Masks

I adore masks, and my friend Livn brought them up.  Yesterday being Halloween, it only makes sense.  I'd like to share some of what I've learned - it's helped me a lot.I took a class where we did nothing but work with masks.  Half the semester, we worked with neutral masks (you know, the blank white ones with no expression) and then the other half, we worked with character masks.  We did this in a dance hall, with a whole wall of mirrors, and we all had to dress in black unitards. (I complained to the teacher that I'd look like two sausages stuffed into one skin, but she was adamant.  And I did.  Working in theatre, you learn to work through self-consiousness.)  In the neutral mask, our task was to learn to completely undo any and all character.  To walk, sit, run, stand, and interact completely neutrally.  No emotion, no character, nothing to mark us as an individual.  (And that has helped tremendously.  Even now, when emotions start running high, I mentally put on that mask, and BAM - they're gone for a while.)In character mask, we learned to start at that neutral place, and then walk, run, etc. wholly in conjunction with the mask.  To let the mask determine how we walked, carried ourselves, and interacted with each other.  A lot of the class was weird and very much the artsy crap that a lot of people picture when they think of acting classes, but boy did I learn a lot.Masks are magic.  They always have been.  They simultaneously conceal and reveal who we are, by providing anonymity.  They allow you to turn off the part of yourbrain that's thinking 'what will they think of me?' and replace it with the assurance that for a little while, you're someone else.  And that is a truly awesome power.  But with that part of your brain turned off, you can see who you really are, operating without the outside expectations of other people.  Any of them.  Which can be as terrifying as it is freeing, because while others see the mask, you see the Truth.  I've tried to explain to people who ask me how I act so well (and it's not arrogance - I'm good.)  And I've said it's the same as having a mask.  I can be completely honest and open and vulnerable.  I can let the audience see me get angry, or fall in love, or be afraid - I don't have to hide any of that.  So I don't.  And I'm SUPREMELY vulnerable.  But safe - the next line, the next reaction, the next event - that's all scripted out.  I know what's coming.  What way the argument is going to go.  The only thing I don't know is how the audience will react.  But the beautiful thing there is, I don't find that out until after I'm done being vulnerable, and then, they're all convicned I was lying through my teeth, pretending to be open and vulnerable.  And then they compliment me on how good I am at pretending, at lying to them.Sadly, it means that very few people understand that I'm not a skilled liar - I'm a skilled truth teller.  So when they hear me say the truth... they console themselves with the knowledge that I'm a liar.  And then attack me with that.  Which hurts.  I'd far rather be on stage.  Wearing my mask.