'Archetypes' - Half masks

  • The Trickster
  • The Child
  • The Innocent
  • The Mother
  • The Hero
  • The Old
  • The Whore - to name a few!

These are all examples of sterotypical characters that are easily accessible to portray in theatre.
This is easily acheived through playing around with undulations.

Undulation is: bending knees, slumping your body over, pushing your pelvis out and returning upright to lean back into your hip joints. In each of these positions a character can be born, for example: in the bending knees and slumped over form, its easy to play 'The Old'. The same for 'The Mother' leaning back can portray pregnancy, and theres so many more.

If you lead with your head, you can play 'The Hero', strong and willful.
If you lead with your nose, you could play 'The Geek' or even 'The Nosey'.

So many possibilities evolve just from playing around with physicality, and which part of the body to lead with.

This technique was used as a form of 'Commedia Del Arte', and it can be translated into most forms of characters, For example, it reminded me so much of when I was in a shakespeare play called 'Oedipus' in college, and I played a Queen. My body language was upright, and my chest pushed forward, showing my dominance and power. Shakespeare plays are common for adapting these stereotypes.

Experimenting with half masks meant that we had to focus not just on the physicality of the body but also what our mouths were doing at all times. As the audience can;t see our faces, we had to exaggerate every mouth movement and be constantly aware of what our mouths were doing, which is really hard when trying to focus on maintaining your character and reacting to people and objects in space.


Example of a half mask
http://www.masksoftheworld.com/Europe/European%20half%20mask.htm


I had 'The Trickster' character (shown above) which I had put some originality to it. Rather than  itbeing a person to constantly steal, I approached it in a way where he/she was always scheming and plotting, and a laidback approach really added for effect, I think. When acting in the space, I found that my walk changed at one point from my original laidback slow one and that's because my focus had slipped onto other things.

The second time I tried this technique, when acting with Janiece, my focus was alot more controlled and I managed to keep up the long period of time of acting, and my natural reactions kicked in. For me this was still a little shakey, so this is definitely something I'm going to have to practice, and something I really enjoy doing.

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