ANIMATING THE ANIMATORS WORKSHOPS

Core Skills Workshops for the Puppeteer
MASK AND MOVEMENT
By Howard Gayton
Workshops conducted between May 23rd and June 6th 2005



There were three main areas that were covered during this sequence of workshops –

- Mask-as-transformer.
- Mask-as-frame.
- Mask-as-training aid.

We were using ‘universal’, whiteface masks (often referred to as neutral), which are basically full-face masks that have no character or expression.

THE WORKSHOPS:

The workshops ran along the following lines:

The warm up concentrated on the link between breath and movement, designed to centre our selves in our bodies, and to begin to create the right atmosphere for the mask.

A run through of the physical body, how it moves and operates, and the internal systems it supports; blood, energy, thinking, emotions, imagination. This gave us an idea of what we have at our disposal to work with. It also starts the process of dis-associating ourselves from our ‘normal-daily’ being. To work the masks we need to work with ‘extra-daily’ states of being.

1. The first major exercise was to come into a space, in front of the rest of the participants, and stand unmasked doing nothing. This is repeated but this time masked.

This deceptively simple exercise contains many of the principles that were then explored. We discovered it is an exercise that makes one feel very ‘open’, naked almost. It gives the participant a very real comparison between being masked and un-masked, it transforms. It gives the watchers an experience of the power of the mask as a frame to what they are watching, how the mask focuses our attention on the body, and how, paradoxically, it reveals so much about the person that we would normally not pick up on.

As a training, this exercise begins the process of ‘stripping away’ of the superfluous baggage that performers have picked up through life. Imagine a circle, with a dot in the centre. The circle is all possibility, in terms of character say. If I am at the centre of the circle, I have equal access to the whole of potentiality, if I am restricted to one area of the circle, then I have limited access to full potentiality. To get to this notional (and un-obtainable!) centre of the circle, I need only strip away all that is preventing me being there.

The act of stripping away, of diving into areas of being that are normally not accessed, is not only facilitated by the mask, but it is how the mask works. Masks demand of us honesty, a reaching into our depths. To understand masks we need to be able to hold paradox; how can something that covers, that hides, reveal so much? Masks have been used for millennia by traditional societies as shamanic tools, to aid individuals in reaching altered states of consciousness; in other words to travel into their own selves in order to bring back a boon to their society. In our case, this boon is art. We open ourselves up, we struggle with our internal selves, and our aim is to bring back art.

All this just from walking into a space!

Having discovered this state of ‘being in the mask’, and what it feels like to be in it as a performer, we used it to explore a few things.

We looked at the basics of movement. What does it actually take to sit-down? What muscles are used, where does the weight go, how does it change? Can we simplify our own personal sitting to eradicate any extraneous movement? The universal mask state helps us to focus on our body, our weight, bone and joint structure.

This is a useful tool as a puppeteer, to be able to work out the simple mechanics of a movement. Puppets can exhibit traits of both their ‘human’ nature, and their puppet nature. At times they wish to be fully human, conforming to our laws of gravity and weighting, and an ability to fully analyse the minutiae of a movement is helpful in working out what weighting a puppet might need, or which part of the body begins a certain manoeuvre.

We also looked at a simple mirror exercise, one person following the simple and slow movements of another. The leader for this exercise is changed, and eventually no one leads, but the movement continues. This is a common drama exercise, which teaches receptivity, awareness, and the idea of flow. The mask enhances the state of awareness, and the exercise deepens the state of the mask.

2. The second major area of exploration was a very focused walk, which is drawn from a mixture of Butoh and Suzuki training - both Japanese forms of theatre, which draw on traditional Japanese theatre forms in a modern way.

The walk consists of moving in a straight line, knees bent. Placing one heel to the toe of the front foot in order to progress, the idea is to avoid wobbling from side to side, or bobbing up and down. The top of the body should be relaxed, and the energy to move through space comes from the centre. For my own nefarious purposes, the walk is performed with masks on. Music is played as the ‘walkers’ progress through the space, turn, and progress back. The basic structure is then played-with as seems fit. For this sequence of workshops, we added the holding of objects to the basic pattern. There was no attempt to manipulate the objects, just holding them with the intensity of focus that the combination of the mask and demanding criteria of the walk produce.

This exercise is mostly in the category of the mask-as-frame. The intensity of the image gives a peculiar focus on the object being held. The spectators begin to make up stories as to the meaning of the images presented to them. We can’t help it, the images are so strong, and we as humans love to give things meaning. The images before us take on ritualistic, surreal, political or emotional significance, yet the performers are doing nothing more than concentrating!

I find this fascinating in terms of the puppet. The object is ‘manipulated’ solely by concentration of energy. Powerful images are created, in which these objects are given great significance, playing with image, colour, shape, dynamics and the audience’s imagination. In many ways it is puppetry, stripped bare. Moving an object as part of a moving image.

The Relationship of this work to puppetry, I think, goes along the following lines:

• As training for the puppeteer, it introduces the concept of energy and being within a state of flow. We can approach puppetry as an exchange of energy between us and the object or puppet.
• It helps us to move in a way that concentrates us where we should be focused, on the object or puppet.
• It allows us to explore image and its power in a form devoid of other distractions, surely a useful tool for anyone interested in a form of theatre that is so much involved with image.
• It helps us to analyse the mechanics of movement.
• It takes us as a performer to realms within ourselves that challenge us, and our concepts of who we are. I believe that this is the job of performers. Our society constantly tries to debase the performer’s art into nothing more than a commodity, but performance is not a commodity, it is an expression of Spirit. It is our job to constantly dive into the great mystery that is life, and come back with an expression of that mystery that benefits our society.

By Howard Gayton