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 This mask was originally made for a dance performance – to be worn by one of the dancers.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...

BROWN BEAR MASK - PART TWO

BROWN BEAR MASK EXPERIENCES THE POWER OF BEING A WITNESS

By Rita Grimaldi

A Personal Truth

My father died when I was 22. Perhaps the truth is that because fathers are always a generation ahead of their children, everyone sees their fathers die. And if you had a good father as I did, it may be true that you want to confront and defeat the death that killed him.

For it is true that in all of us the young child sees our father as invincible.

The Performance

Transforming into Brown Bear by using mask and having Brown Bear take the role of witness for most of the story, allowed me to absorb the story in a much more personal way.

                                  

Brown Bear as Witness

The witness role allowed me to unconsciously feel what was happening between the boy and the Monster Bear that killed his father.

During the performance, the boy’s words came out of my mouth along with the boy’s feelings.

The boy says “Who killed my father?”

Monster Bear answers indignantly “I did.”

But after the performance, it is as if I had said,

“Who killed my father?”

And death answered,

“I did.”

And then in the performance, the boy says “How hard was he to kill?”

And Monster Bear replies “About as hard as a dry juniper.”

Then the boy shoots his arrow into a dry juniper and it explodes into a million shards.  With this act, the boy grows to be the size of a man. And he says “Not hard enough.”

After the performance I think my father should not have died.

I should have been able to kill death for him.

Just as the boy kills the Monster Bear.

I know that this is not a rational thought. But the child part of me who believes in the invincible good father still believes it.

Brown Bear then witnesses the boy shattering a rock with his next arrow. And then the boy shoots his arrows at Monster Bear. As the bear dies, he tells the boy what to do with his body.

The Good Father’s Legacy

As Katcheetohuskw is dying, the text says that he instructs the boy to “Cut my body into small pieces, eat my head, but keep my ears for your bed.” I wrote into the original text that when sleeping, the boy would hear Katcheetohuskw and listen to his instructions. The boy becomes a great hunter.

Doing as he is told, the boy cuts Monster Bear’s body into small pieces and throws some into the air. These become birds and fly away. Then the boy throws some on the ground. These become animals and run away.

Now the story circles back to something positive coming from the negative killing of the good father. The boy now has the resource to become a great hunter.

Brown Bear As Witness

There are two witnessing times for Brown Bear. At the beginning of the story, he witnesses the killing of the husband and wife. And at end of the story, Brown Bear, hiding in the forest, watches the boy’s confrontation with the Bear Monster.

Both times as a witness, Brown Bear experiences emotion. First, the emotion of loss and grief as the daughter sees her dead parents. And second, the emotion of amazement as he sees the boy grow by magic as he confronts the Monster Bear.

Brown Bear witnesses the confrontation between the boy and the Monster Bear. As he hears what the boy says and sees the boy’s actions, he reports these to the audience.

  Brown Bear reporting and showing

the shooting of the arrow into the rock.

Because in the first and last segments, Brown Bear was not part of the action of the story but only a reporter of the action and words, the actions and words of the story had a greater effect on me. I don’t know why this is so, but it was.

I became a witness too. I was one step behind Brown Bear, one step inside Brown bear, one step beneath Brown Bear. The role of witness engulfed me. And what I was witnessing had direct relevance to my own life.

The End Of The Story

At the end of the story, I wrote in that Brown Bear would say

“All this I Brown Bear saw, and I Brown Bear remember, for it is good to remember what happens.”

When I went home from the performance, a great line of memories of my father’s life and death came to me. So I could say for myself

“All this I Rita saw, and I Rita remember.

For it is good to remember what happens.”

Note: In rewriting the story for telling in mask, I made many changes to the original. The complete original story of ‘Katcheetohuskw’ can be found in Giving Voice to Bear (1991) by David Rock.