George allowed his students to work in a very casual way. Bill and I had tried to condition a response to the wearing of a Mask by insisting that whenever one was on the face, the actor should attempt to enter the 'Mask state'. This led to Masks being handled as if sacred. George shocked me by allowing actors to talk as themselves while actually wearing the Masks. They'd choose clothes or wander about with the Masks on without any attempt to be in character.
It's difficult to understand the power of the Mask if you've only seen it in illustrations, or in museums. The Mask in the showcase may have been intended as an ornament on the top of a vibrating, swishing haystack. Exhibited without its costume, and without a film, or even photograph, of the Mask in use, we respond to it only as an aesthetic object. Many Masks are beautiful or striking, but that's not the point. A Mask is a device for driving the personality out of the body and allowing a spirit to take possession of it. A very beautiful Mask may be completely dead, while a piece of old sacking with a mouth and eye-holes torn in it may have tremendous vitality.
Masks are surrounded by rituals that reinforce their power. A Tibetan Mask was taken out of its shrine once a year and set up overnight in a locked chapel. Two novice monks sat all night chanting prayers to prevent the spirit of the Mask from breaking loose. For miles around the villagers barred their doors at sunset and no one ventured out. Next day the Mask was lowered over the head of the dancer who was to incarnate the spirit at the centre of a great ceremony. What must it feel like to be that dancer, when the terrifying face becomes his own?
George cited Chaplin's Tramp as a Mask, since the character had come from the clothes and the make-up. Here's Chaplin's own account (from his autobiography). 'On the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, and a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything to be a contradiction; the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look young or old, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small moustache which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression.... I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and make-up made me feel the kind of person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on the stage he was fully born. When I confronted Sennett I assumed the character and strutted about, swinging my cane and parading before him. Gags and comedy ideas went racing through my mind.... My character was different and unfamiliar to the Americans. But with the clothes on I felt he was a reality, a living person. In fact he ignited all sorts of crazy ideas that I would never have dreamt of until I was dressed and made-up as the Tramp.'
We don't know much about Masks in this culture, partly because the church sees the Mask as pagan, and tries to suppress it wherever it has the power (the Vatican has a museum full of Masks confiscated from the 'natives'), but also because this culture is usually hostile to trance states. We distrust spontaneity, and try to replace it by reason: the Mask was driven out of theatre in the same way that improvisation was driven out of music. Shakers have stopped shaking. Quakers don't quake any more. Hypnotised people used to stagger about, and tremble. Victorian mediums used to rampage about the room. Education itself might be seen as primarily an anti-trance activity.
Nina Epton met a Balinese who told her that before he left to be educated in Europe he could 'leap into the other world' of trance in twenty seconds, but that even if he can succeed these days it takes at least half an hour.
I see the 'personality' as a public-relations department for the real mind, which remains unknown. My personality always seems to be functioning, at some level, in terms of what other people think. If I am alone in a room and someone knocks on the door, then I 'come back to myself'. I do this in order to check up that my social image is presentable: are my flies done up? Is my social face properly assembled? If someone enters, and I decide that I don't have to guard myself, then I can get 'lost in the conversation'. Normal consciousness is related to transactions, real or imagined, with other people. That's how I experience it, and I note widespread reports of people in isolation, or totally rejected by other people, who experience 'personality disintegration'.
When you're worried about what other people might think, the personality is always present. In life-or-death situations something else takes over. A friend scalded himself and his mind split immediately into two parts, one of which was a child screaming with pain, while the other was cold and detached and told him exactly what to do (he was alone at the time). If a cobra dropped out of the air vent into the middle of an acting class, the students might find themselves on the piano, or outside the door, with no memory of how they got there. In extremity the body takes over for us, pushing the personality aside as an unnecessary encumbrance.
If Masks were subjected to the same pressures as our children are, then they also would become dull and inexpressive. We adults have learned to be opaque. We live among hard surfaces that reflect sound back to us, so we're constantly telling our children to be quiet. Our lives are surrounded with precious objects — glass, china, televisions, stereos — so that movement has to be restrained. Any adult who acted like a three-year-old would be intolerable to us.
We have instinctive responses to faces. Parental feelings seem to be triggered by flat faces and big foreheads. We try and be rational and assert that 'people can't help their appearance', yet we feel we know all about Snow White and the Witch, or Laurel and Hardy, just by the look of them. The truth is that we learn to hold characteristic expressions as a way of maintaining our personalities, and we're far more influenced by faces than we realise.
If you lie down and make your body relax, going through it from feet to head, and loosening any points of tension that you find, then you easily float away into fantasy. The substance and shape of your body seem to change. You feel as if the air is breathing you, rather than you breathing the air, and the rhythm is slow and smooth like a great tide. It's very easy to lose yourself, but if you feel the presence of a hostile person in the room you break this trance, seizing hold of the musculature, and becoming 'yourself' once more. Meditators use stillness as a means of inducing trance. So do present-day hypnotists. The subject doesn't have to be told to be still, he knows intuitively not to assert control of his body by picking his nose or tapping his feet.
Again we see that the subject is made to feel that his body is out of control, and becomes subject to a high-status person.
If we wanted to be analytical we could say that the flatness of the Mask, and its high forehead, are likely to trigger parental feelings. The eyes are very wide apart as if looking into the distance, and helping to give it its wondering look. Where the bottom of the Mask covers tie wearer's top lip, a faint orange lip is painted onto the Mask. Everyone who has created a 'Waif' character with the Mask has lined their lip up with the Mask's, and then held it frozen. I wrote my play The Last Bird for this Mask, and the Danish actress Karen-fis Ahrenkiel played the role in the Aarhus production. It was only when she froze her top lip in this way that she suddenly found the character. The eyes of the Mask aren't level, which gives a lopsided feeling, and is probably the cause of the characteristic twisting movements that the Waif always has.
Trance states are likely whenever you abandon control of the musculature. Many people can get an incredible 'high' from being moved about while they remain relaxed. Pass them round a circle, lift them, and (especially) roll them about on a soft surface. For some people it's very liberating, but the movers have to be skilled.
In moments of awe, or of grief, something takes over the body and tells it what to do, how to behave. The personality stops doing all the trivial things that help to maintain 'normal consciousness'.
Normally we keep altering our faces to reassure other people. The effect is subliminal, but when it's missing we can't understand the anxiety created in us. We continually reassure people by making unnecessary movements, we twitch, we 'get comfortable', we move the head about, and so on. When all such reassurances are removed we experience the Mask as supernatural.
As for the fear of madness, I would answer that the ability to become possessed is a sign of correct social adjustment, and that really disturbed people censor themselves out. Either they can't do it, or they're too afraid to even try. People who feel themselves at risk avoid situations where they feel likely to 'go to pieces'.
To work this Mask you face another Executioner, and hold a grimace that shows both sets of teeth. You must never entirely lose this grimace. With it you can speak 'in character' — the voice has a threatening roughness — and it releases very brutal feelings in the body. You feel aggressive, powerful and wide. If you expose both sets of teeth you're bound to sense yourself differently. Try it now: grimace and look round the room, move about and try and sense the differences. Some people who find it impossible to work the half masks break through after working Executioner Masks. Women never look 'right' as Executioners, but the grimace also releases strong feelings in them.
Face Masks probably go back at least to Copeau. I sit four actors on a bench, show them a mirror and say 'Make a face, nothing like your face, hold it, don't lose the expression.' The audience laugh at the transformation, but the actors don't feel that 'they' are being laughed at. 'Get up,' I say, 'shake hands with each other, say something.' Most actors find that their bodies move in a quite different way, but some hold on to themselves and 'insert a barrier' in the neck, so that the changes in the face can't effect the posture of the body. It's easy to draw gentle attention to this, and to encourage the actors to let their bodies 'do what they want to do'. The actors then play scenes while holding faces that express some sort of emotion. The greater the emotion expressed on the face the greater the change in behaviour and the easier it is to improvise. I use the Face Mask as a rehearsal technique. Actors pick faces at random and then play the text. They often get insights into the nature of the scene in this way, and they lose their fear of overacting, which makes many actors appear inhibited.
[Chekov:] 'Try a few experiments for a while. Put a soft, warm, not too small centre in the region of your abdomen and you may experience a psychology that is self-satisfied, earthy, a bit heavy and even humorous. Place a tiny, hard centre on the tip of your nose and you will become curious, inquisitive, prying and even meddlesome. Move the centre to one of your eyes and notice how quickly it seems that you have become sly, cunning and perhaps hypocritical. Imagine a big, heavy, dull and sloppy centre placed outside the seat of your pants and you have a cowardly, not too honest, droll character. A centre located a few feet outside your eyes or forehead may invoke the sensation of a sharp, penetrating and even a sagacious mind. A warm, hot and even fiery centre situated without your heart may awaken in you heroic, loving and courageous feelings.
Someone wears a boiler suit stuffed with balloons to make him 'huge'. He still looks 'himself'. I say, 'Move and imagine that the costume is your body surface', and suddenly he becomes a 'fat man'.
Pretending that the costume is the actual body surface has a powerful transforming effect on most people. We all of us have a 'body image' which may not be at all the same as our actual body. Some people imagine themselves as a blob with bits sticking out, and others have a finely articulated body image. Sometimes a person who has slimmed will still have, visibly, a 'fat' body image.
Garbo had a stand-in who was identical to her, and who was said to have 'everything that Garbo has except whatever it is Garbo has'. What Garbo had was a body that transmitted and received. It was her spine that should have been raved about: every vertebra alive and separated so that feelings flowed in and out from the centre. She responded spontaneously with emotion and warmth, and what she felt, the audience felt, yet the information transmitted by the body was perceived as emanating from the face. You can watch a marvellous actor from the back of a big theatre, his face just a microdot on the retina, and have the illusion you've seen every tiny expression. Such an actor can make a wooden Mask smile, its carved lips tremble, its painted brows narrow.
We 'read' the body, and especially the head—neck relationship, but we experience ourselves as reading the Mask. If you look at the head—neck relationship in great paintings you'll see amazing distortions which increase the emotional effect. The angle between head and neck, and neck and body is crucial to us. There are reports of crowds panicking with horror when they witness public executions; they don't panic when the head is severed, but they do when the executioner holds it up and turns it to face the crowd.
We all know how a wreath should be placed on a memorial during a great ceremony: we may have to be told where to stand, and when to move forward, but the way we move and hold our bodies is instinctive. We know we mustn't do anything trivial or repetitive. Our movements will be as simple as possible. Our bodies will be straight. We won't hurry. There will be a smoothness about us. The people you see standing around after mine disasters, or similar tragedies, have a stillness and simplicity of movement. They rise in status. They are straighter, they don't make little nervous movements — not when the shock is on them — and I would guess that they hold eye contacts for longer than normal.
(When someone is very upset it usually helps to hold them rather firmly — the message you give is that you're willing to be close to them and to support them. Patting people who are upset isn't really much use. It's more like trying to push them away.)