Roger: Mask performer / Mask collector
I was first introduced ot Masks when I started teaching (as Head of Drama) at The Deanes School (Thundersly, Essex UK, 1975-78). Inspired by Keith Johnstone’s remarkable book IMPRO, which deals iextensively with Masks, I began trying to make myown with papier-mache – a messy, lamentable failure!
A friend invited me to his public Mask workshop and he dragged me on-stage as a volunteer. He didn’t let me see the mask he put on me: I could only react to the young woman he had also masked. When we turned to face each other, she recoiled in horror and the audience laughed. She was a monkey. I looked at her, curious – the audience laughed some more. The nore we looked at each other, and took tentative steps towards each other, the louder the laughter. when it it ogt to the point when we reached oeach other and tentatively touched eact other, the audience erupted. removing the Mask I discovered I was a massive gorilla.
i turned to Michael Grater and began to make much more effective (though far less durable) Masks out of card and paper which I used with my first ever group of GCSE Drama students.
One of those drama students was the gifted Alan Riley, who went off to Middlesex Poly and five years later co-founded TRESTLE THEATRE (1981) which became the go-to UK company for exciting mask work, and whose simple, yet extremely versatile masks sets I then bought (GBP8 each in 1983; now GBP24!) and used in my own classroom work for many years
Masks - inspired by commedia leather: made in Italy wood: carved in Bali
Fast forward to 1993, the 200th anniversary of Carlo Goldoni’s death, and I was asked to act as MC for a group of Italian commedia actors led by MARCO LULY, as they presented scenes in Italian for Singapore audiences. I agreed – on condition I can wear a Mask also!
So began a friendship that continues to this day and has seen us perform together in Bangkok, KL, Yangon, the South Pacific, Trieste and Pula (Croatia). We also made SPIRIT OF COMMEDIA, a film introducing commedia to drama students at A/IB level.
This trailer (below) was for our show inspired by The Decameron. The performancepre-show featured myself as il Dottore in the classic plague mask of the long beak, and I and Marco aka Arlecchino, ‘examined our queueing audience (he particularly any attractive lady!) once inside we made a big dfeal of closing the door ansd asuring them all was safe. The play ran in Novemer 2018 in Singapore, Bangkok and Yangon. Covid began in “January 2019 prompting eerily similar queues and fears for public safety!
Two more stories from The Decameron, both recorded on zoom and edited during covid.
Chichibio cooks a crane was a story that became part of our play production.
A New Use for an Old Butt is my retelling/dramatisation of the Seventh Day/2nd story of Peronella who is caught with her skirt up (and her lover’s trousers down!) when her husband unexpectedly returns.
Thanks to my good storyteller friend, Alice Bianchi-Clark, with whom I have also told stories bilingually (Alice telling in French and Mandarin).
Masks from Asia
Some of the Masks are highlighted with colours as Christina Sergeant and I used them in our 1984 productton, PHIZZOG MASK THEATRE. As it was staged in a theatre, we felt that the unpainted wooden Masks did not ‘throw’ or project their expression to the back of the auditorium.
Masks made by Pak Ledjar from Yogyakarta for my workshop
In the summer of 1979 I made my first trip to Indoneisa, and focused on central and eastern Java, My first stop was Yogyakarta. I stayed in the backpacker’s quarters near the station at the top of the main street, Jalan Malioboro.
It was a long one way gentle3 stroll downhill to the kraton, the historic palace when one could still sit and listen to the court gamela practice for free.
So on my second day, I took a ride a becak – the Javanes cycle rickshaw, to head back uphill to the top of Malioboro, a suddenly I saw to my left a small wooden roadside shop with the most wonderful plain Masks hanging outside. i stopped the becak and ventured inside and met the afffable, generous, ever smiling Pak ledjar – master mask-carver, wayang-kulit maker and dalang (puppeteer.) How i wish I had been able to speak bahasa! I could only afford 5 Masks that time (and my back-pack had no room for more!) but i was to return several timmes througohut the ’80’s and collect many more.
They work so well in a rehearsal context.