Monday, March 23, 2015

THE FIERCE ROSE MASK TELLS HER FIRST STORY

Editor's Note: The Fierce Rose story was performed in mask by Rita Grimaldi of Peterborough Storytellers during a World Storytelling Day 2015 concert held in Peterborough, Ontario on March 18, 2015. 

The article posted here is Rita's account of adapting the original tale, creating the mask and giving the performance. Storytelling in mask is a unique skill set and the Tales and Tips blog is pleased to host several articles written by Rita about the performance use of mask in oral narrative.


 By Rita Grimaldi

Telling stories in mask always requires rewriting the story from the mask character’s perspective.


 Rita’s ‘Fierce Rose’ mask

The Fierce Rose mask says,
“I wish I could have a human child form in one of my rose buds.”

She says,
“How happy I was to see my human son.”

She says,
“The forest magic did not abandon me for I could see in my rose heart all that was happening to my human son. I saw the human queen rocking him in her rose arbor.”

All these things I wrote into the story for my Rose Mask to say.

The original story had been about her son, the Rose Prince, but the rewriting of it turned it into her story.

I asked myself…
Who is the being represented by this mask?
What does she want?
How does she want to dress?
How does she love and function and desire and fill her needs?

I wanted the audience to know her as someone.
Even though she was a plant being, a rose bush, I wanted the audience to believe she could talk to them and that she could feel a mother’s love and a mother’s desire for her human son.

After the performance, a woman from the audience said to me “You expressed how I feel for my son. How I want him to go out into the word but to go out and do good things. Your costume emphasized your breasts just like a nursing mother’s breasts might be emphasized.”

I was pleased with these comments.

It was a great challenge for me as a mask storyteller to transform myself into a plant spirit capable of human-like emotions. These comments said to me that the Fierce Rose mask had told her story as a real being with real feelings.

Here is the poem she wrote two days before the performance.
Read her feelings and know her.




Being Fierce Rose

My Red Dress embeds itself before and after me
My dress remembers my life in the forest
It remembers my roots in the soil
As for me/Fierce Rose mask, I remember Rita’s face that I was formed on
And I remember the small bird feathers at the corners of my eyes
And I know my lower lip is full of thorns
They are sharp against the memory of losing my son the Rose Prince,
He who was embedded in my roots
And rose up to grow in one of my buds

To be born to see the sunshine on the tall forest trees.

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