Keith Johnstone's Impro is a terrific book for actors looking for methods to feel at home and never without words on the stage. Johnstone's emphasis is to understand and utilize improvisation effectively. The book is full of wonderful exercises and activities that do indeed have the ability to unlock spontaneous, creative speech to instigate, develop, and move almost any scene. Johnstone's ideas also have a direct relationship to story telling, as a practice of improvisation also creates a freedom to pull tales out of the air in a kind of organized stream of conscientiousness. And if you are ever stuck as an author I highly recommend having a look at his work and try out some of the exercises.
These notes however, are not about his improvisational games, but Johnstone's ideas on Mask, and especially the tranced state which is induced when working with a powerful Mask. It is interesting because from his observations it seems as though we often are in a soft-state of trance (ask any writer working on a new book who gets in a car to go to the store and winds up in a completely different place. Aish....the only reason we don't crash is because of bi-location -- which allows for part of the brain to do the practical work of driving while another part disappears down the creative rabbit hole.) Jonhstone's focus here is on Mask work for modern theater -- but he does have a section the much older traditions of Mask work that are part of ritual performances -- much earthier, deeply rooted in ancient traditions. The Mask performers become the old Gods through possession and engage in specific tasks to challenge, excoriate, cleanse or heal the community, ensuring its continued success. (Though some of those Masks are terrifying! Like the Grampus.).
Notes: Keith Johnstone, "Masks and Trance." (Impro, Theater Arts Books, Routledge, 1992)
"It's true that an actor can wear a Mask casually, and just pretend to be another person, but as Gaskill and myself were absolutely clear that we were trying to induce trance states. The reason why one automatically talks and writes of Masks with a capital 'M' is that one really feels the genuine Masked actor is inhabited by a spirit. Nonsense perhaps, but that's what the experience is like, and has always been like. To understand Mask it's also necessary to understand the nature of trance itself. " (143-144)
"Masks seem exotic when you first learn about them, but to my mind Mask acting is no stranger than any other kind: no more weird than the fact that an actor can blush when his character is embarrassed, or turn white with fear, or that a cold will stop for the duration of the performance, and then start streaming again as soon as the curtain falls...Actors can be possessed by the characters they play just as they can be possessed by Masks...We find the the Mask strange because we don't understand how irrational our responses to the face are anyway, we don't realize that much of our lives is spent in some sort of trance, i.e. absorbed. " (148)
"The Mask...exhibited without its costume, and without film, or even a 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 personality out of the body and allowing 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 possess tremendous vitality. (149)
"Many actors report "split" states of consciousness, or amnesia; they speak of their body acting automatically. or as being inhabited by the character they are playing. Sybil Thorndike: "When you're an actor you cease to be make and female, you're a person with all the other persons inside you. (Great Acting, BBC Publications, 1967.) Edith Evans: "...I seem to have an awful lot of people inside me. Do you know what I mean? If I understand them I feel terribly like them when I am doing them...It's quite odd you know. You are it, for quite a bit, and then you're not."
"In another kind of culture I think it's clear that such actors could easily talk of being possessed by the character. It's true that while some actors will maintain they always remain 'themselves' when they're acting, but how do they know? Improvisers who maintain that they're in a normal state of consciousness when they improvise often have unexpected gaps in their memories which only emerge when you question them closely....Normally we only know of our trance states by the time jumps. When an improviser feels that two hours have passed in twenty minutes, we're entitled to ask where he was for the missing hour and forty minutes. " (152)
"Most people only recognize "trance" when the subject looks confused--out of touch with the reality around him...I remember an experiment in which deep trance subjects were first asked how many objects there had been in the waiting-room. When they were put into trance and asked again, it was found they had actually observed more than ten times the number of objects than they had consciously remembered." (153)
And this is for fun because one doesn't need to know the language -- only the Mask, the Voice, and the Gestures to pretty well get this performance by Dario Fo of Arlecchino with a personal problem.
Research Notes, Johnstone, Impro : Masks and Trance I, Trance States in Masks II, Rudlin Commedia Masks III
Excerpts from The Innamorati: Anna and the Masks , Anna Surrenders, Anna's Return
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
