2nd/3rd June - Masks Workshops

We've been wanting to work with masks for ages, and the funding that we got for this Gatehouse production gave us just the opportunity that we needed.  Because of the style of the performances, they will work very well with masks.  In fact, the way that we have painted our faces thus far in the shows are masks, albeit in paint form.  The masks that we made, however, which we will be able to put on and off at will, will change the mood of the performance considerably.  For a start, the painted makeup was quite beautiful and smooth, whereas the masks will be a bit more grotesque, which I think will be especially effective in Urashima, to add a bit of horror.  The only problem with this is that two members of the Urashima cast don't have masks for this yet, but we can discuss this tonight.  The gods in Good Thunder have masks in progress and these are looking very good.  As for the badger kettle, I don't think that any of the characters will be masked.  The story is very lively and active, and painted faces will not slip, also the jolly nature of the story may not go with the awful grotesque element added by the masks.


The workshops were over two days, and were originally timed at 3 hours each.  This was to include making, painting and enrolling into character.  As it was, we took 4 hours on each day, and didn't even get around to finishing the making of the masks, with the exception of Sophies fairy narrator, which she made and painted.  This means that at this evenings workshop, we will be working with partially completed masks.  however this will enable us to get the feel of the mask and to be aware of keeping it visible to the audience, so that the power of the mask is not lost.  An interesting challenge as we are performing in the round (well, it's a sort of enlarged semicircle really).

Making the Masks
The technique we used to make the masks was mainly with rolls of brown paper sticky tape, and padding made of kitchen roll soaked in pva glue and water (we took a while to learn the importance of squeezing this out as much as possible so that it isn't dripping wet - this makes the mask soggy, lose it's shape and difficult to stick the features on.).

First of all, we got into pairs, and took it in turns building the base of the mask.  That is sticking the tape back down onto the persons face.  When I say back down, the sticky side does NOT touch the face, it is sticky side up.  The base of this is a frame and more sticky tape is used to cover the entire face, diagonally across, and then 3 or 4 more layers on top until it was quite thick. 

The tape is stuck down by being wetted on the non-sticky side and then stuck to the sticky side exposed underneath.  On the last layer the tape is reversed, so it is sticky side down, which means that there is no sticky showing on the mask. 
Then the mask shell is carefully removed, and we waited for it to dry - which ended up being over night.

the next session was the building of the features of the mask.  Looking at pictures of Noh masks for inspiration, we built up cheeks, chins and eyebrows with kitchen towel dipped in pva glue and covered over with more wet sticky paper tape, this time it being stuck sticky side down. 

the Narrator masks (mine is the widow narrator from Urashima, Sophies the fairy narrator from Good Thunder) will be half masks to enable us to speak, all of the others will be full masks.  Sophie has made her mask rather cleverly cut across the diagonal, which makes it interesting visually, stylish and quirky.

As with the backdrops, there is much work still to be done, however having this much done is very encouraging, and I look forward to us being able to work on our enrolment rituals, in order to be able to get the most out of the masks in performance.