THE PRINCESS MASK AND ITS TRANSFORMATION - PART 2

By Rita Grimaldi                           

Removing The First Enchantment

In my revised version of the story, when the Prince first views the Princess, I will say -

        

When the Prince opened the door of the Troll’s castle, 

he saw me – a maiden alone -

and I was black as soot from head to toe.

The Princess had been enchanted by the Troll. This enchantment has caused her to become black as soot. However, the Prince, looking through his key, sees her real form.

He asks -

How can I free you from this enchantment?

She replies -

If you will abide three nights

and bear all that shall happen to you without a word

then I shall be free.

I decided to allow the darkness of being ‘soot black’, to be represented by my costume - the soot black dress - and to wear this costume over my Princess dress. Here is what I look like ‘soot black from head to toe’.

The soot dress, black gloves, and veil

The story then says that each night the Troll comes and beats the Prince. The Prince does not say a word. The Troll leaves before sunrise each of the three days and the Princess weeps over her Prince. Her crying makes his pain and injuries go away. Her crying restores part of her body to being ‘white as silver’.

I will show this by first removing my right black glove and having the Princess say -

And when I looked at the right side of my body,

it was as white as silver.

All this repeats on the second night. After her weeping, I will remove my left black glove and say -

And when I looked at the left side of my body,

it was as white as silver.

The soot dress with gloves removed.

Finally, after the third night, I will remove the black lace veil covering the Princess mask and say -

And now my face was as white as snow and

my cheeks were as red as an apple and

my eyes were a blue as the sky.

It was important when deciding how best to costume and perform this story, that I spent time considering the meaning of dark and light. The analogy of sunlight and dark night comes to me. Sunlight and dark night are two opposites. It is of interest that a Troll cannot tolerate sunlight because they burst apart when they come in contact with sunlight.

In my experience, there are always two kinds of times in life - those marked by the hard learning of dark times and those that are marked by the ease of sunny times. In my performance of the Princess story, I want to illustrate the dark times – not just by the Princess’ actions and tears - but also by the visual symbolism of her dark clothing.

Transition To The Second Enchantment

The original story says that after the first enchantment “the Princess had little or nothing upon her.” This certainly was not viable for my performance so I opted to keep wearing the soot dress.

The original story also says that the Prince finds a ram’s skin to cover the Princess. As I do not need the covering, I will say that the Prince finds a sheepskin (I change ‘ram’ to ‘sheep’ as I have a sheepskin in my costume collection) in the Troll’s castle to protect the Princess from the cold.

At first, I considered leaving out the sheepskin - allowing the audience to just imagine it being on. But then I realized that I needed to physically show the sheepskin as being removed. It’s the removal of the skin that causes the Princess’ second transformation – becoming a red bird.

So here is the Princess as she and the Prince leave the Troll’s castle. She still wears her soot dress but now has the sheepskin to protect her from the cold.

The Princess wearing the sheepskin over her soot dress.

In Part 3, I will explore the making of the Red Bird mask and how the Princess’ bird enchantment ends. Finally, I will explain how I will end the story.