The Troupe's New Masks: Behind the Mask Studio

One of the benefits of Teatro delle Maschere's relationship with Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre is that master mask maker Eric Bornstein is crafting the troupe's new masks. After using a set of masks I had developed for teaching classes and workshops in performance, we will be premiering Eric's masks at our June 2nd performance at the Cambridge River Festival.

What follows is a preview of the masks as they are in the process of being crafted:


Arlecchino sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of my face.


Columbina sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of Stacey Polishook's face.


Il Dottore sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of James Van Looy's face.


Here is the trio after all three have been sculpted.


This is a cast taken off of a clay mold. It will form the basis of a final mask. In this case, the mask is for Perriot; who, though not traditionally a masked character, is in our case. As with the Dottore, he has been sculpted over a face cast of James Van Looy.

Arlecchino Am Ravenous at Behind the Mask Studio and Theatre

I'll be performing Arlecchino Am Ravenous as a free outdoor performance at Behind the Mask Studio and Theatre on Wednesday, July 28 at 1pm.

Master maskmaker Eric Bornstein had originally asked me to perform as a demonstration to his assistants (and to inaugurate the small outdoor stage they built this summer) and then decided to open the event to a larger audience.

Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre
6 Campbell Park Place
Somerville, MA

(Enter around back. Please use public transit if possible: it's a short walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.)

If you like to use facebook, you can RSVP here

Arlecchino Am Eating Polenta!

Everytime I make polenta, this character appears in my kitchen.

Perhaps I should use this or a similar image next time I perform Arlecchino Am Ravenous? Now if only I knew how to make costumes or could afford a more traditional Arlecchino costume.

January 16th: Arlecchino Am Ravenous at PuppetSLAM

Photography by Shannon O'Connor; Montage by Ian Thal

Saturday, January 16th @ 8pm: I will be performing Arlecchino Am Ravenous as part of the PuppetSLAM at Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline.

Also performing:

Wonderspark Puppets
Little's Creatures
Kyle Mackesey
Paul Sedgwick
Jim Sedgwick
and Diane Kordas

Tickets are $15 and you can order them online or reserve them by calling the box office at 617-731-6400

Facebook users can also RSVP here.

Puppet Showplace Theatre
32 Station Street
Brookline MA 02445

I have previously performed Arlecchino Am Ravenous at The Gulu-Gulu Café, and Stone Soup Poetry. The piece originated as a series of improvisation on La Fame dello Zanni or "Starving Zanni" lazzo in preparation for a show at Willoughby & Baltic.

[N.B.: Added new information regarding line-up and links. January 11, 2010.]

Ian, Capocomico!

I am spending another summer teaching mime and commedia dell'arte to the children at Open Air Circus. Slowly, over the years, my classes have been attracting more and more students as kids from previous years keep returning to me, and bring new students with them, so this summer, I'm teaching two mime classes and one commedia class. The commedia class has gone from five students last year...

...to eight this year, thus necessitating that I sculpt at least three more masks in time for or final show. In the mean time, feast your eyes upon the masks I made last summer worn by the students who inhabited these characters.

This is Arlecchino-- and this is the same mask I've come to wear this past year when I play the character with i Sebastiani. The motley on her head was made by my father as a gift and are the school colors of Boston College, which I was attending at the time.

This is Pantalone. I thought a formal brimmed hat might befit a more modern version of the character. My students often see him as the archetype for Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons.

Il Dottore is a parody of all learned professionals. The hat has been part of my collection since 1994. Once while wearing it at a coffeehouse, studying for exams, a woman called me "Il Dottore" and proceeded to introduce me to some of the characters of the commedia dell'arte. The girl playing Il Dottore is the sister of the girl playing Arlecchino.

Il Capitano is parody of every blustering, lying, narcissistic bully who ever walked the earth. He is often the villain and he is often from out of town. The pin that ties the cape was a wonderful borrowing from the player's mother since it features the faces of a number of commedia characters.

Franchescina is sometimes known as Columbina. Like most female characters, she is not traditionally masked in the commedia but I did not want anyone left out of the fun of wearing a mask so I invented something.

The story about the making of these masks can be found in this earlier post. Right now though I'm at work on three more masks: Pulcinella, Brighella, and Flaminia.

Teatro Punto Workshop

Two weeks ago, I attended a day-long commedia dell'arte workshop conducted by Carlos García-Estévez and Katrien van Beurden of Teatro Punto. As commedia dell'arte is a rich tradition with a long history a day-long workshop could never be adequate to teach all there is to know, but neither is the time I have put in working first with the short lived Teatro Commedia, and currently with i Sebastiani, nor could the class I teach at Open Air Circus could have taught me all that I need to know as a commedia performer. Conversely, any opportunity to add to my knowledge, skills, insight, and experience with commedia is desirable.

Teatro Punto's approach to commedia is not that of historical recreation, but to take the archtypes represented by the masks and discover them in the contemporary world. All of the historical techniques of commedia are still relevant as ever, but the goal is not to indulge nostalgia, but to reflect a world that the audience recognizes.

The workshop began with a series of exercises revolving around being prepared to act in and react: an ability needed in the world of improvised theatre. Standing in a circle, we had to respond to any number of tasks, each round introducing a new tasks: tossing and catching balls, trading places with one other, passing objects, singing, stomping one's feet (this last one was quite simple for me owing to my kathak studies) all while staying in communication with one another. When one is multitasking in this manner, one realizes just how often one's mind has a tendency to drift, even in the altered state of performance.

Afterwards, we experimented with the physical stance of different characters-- something I have been doing since my earliest studies as a mime-- how different characters are made manifest by emphasis or inclination of the pelvis, abdomen, chest, or head. One insight I did gain was that while some of these stylizations are typical of specific of various comic archtypes, they are also representative of different theatrical genres, the puffed up chest that would serve an innamorato, or an arrogant Capitano while not appropriate for tragedy might also be appropriate for melodrama.

During the lunch break a few other workshop participants and I joined Carlos, Katrien, Judith Chaffee, a theatre professor at Boston University, who was acting as the host for the the workshop (check out her website, Commedia-dell-Arte.com.) During lunch Carlos and Katrien discussed their time studying with Antonio Fava and how their approach to commedia differs, and we local participants discussed the difficulty in building an audience for any sort of physical theatre in the Boston area.

On returning to the classroom and began work on our own lazzi, encouraged to use mime, grammelot (nonsense syllables that resemble an actual language.) Afterwards, we were given a primer on the technique of the traditional leather mask-- how to hold it when placing it on the face and also how one is supposed to use the face behind the mask: Counter-intuitively, the face does not become passive when covered: all masks require holding one's eyes wide open, and certain masks (some of the vecchi, for instance) demand that one cover one's teeth with one's lips.

Katrien explained that in the early days of commedia, the actors were often hungry and desperate, and this did not only force them to innovate, but it meant that the tragic dimensions were as visible as the comedic. In modern western societies, there simply is little reason for an actor to be literally starving. Since withholding food was not an option as we had all eaten lunch, a new technique was added to create desperation: Carlos acted as an interlocutor for every one of us-- often disrupting the lazzo we had created earlier, with questions about our character's backstory, whether we are keeping our eyes open under the masks, and whether we were making contact with the audience or just going through our rehearsed lazzo. This was the most difficult part of the workshop, with many unexpected results.

A workshop is not just an opportunity to show off the technique one already had, or to learn new techniques, but to learn about one's own short comings as a performer. In my case, I realized that my own dedication towards developing my technique-- both in terms of the precision and skill of my mime work, and the detail with which I craft my routines, while an attraction to the audience, is also a shield I put up to avoid being vulnerable to the audience-- and so, something that this performer must overcome. That said, I highly recommend Teatro Punto's workshops to any performer interested in commedia dell'arte.