WE REMEMBER RITA GRIMALDI

GOODBYE, MY FRIEND

Rita Grimaldi, my friend and storytelling mentor, died unexpectedly on the evening of March 28th, 2020.

When I first approached Rita to write about her storytelling experiences with masks, she declined. She said she was a very private individual and did not wish to share snippets of her personal life or thoughts. She said she could sometimes be awkward and clumsy with her written words, so anything she’d write would perhaps not adequately convey the power of her masks to connect with audiences. Finally, Rita said she was skeptical about whether anyone would be interested in what she had to say about this unique genre of storytelling.

Several months passed. I persisted, but Rita remained firm. 

Finally, I offered to read her first drafts, suggest edits, ask questions about her ideas. I said we’d ‘fancy it up’ with photographs and better formatting. Rita said she’d write a couple of articles and see how it went. 

Her early posts were very well received by an international readership. Rita was delighted. So she wrote a couple more. And then, a whole lot more.

In telling you about Rita – the artist and the woman – I’ve decided to use her own words as they appear in her blog posts, to reveal a very special person, an accomplished storyteller, and ultimate master of the challenging art of mask performance.

RITA’S MASTERY OF THE ART OF STORYTELLING WITH MASK

I remember once hearing a famous storyteller who told a story with his eyes shut. When he was done, I put up my hand, and I asked why he told with his eyes shut. He answered that he told this way because it allowed him to better concentrate on the text of the story.

But this is not my way of storytelling. I don’t want to only concentrate on the story.  I want to concentrate on making the story a shared experience between the audience and myself. 

Seeing the audience’s facial expressions tells me how they are experiencing the story. Always my goal is that the story will reach them on an emotional level. By seeing their faces – especially through the focused holes of the mask – I will know if I have reached my goal of emotional involvement.

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One of the audience members in Warkworth came up to me after the performance and said that it was very powerful that I changed in full view of the audience. I felt I wanted to do this because the visible change allowed the audience sufficient time to adjust their emotions. And as I changed, the harp music playing softly and in sync with the emotional changes, helped the audience feel the emotions with me.

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Clothing affects us more than we know. And changing my clothing affected the emotion of my mask persona immensely. I did not feel the same while wearing the soot dress, veil, and gloves as I felt when wearing the Princess dress. And I am going to guess that watching me, the audience did not feel the same either.

Does clothing have a message to tell the storytelling audience and the storyteller herself?

My answer after this experience is ‘yes.’ My experience wearing the Princess dress helped me feel the positive times and wearing soot clothing helped me to feel the difficult and fearful times.

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Here is what I feel during the mask performance of a story containing conflict.

o   I feel the threatening, negative energy of my adversary.

o   I feel my fear of his rising power.

o   I feel the relief of my escape or the pain of my death or sometimes the rightness of just walking away.

These feelings teach me about life and about what it is like to live with conflict in the real world.

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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.

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.

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But as soon as I put on Monkey mask, to rehearse ‘Molly the Monkey’ - one of the stories I planned to tell - my whole being came alive. The story came alive. Energy welled up in me and poured into my experience of the story.

It occurred to me that this was not right. My own face must be as valuable a storyteller as my mask face. My energy out-of-mask has to be as deep and available to audiences as when I’m in mask.

The key factor is emotion. Mask automatically brings emotion out of me because mask automatically bonds me with the feeling of being part of the story’s reality. The story’s reality becomes my reality. I see the story from inside rather than from outside.

It is not that I like the stories I tell in mask any better than I like the stories I tell out-of-mask. It’s that the stories I tell in mask I know better. They are part of me in a different way. They belong to me, and I belong to them. 

The transformation of using the mask causes this belonging experience. When I put on the mask, it is as if I no longer belong to my regular life. I belong to the reality of the story.

RITA’S USE OF SELF WHILE PERFORMING IN MASK

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.

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In the second performance, I had no stumbles. For me, it was a purely emotional experience. I felt everything. I saw everything. Looking through the key, I saw as things really are and not how things appeared to be. When I saw the Troll beating the Prince, my feelings of fear and helplessness were real to me. When I was restored to my real Princess appearance, and my Prince was restored to health, my joy was real.

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I began to feel old - too old to make such a mask. Then I decided that it was necessary for me to re-acquire my own feelings of strength, innocence and beauty, as you cannot create what you do not feel inside. So doing this and not anticipating either success or failure, I began to re-sculpt the Princess’s face once more.

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Twice during rehearsal, at the point where the young man runs away (thus not honouring his side of the bargain), my rehearsal came to a dead stop.

The first time when I was stopped, I took off the mask and walked out of the room.

A friend of mine said that two stories were going on – my story and Wolf’s story. 

Reflecting on my story, I realized that this is perhaps the truth - that in real life, I cannot tolerate bargains not being kept. And equally important was my realization that both Wolf and I have to learn that there are times in life when you just have to cut your losses.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.”

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Early this morning and for several early mornings previously, I reflected on my Small Bear mask telling experience. I came to realize that Small Bear’s drive to find what is necessary for his survival is, in truth, a deep part of my own life.

Like Small Bear, I too lost my mother at a young age. The survival drive within me is similar to that possessed by Small Bear. Mine has led me to search for ‘food’ and find it. This search is not only just a part of ‘story land.’ It is part of this world as well.

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Living these events through mask helps me face the possibilities of resolving conflicts in life. Facing threats in this way is not at all like the abstract reading of psychology texts; it puts the options of how to react to conflict into concrete, felt experience.

DANCING WITH THE KAHA BIRD

I would like to conclude this memorial post with some personal observations and reactions to a remarkable mask performance featuring Rita’s mask character – the Kaha Bird. I wrote this post the following day - May 30, 2016. For those of you who never had the opportunity to experience a mask storytelling by Rita, I hope this helps bring it all to life for you.

First – the overall design of the mask. It is imaginatively detailed in its features and how it was accessorized. The spiky hard feathers radiating out from the face were startling. The bird’s long, finely shaped beak over a lower beak jaw that moved in sync with the teller’s words – seemed both predatory and cunningly charming all at the same time. Masks that possess the moveable lower jaw are not common, but the movement during speech impresses the listener and watcher as if it is a living creature standing before you.

Second – the carefully selected accessories. A mix of feather types and subtle colours are dramatically interspersed between the hard spike feathers. The use and placement of these feathers softens the Kaha Bird’s overall appearance while silently encouraging me to see and experience the mask as a living bird.

Third – the colour scheme. Colours were artfully chosen and painted onto the moulded features of the Kaha Bird mask. In particular, the brush strokes surrounding the eyes and the ochre-coloured patches directly beneath and beside each eye served to capture my attention, directing my thoughts and aroused feelings toward and into those mesmerizing eyes.

I know that Rita is not just wearing the mask. She is not just performing in the mask. She is just not speaking the words for the mask.

Rita is the mask. For her, it’s an inclusive, transformative process and experience.

Each of her masks invites Rita to tell its story.

In some ways, the story is her real-life story too.

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The End …

I leave the performance area.

I remove the costume and the mask.

I become Rita again.

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“I am tired. Now I go to sleep.”

At her home - March 28, 2020