art

Mask Work

Theatrical Process

I did a short mask class teaser session yesterday (a mask class workshop, if you will).  We worked with larval mask and hats, and then with found masks (gas masks).

For the larval exercise, we just stood in the mask, looking at the room.  Afterwords, we left the mask and got feedback. There were four of us and three larval masks.  The first of us to go chose a mask with a huge jaw and tiny eyes – a very simple mask at first.

His presence onstage totally changed.  I noticed every small motion of his shoulders, the way his torso moved.  The mask seemed at once curious, small, and lowly.  It reminded me of popeye or of a small child.  I could not get the idea of the sailor out of my head when looking at the mask.  Furthermore, the eyes- two small cut out circles – enthralled me.  They were such small dots but they stared so deep.

The mask I chose looked something like the clown Violator from Spawn (for those comic fans out there).  When I had finished with my mask work, my peers reviewed me.  They felt that the mask seemed to create a very sad character.  I remember that one of the eyeholes dug into my actual eyesocket a bit, forcing me to view the world lopsidedly.  My breathing really changed inside the mask (after all, one does need to breath heavier inside a mask).

Our last two members chose the same larval mask – one with a jutting forehead and a small slit for a mouth.

The first wearer was a girl, a good friend of mine who I knew to be a very responsible person.  What was interesting was that her mask was very angry at first, very threatening.  When she looked around the space and tilted the mask up, I saw a great deal of curiosity in it, and then when she came back to look at the audience, the mask was no longer angry in a threatening manner, but tight-lipped: it knew something we wanted to know but it wouldn’t tell us.

After she remove the mask, she told us that the mask pressed against her mouth, making her breath through her nose: an interesting correlation to the tight-lipped emotion the mask portrayed on her.

The second wearer was a boy, taller than the girl, who I knew to be something of a quiet but fun-loving sort.  On him, the same larval mask was simply distant, like a teenager at a funeral:  It was taking in everything around it in a detached manner.  As the mask looked around, it became more bemused and interested in the world around it, and returned to look at us in a sort of stupor, like one taking in information but not fully processing it.

What really hit me was how different this same mask was on two people.

Next, we worked with found masks, in the form of gas-masks.  We partnered up for this exercise, myself and the jaw-larva wearer going together.  I chose a circular one to see what it might help me convey.  Our instructor told us to be aliens – everything around us was new and strange.  We were to begin sleeping and awaken to find ourselves in a new world.

So we did.  And everything was very new: the lights, the piping of the batons, the room, and a staircase.  What I found fascinating was my partner’s body – I figured if we were alien’s we weren’t human, so the human form would seem strange to us.  After watching him move about for a bit, I decided to try motions similar to his.  I looked at my own hand, then at my ‘legs’ and my ‘feet’ and then I ‘stood.’  This felt crazy, like I was rising up on top of gears and pistons, coming up from a great depth and emerging.  My partner touched the back of his head after our instructor said something and I thought we had to end the excercise, so I remove my mask, only to realize my partner was still in mask, still in the scene.  I had become an audience member trapped onstage.  So I sat and watched him until he finished.

After our exercise, my peers pointed out that I had stood with a posture which I had never had before, I seemed to be a lot bigger, to have a much larger presence.  That being said, we (as aliens) had seemed to be children to the audience, and our instructor asked us that the next time we did mask work to remember to look at the audience in order to pull them in.

It was crazy looking at alternative ways of viewing both as an actor and as an audience member.  It really opened my mind up to the idea of masks!

On Acting

Theatrical Process

The hardest part about acting is not being oneself.  Certainly, it is impossible not to be oneself when one does something, but then, one is, often enough, not being oneself.  Often, people do ‘perform’ for other people, employees treat their bosses differently than they do their coworkers, friends treat strangers differently than lifelong buddies, a spouse treats their partner differently than their parents or their children.  Confucius had categorizations for various relationships among people, and Jesus of Nazareth stated “Give Caesar what is due to Caesar, give God what is due to God,” which implies two different relationships between different types of perceived authority. In light of all this social evidence of people ‘not being themselves,’ or at least putting on different airs for different people, the hardest part of acting shouldn’t be that hard.

The more appropriate way to phrase the earlier critique would be that the hardest thing about acting is know what comes from oneself and what comes from the character.  What parts of one’s acting are habit, for instance?  Is there a certain bias to the ‘neutral base’ that actors take?  Is there a given impulse which an actor often plays?  The better actors know themselves, the better they can make choices that create characters.

One excellent model for this process is Brechtian theatre.  It encourages actors to at once be themselves and play a character.  The character can be created through a series of indicative actions or ticks or gestures which give the audience cues as to the character.  The actor themselves can comment on the action occurring before them while still ‘playing’ the character.  While this may not always be the best ‘product’ for an actor to achieve, it does make for a good method of understanding what parts of performance come from oneself and what parts come from a character.

The danger of breaking down oneself into a series of understood actions is that one can lose self confidence.  If an actor is never themselves, then they must always reject their personal neutral in order to take on a character.  This is an unhappy extreme, even less happy than the extreme of always playing oneself, an extreme in which there is incredible self – trust and confidence.  A happy medium can lead to added growth both in an actor’s repertoire and in themselves.

Often, in Western Theatre, there is a drive to comprehend the text, and in various methods of script analysis, character can emerge.  In the plot of a play, actors can undertake a series of actions which reveal their characters.  However, this series of actions is not enough to fully convey a ‘real’ person.  The text alone, the lines and actions and subtext behind a verbal enaction, are not enough.  The voice does not only speak through the body, especially in a gaze centered medium such as theatre.

The whole person is viewed onstage.  The face, the hands, the feet, the legs, the hips, the back, the armpits, the groin: all visible, all judged, all symbolic onstage.  The way an actor can give more than just the plot, the method by which an actor can convey a deep and lasting story, is through the body.  How does a character carry themselves?  Does it have old injuries, fears, role models?  What do these conditioners do to the body and the way it is carried, where it holds stress, how it gestures, what way the fingers touch?  In this analysis of character, that tells back story through the body, actors must deconstruct themselves in order to realize what patterns that they, as people, carry by habit, rather than by choice.

To clarify: acting is not pretending to be someone else or to ‘make believe.’  While these elements become part of being an actor, the key to noun is the verb: act.  To take action, to execute a choice.  And so, before one can act, one must make a choice, and then carry it through with confidence.  For this reason, actors break down text into beats, actions, verbs, text and subtext, in order to choreograph their designated image.  So I say, the better an actor knows what they always do, the better they can make a choice that is not themselves.

To clarify further: no one is never entirely not themselves.  Even socially, people perform certain aspects of themselves.  Philosophically speaking, no one is ever anything more than an aspect of themselves, and so at all times, one is being a certain side of oneself, never the entire thing.  So it is with acting.  The better one can make choices, the better one can act.  So, what is a well-made choice?

A well made choice has a trigger, its verb, and an end.  This end becomes the trigger for the next choice.  Triggers can be anything sort of input: a visual trigger: an object, an action, an event, and so forth; an audio trigger: a phrase, word, or a sound; a tactile trigger: temperature, exhaustion, touch, pain; an olfactory trigger: any scent; or a taste trigger: any taste (this ties to scent). The trigger begins the choice.

Once the choice’s trigger has been activated, the verb must be enacted.  If a sight is repulsive to a character, they must react accordingly until they receive a new stimulus (external or internal).

The duration of choices can be long or short, depending on the set circumstances.  Often, a series of complicating circumstances may cause an initial reaction to be stifled and then covered, leading to a series of choices: reaction, revelation, stifling, cover, or: cover (until a complicating circumstance is gone) then react.

This rapid pace of clear choice changes demands that an actor both understand their own physicality and their own mentality: where does the person go as a reaction?  What are the person’s feelings about a stimulus?  What are the common choices the person makes as a reaction to given triggers?  How are the character’s physicality, mentality, and choices different?

It is important for these reasons to work on character from the outset.  While I recommend trying a series of characters and choices in order to find freshness and vivacity, I also recommend solidifying character early enough in the process for the physicality and mentality of the character to be easy to access.  Notice I do not say natural – the person is natural, the character is artificial.  The character should never become ‘natural,’ it will lend itself to the person enough.  The character should be easily accessed, however.

For helpful methods on character work and choices, as well as character awareness, I recommend the works of Konstantin Stanislavski and the acting method called Archetypes, based on the psychological work of Karl Jung.

Architecture and Art

Theatre Business

One huge problem for Theatre Organizations is Money.  I figure there are two answers to this:

Education and Going Green.

By Education, I mean training programs, outreach, and community involvement. In addition, working with schools ( or as part of a school or on-profit) can help earn access to various grants and/or scholarships for student employees.  Speaking of students, volunteer positions are also great ways to reduce budget and increase community involvement.

By Going Green, I mean planning and communicating.  There’s no reason a Theatre should have to spend a nickle that it doesn’t need to (on things other than art, that is).  I recommend viral marketing to cut down on mailing costs, online updates and posting for cast and crew to reduce printing expenses, and web databases for easier access and storage saving for files.  That being said, having hard copies of items never hurt.

I also refer to architecture in building structure.  There’s no reason a theatre should be built above ground.  Granted, perhaps local geology or geography makes it preferable, but if you want to save money, you can save on expenses for heating, and cooling (and land space) by simply building down rather than up.  Theatre is a naturally subterranean art these days: the needs of lighting require a space without windows.  By building down first, one can save money on site construction by putting parking above the theatre space.

Underground building isn’t all that is available.  Currently in DC there is a Solar Decathlon between around twenty universities, all working on building houses that cover the costs of their energy expenses over the course of the year.  This system allows them, in some cases, to store that same energy and sell it back to energy companies in their area.  These sorts of buildings would make for excellent above-ground reception and training areas for students, and, if the methods work well enough in energy storage, could help eventually store energy that would pay for the costs of theatrical technology.

Another method of going Green is communication, especially in terms of waste management.  I cannot stress enough the benefits of community involvement in waste management.  I have seen, at my college, whole set pieces get torn down and shredded because they did not fit stock requirements.  I think that with a few years’ communication work and developing relationships with local theatres and schools, that this waste could be reduced, perhaps even eliminated, through a system of trade, rent, and exchange (perhaps a rent/ trade credit program).  The necessity to foster such programs is open communication between multiple groups, which again brings up the idea of internet presence.  This is a fast method of communication which costs less than mailing and results in less paperwork and travel than driving around putting up fliers.

I especially encourage work with local conservation groups, art departments, music groups, churches and theatres – all entities which exist off charity and community and should all be working together to better the community.

To recap, my recommendations for the Theatre for reducing costs are:

  • communication and community outreach, especially for terms of waste management and storage,
  • internet use for publicity and paperwork
  • ties to education/programs for education/non-for-profit status that allows for access to grants and scholarships,
  • architecture that reduces costs of heating, cooling, space use, and light issues, perhaps working with underground theatres and overgrown 0-energy spaces.

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Plans

So,

Rocket Science and Theatre never really seemed to gel.  Until I got to thinking:

a) what is it that Engineers can’t do that theatre people can?

b) what is it that Theatre People can’t do that engineers can?

a) socialize.

b) tech.

by socialize, I mean, Theatre People (actors especially, also dancers and other performers) are taught to Improvise, get in touch with their Emotions and even be able to call them up or, if feeling them, Analyze the Feeling.  they are studied in the Manipulation of their Selves – both Feelings and Physicalities – which enable them, if they so choose, to Express themselves articulately and effectively.

by tech, I mean Engineers are trained to work with Mechanics, of whatever variety, and Understand how the World around them works.  They can Manipulate space and time (or use their advanced Understanding of the interaction between the two) to Change the World around them.

Theatre People don’t always know how to change the world around them, but they certainly can express themselves.

Engineers can do wonders with technology and comprehension, but don’t always know how to say the things they mean to say as they mean to say them.

Synthesis: An Acting Therapy Group designed to help engineers which also gets tech- savvy people interested in local theatre endeavors and gives engineers a Productive Hobby.  An eye for an eye helping the world see better, if you will.

The overall idea could be very cool.  I wonder if anyone is already doing something like this… research time!!!

Mission Statement

Plans

So after a few posts that have been generally infrequent and rather all-over- -the-place, I’ve decided that I need to figure out what my blog’s going to be about.

I don’t like blogging for its own sake, so I figure I’ll use this thing as a means of furthering my interests and myself.

I won’t be any Perez Hilton, but…

Let’s figure this out:

goals for the year:

– daily posting: shorter posts, link to twitter, link to facebook, yada yada

– ads!  I should get some of those…

– themes: what are my focus areas?  I think, as I mentioned, they’re my interests: theatre, art, architecture, design, the green movement, and space travel/exploration/colonization, philosophy.  Now, all of those tie in pretty well except… theatre. Yeah, I know.  Funny, it’s my major.

– get a scanner: upload comics!  yay webcomic!  I think I’ll do one on Superheroes…  I can upload commission-able art samples in watercolor, pastel, pencil, and pen.

– get a tablet PC: simply draw and edit images on da computah.

– figure out what my real job will be while I get this started up…

– network: have a whole mess of buddies who advertise me while I advertise them.

okay, I think that should do it for goals.  Of course, these will get more specific.  But for today, it’s a good laundry list (grocery list?)

for now, my basic q: this website will be about using art and philosophy to help further mankind, and to make the idea of space exploration and efficient living ‘hip.’