Masquerade

"Because the mask is your face, the face is a mask, so I'm thinking of the face as a mask because of the way I see faces is coming from an African vision of the mask which is the thing that we carry around with us, it is our presentation, it's our front, it's our face."
—Faith Ringgold

Part of the marks in IB Theatre Arts come from a Research project, and our teacher gave us one each to practice, themed either around masks or puppets. (Although they are graded. My bet is he likes to see us suffering.) Anyway, I chose a certain kind of ritual Andean dance/celebration using masks to represent devils; but changed to Korean masks.

Masks have been used since the beginnings of theater, to show the character rather than to hide the actor. This, combined with the use of puppets, will be used in the school play to represent different points of view; which would let us have two or three different actors and/or puppets representing a specific character.

Adding a little of TOK to the thing...

Read again the quote at the beginning and come back, now. NOW.
Done? Welcome back, then. Now, faces are masks. People hide behind them, pretending to be whoever they are. They hide their fears and imperfections alike. They do their best to seem perfect. They become socially acceptable. They become oblivious to everything society declares "not normal"; such as not paying attention to that guy playing the violin at the subway, even if that man is one of the greatest violin players in the world and is playing the most intricate violin pieces in a very, VERY expensive violin. We are told to follow blindly what a handful of people say so they get more money to become even more influential. Our faces become masks, things we carry around with us, our presentation, our front, a farce we put up so we are not rejected by this society. This masks we put up keep us from seeing the damage this heavily-consuming society does to the environment. It keeps us from being happy.

I'd rattle on about how society is bad for inter-human relationships, but time is running out, and I'm getting obfuscated by the memories used to help me write. I'll leave you with a question, though. Are you willing to take your mask off?

Connections, connections.

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
― Samuel Beckett

…And there I go again, quoting Samuel Beckett. Next week, I promise, I'll quote someone different. Anyway, the minds of insane people work in curious ways (I admit it, mine included), and they can connect things in several different and curious ways. Which leads me to what this week's entry is really about: connections. Mad people may connect a smell with music, music with a book, a book with certain part of their lives… And just as many seemingly unrelated parts of their lives connect, we must connect different aspects of our lives; for instance, using Literature's ways of making things you write (hopefully) interesting to make this blog, synthesizing ITGS's norms to make presentations interesting and Theatre Arts' skills of conveying information to a public, employing Physics' formulae to solve a Maths test… The possibilities are infinite.

And just as different aspects of our lives should be connected, so should the parts of a play. The music of a play needs to follow the play's theme, the structure should respect the play's game, and so on. What is a theme, you say? To explain this, I'll start from the beginning: what is a stimulus?

The Stimulus

Think of something. It can be an object, a song, a painting, a movie, a play, a videogame, clothing, your pet… Now start thinking, and jot down any ideas or feelings you get from the thing you chose. Those ideas are used to make a play. And it works for other things, too! The thing you chose is your stimulus. (I used the word "thing" on purpose, because a stimulus can be anything.)

Let's take a look at an example to clear things out. We watched a play last Tuesday, Védova in Lumine; and its stimulus, we figured out, was the ritualistic burning of a life-sized doll just at the beginning of the New Year. This was the basis of the play, and it ended up being about the ravings of the human mind. Which leads me back to the quote.

Music and Theater
I don't want to stray too far from this play, though. Why? Because this particular play mixed both dance and theater, creating something the rest of our theatrical group didn't like at all. I liked it, however, because of a several reasons; it was partly because it felt like one of those texts you have to read in Literature class and you don't like, but when you peer deeper into it, you fall in love. It was partly for the ceremonial way in which the only actress moved and made her actions. Also partly because of the loneliness the play oozed, and the view of the world from a different person. And by different, I mean weird. But not in a bad sense; I've been shunned by society more than once. My point is, this play mixes more than one art: Dance, Theater, and Music. And puppets, but that'll be next week.

Music should connect with the play so that it glorifies it, making it even better than it is. I'm in charge of the music in my school's big play this year, and I've realized that it should go on with the themes. For instance, if the play is Gothic, the music will be Baroquesque. Or Tim Burton-ish. Depends. The music needs to flow with the play, helping shape the message. In the case of Védova in Lumine, it sometimes didn't. Just check other Theater Arts IB blogs posted between today and yesterday. The music set the culprits needed for the dancing play to take shape, and it marked the pace of the play.

I'd like to ponder deeper into these connections today, but my bed calls. As well as my angry mother. Before I leave, however, I'll ask you to ask yourself one question: up to which point do you connect parts of your life?