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.
