A friend of mine from high school once described to me an activity involving masks he participated in while in a summer program focusing on drama. Recently I asked if he could recall the details, and this is what he told me:

"...As far as the exercise that I did at Governor's School for the Arts, it was essentially this (as best as I can remember):
- Create "snapshots" from your life; pantomime short scenes from significant moments that stand out to you from any stage of your life.
- We created a few to perform in succession without pause (there was no minimum or maximum number of scenes, but the exercise should be fairly brief, say 5-7 minutes).
- Half of the class performed their snapshots in front of the other half that watched. Whenever a student would finish with his/her own set of scenes, they held still, paused on their final scene in a relaxed manner until the rest of the students finished. Then we switched and the other half performed.
- After the initial performance, the half of students who were up already up immediately did the same performance wearing an emotionless, gender neutral white mask. When finished, the other students did the same.

The reaction that some students had was quite remarkable. Where some were empowered by the face of anonymity, others were startled and felt powerless when they could not emote in the way they were used to. And then there was me, oblivious to any change, not really thinking about the relevance of the second performance until I heard other GSAers' horrible cries of pain/anguish/something. Our instructors had a long discussion about the exercise afterwards. It certainly had an impact on the majority of the students."

I found this description rather interesting and it made me wonder about what's in a face. Especially the contrast between those who felt empowered by anonymity and those who felt suffocated by it -- perhaps an introvert / extrovert kind of distinction. Many of the theatre people I have known have been some of the most naturally emotionally expressive people I've ever encountered -- perhaps in that group there would be more with the distress reaction than a group of "normal" individuals.

I can empathize pretty easily with those who felt empowered --- I can see how it could feel like a suit of armor, a blank screen while acting where you could project whatever self-image you wanted on yourself during that memory. Showing a childlike, blank-slate-like innocence, evoking a sense of impermanence and transience: "this is not going to matter."

Still, it is the distress response of those which I'm thinking were more the extroverts that interests me more. Maybe when they saw themselves in that memory with the blank facial screen, they thought of emotional reactions that they'd felt were forced on them and/or that they suppressed.

Or, in my pretentious attempt at psychobabble: The sensation of mentally seeing themselves from outside allowed them to see themselves in a more neutral manner, suggesting other emotions that could have played a role in those events rather than those consciously recognized and emphasized. Because feelings were suppressed at the time, hearkening back to an original kind of mask of emotional ice, thus evoking repressed unconscious feelings.

The sensation of mentally seeing themselves from outside allowed them to see themselves in a more neutral manner, suggesting other emotions that could have played a role in those events rather than those consciously recognized and emphasized.

I think of the blank face as a sort of archetypal Everyperson. It reminds me of thoughts I used to have as a kid growing up Christian that sometime after I died, after we all died and after Time was done -- Judgment Day, basically -- there would be a vast theatre where everybody who ever lived would get to experience every minute of everybody else's life. From the inside, so you'd get the full context of every thought, feeling, sensation and dream.