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
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