THE STORY OF THE MOUSE AND THE PRINCESS MASK: PART TWO

By Rita Grimaldi

Making The Clothing For The Mouse Bride

In some science fiction stories, the hero crosses into another reality. As he crosses, he is automatically dressed as an inhabitant of that new reality.

I approached the telling of ‘The Mouse Bride’ in this way. I have a great desire to clothe both the Mouse mask and the Princess mask as they might be dressed in their story world.

  

Mouse in the story is an ordinary grey mouse. But I can’t turn myself into the size of a mouse or have mouse skin.

On top of this, Mouse and Princess are the same person - the Princess being transformed into the Mouse by a witch. So their dresses must mirror each other.

The Shape

I began to think about what shape the Mouse and Princess’ dresses could take. The audience must read each dress as follows: simplicity and small animal for the mouse; beauty and elegance for the Princess. I decide on a simple flowing tube-shape dress for each mask.

Choice of Materials

Grey was the necessary colour for Mouse - the story says that Mouse is a ‘little gray mouse’. So, in my collection of fabrics and precious sewing items, I found a piece of grey fabric for Mouse. And for Princess, I chose a fabric with velvet flowers embossed on it and a beautiful embroidered bird.

The Dresses

Here are the two dresses for Mouse (on the left) and the Princess (on the right).

The Headdresses

Because I can’t have the head of a mouse, I needed to have my head covered for the performance. And once again, the headdress for Mouse must have a mirror image in that worn by the Princess.

Here are the headdresses - Princess to the left, Mouse to the right.

  

Matching Features of the Headdresses

o   Both Princess and Mouse are the same shape.

o   Each headdress has white detail – lace for the Princess and rickrack for Mouse.

o   Mouse has a bow made of the material of the Princess’ dress sewn to the right side.

o   Both headdresses have deep gray colour in their construction.

Mask work requires the teller to enter into the story far more than in regular storytelling. Mask requires immersion on the part of the teller – giving up part of oneself to become the character in the story.

The clothing a mask wears helps me come into the being of the mask. In this case, Mouse’s clothing helped me be a small creature still believing in a positive future. Princess’ clothing helped me be an elegant and beautiful young Princess.

This is the magic of mask. In the plot of the written story, transformation happens through the power of an external person. But in the performed story, the masks and costumes invoke a transformation experience equally as powerful.

  

In Part Three, I will talk about

the transformation experience

of telling

‘The Mouse Bride’.