Mask Making for Professionals

All of our own home made masks... yes its true... can you tell?!  To begin the epic journey of mask making and mask play we were tasked to make our own masks... to call on our own creative intuition and make a proposal, or a statement.  And we did...  It was such fun...

our creations!  

My wonderfully bizarre mask which I had enormous fun playing.

So yes, we all made the usual and expected mistakes with our first masks, and from there we went into depth on understanding the face - form, plains, volume, colour.  A nose is the consequence of two side volumes meeting... a mouth is the consequence of the top volume meeting the bottom... features are not added or stuck on at all... they emerge for the form that ultimately is the face... the whole face is  the consequence of volumes meeting.  Obvious.  Possibly.  But try do it.

Initially it is perhaps a practically confusing way to work, but poetically and artistically it is totally true.  It is therefore very difficult - and ill advised - to decide beforehand the kind of mask you are going to make... Like deciding that you want to have a big nose or broad cheeks and so on.  Rather, you 'simply' make the mask you are going to make... the form emerges, and it is - for the most part - out of your control.  And then... of course... you have to hope that it works on stage and not as a decorative wall hanging!

Below are some pictures of the process of mask making.  What an absolute privilege - Matteo, our mask making teacher, is an absolute genius.

From this... to this in a week!  Weirdly there is something similar about them.  How odd.

Vika and her two masks... isn't it amazingly wonderful!

Really!  I am very excited to see what our third masks are going to look like.