Thursday, March 6, 2014

A PERSONAL REACTION TO A PERFORMANCE OF STORYTELLING IN MASK

By Don Herald

I’ve always thought telling a story in mask was like putting on your favourite Halloween mask and telling a story. It might be interesting. It might be dreadfully boring. It might be emotionally involving. Or it might leave me cold and pondering what I was going to feed the dog for dinner. It might be creative. Or it might be flat, dull and totally impersonal. In short, I knew that a storytelling performance in mask offered me no guarantees about my reactions as an informed listener and observer.

But that was all forgotten when I was in the audience for Rita’s mask performances of ‘The Boy Who Lived With Bears’ and ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’. I must confess that I had an edge that no one else in the room had except for Rita herself. As she was writing her diary entries and then rewrote some of them into blog posts prior to the performances, she and I would sometimes talk at some length about the ideas and creative process that were going into her mask design and show preparations. And then I would see her live performances. I would hear the words spoken by her mask characters.

But for me, running in the background of the live performance, was an invisible script of the backstory of how, over many days, Rita slowly transformed herself physically and emotionally into becoming the characters and the personalities within the stories. For me personally, it was a fascinating experience to watch how all her private musings, struggles, victories and innovations transformed themselves into the on stage performances.

There is no better way to describe this experience than to refer you to Part Four of the Black Bear mask story on our blog. Here is an excerpt that illustrates for me one of the most powerful ideas about telling in mask that I will take away from Rita’s creative journey and performances.

The two masks I used to tell this story caused almost overwhelming feelings of different forms of identity in me. Once I accepted the power of the bear into me (read previous posts above) it swept over my body like a wave of strength. It gathered and focused all the power of my body in the story’s task of protecting its own life and the lives of its bear cubs and its human cub. The Tree Spirit mask, taking the role of the Spirit of the Northern Forest, gave me a real tangible presence, inside my body, of the spirit reality of nature.
         
The experience of rehearsing and telling this story in these two masks brought me into a feeling mode that I have not experienced before in mask. Usually when I perform in mask, there is a cognitive track running simultaneously with the feeling of the story. This performance obliterated the cognitive function of my mind. My mind ran on the Bear’s feelings of power, strength and protection of her young and on the Tree Spirit’s feeling of magic and spiritual reality.

I was totally captured by Rita’s recent telling of ‘The Boy Who Lived With Bears’. The characters of The Tree Spirit and the Bear Mother came alive not only in Rita’s expert use of the masks, but also in the gestures and body positions, voice tones, rhythms and pitch.

In that moment, I was not watching or listening to Rita the storyteller. The Tree Spirit was before me in the room, telling me her story and introducing me to Bear Mother and her cubs. I was in the forest with Tree Spirit. And when Bear Mother entered to continue her personal story, her mask which was so life like and had a moveable jaw as she spoke, my experience deepened.

Rita no longer existed for me in that moment. It was the She Bear protecting her cubs and the boy human who was her adopted cub saving everyone from the Hunter. Rita’s masks and words brought the power of the story to life for me. I was touched deeply by the story as conveyed by the masks. Far more, I believe, than if Rita had just told the story without the use of masks.

The story ended, but my experience lingered for some time afterward. I wanted to hear more. See more. Feel more. As a storyteller who has never considered using a mask to tell a story, the possibility was awakened in me. The fact that I would even consider that idea is a surprise to me.

Rita has shared with me that for several days after the Bear mask performance, she was emotionally drained, mentally fatigued. For her it is not just the performance itself that is the event, but as you can understand from her blog posts, the hours and days of devoting herself to becoming the characters of the mask, acquiring unfamiliar emotional and psychological attributes that will be necessary to become the Bear Mother…all of this I have learned from Rita, is a necessary part of the telling experience when using masks.

I recall an afternoon several months ago when Rita lead a mask workshop for her storytelling colleagues from southern and eastern Ontario. Most of these folks are very seasoned and professionally skilled tellers of tales. Some use musical instruments as characters in their stories. A few are professional tellers who entertain audiences across Ontario, some perform in other countries. I imagine that very few have ever used a mask in their telling of a story.

So in theory, this audience was what I would call ‘a tough sell’. 

But during the workshop and then after the performance, the room lit up with the excited energy of knowledgeable listeners having just experienced a master teller in mask creating a magical world of spoken and visual story that was a truly remarkable and emotionally stirring experience for everyone.

Just as I will always remember Rita’s mask stories and performances, I will also remember how those tellers found their performance expectations taken to a whole new level of engagement and potential power. And that was something truly unexpected.



Don telling a story without a mask!

If you haven’t yet read ‘The Second Story of the Black Bear Mask’ and ‘The Log of the Black Bird Mask’, please take the time to visit our Tales and Tips blog and discover a new world for telling and listening to stories.

All Rights Reserved by Don Herald (2014)

Visit the Tales and Tips blog of Peterborough Storytellers


No comments:

Post a Comment