BROWN BEAR MASK TELLS THE STORY OF MONSTER BEAR - PART ONE

By Rita Grimaldi

Choosing the Mask

I have made three Bear masks - Black Bear, Brown Bear and White Bear.

                   Here is a photo of all three bear masks.

For this year’s Halloween telling I did not want to use Black Bear. It is a sacred mask for me and although it could easily represent Bear Monster I did not want to use it in that way. White Bear is a young creature and did not suit the telling either. So that left me with Brown Bear. This mask was originally made for a dance performance – to be worn by one of the dancers. I have never worn it. It lacked power. So yesterday I began to work with it to give it a stronger ‘presence’.

Here is the changed mask. Can you tell how I changed it? Can you identify the natural materials I have added to bring about a stronger presence?

  

Choosing the Story

Often in mask work, the chosen story for the mask does not work. Then a second story has to be tried. But in this project, all along I had in my mind a story about a monster bear. I kept looking for such a story. When the first story did not work, I looked again. I went to the library. I searched my books. Finally, when I had given up, I found a book a friend had given me and it opened at the story of the monster bear. 

Who is the Bear Telling the Story?

Once, for Halloween, in mask I told the story of the Duppy Bird. This is a bird that kills a boy. It took me days to get over telling it. I realized that it is not in my temperament to transform into a killing monster through mask. So this time, I wanted the safety of being one of the other story characters. 

In the story, there is a second and third bear. I rewrote the original story to eliminate the third bear and wrote in the second bear as a witness to what is happening. This gave me the safety of being the observer. Here is an outline of my version of the story.

The Story of Katcheetohuskw 

The original story comes from the Naskapi tribe of Northern Quebec. The monster bear in the story is extremely large and eats humans.

• ·       Long ago when bears could talk as humans do, there lived an old man and his wife. They had an infant son and an older daughter.
• ·       One day, the old man and his wife go to chop wood and are eaten by the monster bear.
• ·       Brown Bear sees all this.
• ·       The daughter cares for her infant brother. He grows quickly and is soon hunting on his own.
• ·       Then goes off to avenge his father’s death.
• ·       Brown Bear is told to kill the boy by Monster Bear but he will not.
• ·       Monster Bear goes to kill the boy himself. By Magic the boy goes bigger as he confronts the monster bear.
• ·       Brown Bear hides in the forest where the boy is to see what will happen…

I will leave the story at this point until Part Two of my post. In doing this, I will let myself experience during the actual performance, the end confrontation through the eyes of Brown Bear mask. 

Questions for my Experiencing of the Story

The power of the story rests in the confrontation between the monster bear and the boy. This power comes from what is said and what is done. Here are the two questions I want to answer for myself.

1.   Does something happen inside me as I take the witness role as transformed Brown Bear? In this form, am I internalizing the story?

2.   Does the audience also experience the story as witnesses along with the Brown Bear mask?

To be continued...