Student Blog: My Experience with Mask Work

If you take a look around my dorm room you'll find the usual suspects: a mini-fridge, posters, pictures of friends and family, and a tapestry that I'm definitely not supposed to have. But off on the side table, behind a stack of notebooks and beside a cookie tin is a plain white mask-the fabled Neutral Mask, featured in movement courses across America.

My journey with mask work began this spring in a course known as DRAM 115: Independent Studies. At my university, BFA Performance students take a mask course as part of their curriculum; despite not being in that program, my professor was gracious enough to take on an extra class and teach me the ways of the Neutral Mask. Now, every Tuesday morning I'm in our studio space warming up and preparing myself for the explorations of that day.

We started with a bit of Alexander Technique, building on what I learned in last semester's Movement 1 course to help fix my posture and ready my mind for neutrality. I discovered that I tend to stand in a forward lean and hyperextend my legs, and the first time I assumed a neutral position, it was an instant relief from stiffness I didn't know I had. We diligently worked on maintaining this neutral posture by adding in simple gestures I could work with at home: raising an arm overhead, putting a hand out to the front, extending a leg to the side, etc. And four weeks into this, it was time to put on a mask. Or at least, a hood mask.

I took three breaths and placed a black hood onto my face. It took a few attempts, but in the mirror in front of me I began to see not myself, but an outside being that I could manipulate; a clad in black puppet, if you will. I completed the gestures that my professor called out and we moved into further lessons; it grew easier and easier to detach from that hooded figure in the mirror and move him around. Eventually, I was handed a true neutral mask, not unlike the Phantom of the Opera's, and it was time for my mask work to truly begin.

We continued the gesture work as before, still staring at the now-masked figure in the mirror. With the white neutral mask, though, something was a little different. The only way I can describe it was freer. I was no longer manipulating an outside figure that required my energy and concentration; I was now able to concentrate on not concentrating. I didn't have to TRY to focus, I simply did. The normal soundtrack in my head turned itself off and I was able to really hone in on my movements. I was stunningly aware of how each muscle in my finger moved, how precisely my elbow moved to allow for this motion. When I turned around and stared off into the space, it was strangely like playing a first-person point of view VR game; the mask was my headset and my hand in front of me was poised to press X to interact with the world around me.

Even outside of my regularly scheduled class time, I've found the mask work to be of great use for audition prep. A few weeks back I was learning a monologue from Love's Labor's Lost for a summer stock audition, and I was having trouble getting out of my head and just letting the monologue happen. I was too concerned with how I looked, whether I was doing the right movements at the right time, if the people in the dorm next door could see me and were judging me as some kind of crazy person. As luck would have it, I decided to put on the mask and see what happened. And what didn't happen? I lost all sense of worry and self-doubt, and let myself feel Berowne's anguish. I sauntered around my tiny single room, groaning in his lovesickness and leaning against my closet as if I were one of the Princes from Into the Woods. I of course filmed the self-tape with my face visible, but the experience of letting go and simply being was critical to my exploration and performance of that text.

If you get the chance to take a mask course in your time at college, I say GO FOR IT! It will seem scary at first, the idea and experience of seeing your reflection as someone or something else. But the freedom and power to tune out your distractions is worth the uncomfortable moments; it helped me get out of my head and it might just do that for you, too.