Mask Making and Circus School Taking

It's a new year and the start of my second semester of my first year of graduate school. Even months in, it's strange to use those words. Graduate school was a dream for a long time, and it's crazy to look back and think about where I thought I'd be. Certainly not in a physical theatre/devised performance program! Mostly because at the time I didn't know such things existed. And yet nothing could feel like a better fit.

This semester is off to a great start! We've been working with the larval masks, which are large, full-faced masks with no eyes to see out of. So you're moving blindly through the space as you wear the mask. It's a huge challenge, but so exciting to get to release the control an actor feels from trying to express with their eyes instead of their body. We've also been playing with expressive masks, which are much more human looking, and therefore very expressive. These are also full-faced, but with eye holes. And with these we've begun to move towards costuming and props, which are new elements we didn't play with during neutral mask and larval mask. Learning to 'show the mask' (which means keeping the sight line of your eyes up and out towards the audience so they can read you) while not being able to see below your eye holes to the props you're using is an interesting dilemma. It reminds me of when I was first learning stage directions and the confusion of upstage vs. downstage. Sight lines are like a whole new language!

We've also begun a mask making workshop that's been taking a lot of our time. It's so exciting to start creating characters from the mask up. We plastered our faces and made molds in our first 4 hour session. Then we put clay on them and paper mached them with five layers for the second session. We just finished taking the paper mask off the mold, reinforcing the sides with more paper mache, and sanding the paper down to prepare for paint. It's a long process, and we could use a lot more time to do it, but I'm excited to see the finished product. Hint--my mask has 3 chins.

Yesterday we took a field trip to circus school where we walked beams, pipes, and wires. We learned tricks on the Aerial Slings (or silks depending on who you talk to). We tried our hand at trapeze, which I learned is extremely painful without calluses. And of course, we worked on tumbling and partner acrobatics. It was one of my favorite days of graduate school so far. We take acrobatics twice a week, which is always a blast. But the opportunity to use a new apparatus that we don't have on campus was so fun! My entire class agreed we'd love to take classes regularly on trapeze and sling, which we don't have access to on campus. It's a fantastic full body workout, and in some ways easier to see progress than in partner acrobatics and tumbling.

We have a trip to the border planned for Spring Break. Half the class will go to Texas to the Mexican border, and the other half of us are going to the Canadian border. We'll be going as researchers to observe stories, and then we're going to create a piece of theatre about it. Notice I didn't say write a play? We're going to devise a play, which (for those of you who don't know) means we work as an ensemble to craft a piece from the ground up with our bodies, voices, and usually improvisation. Sometimes we throw in text for inspiration, and in this case I can imagine we might use direct text from certain people we meet. Every devising process is different. But the one thing that holds true through all devising is that it doesn't stem from a playwright's words first. It is discovered. And then later potentially written.

In music theory we've moved on to writing songs every week this semester. First week, we used a piece of text that already existed to craft a melody with a pedal played underneath. Last week we were given a specific chord progression with the option of lyrics or no lyrics. It's terribly difficult for me to write a song with no lyrics so I challenged myself to do that last week and it went pretty well. This week we've moved onto the blues. We're using the Twelve Bar Blues, and we learned the blues scale. We'll see how it goes! The best part of class is listening to everyone perform their pieces. It's so invigorating being surrounded by talented individuals. Everyone is so different and their styles and voices always surprise me!

Off to class. Enjoy the pictures!