Mask ritual, Balinese approach, I Gede Tapa Sudana

Mask Ritual.

Venetia,13 October 2000
A 5 days workshop at Foundation Giorgio Cini at isle St Giorgio from 9-15 October for the first time. 18 students, with diversity condition and capacity, we work on group work, Silat, tai chi, music improvisation, rhythm, and mask.
On 12 Oct. we were working in a smaller room, in a library to explore the sensitivity on space, relation with others, text of a short sentence on crystal of thought, contemplation
The beginning of mask work, showing how to explore mask by holding it in your right hand in three phases of work , describing the three step of preparations to “become” a masked-character:
1=Taking the information from the mask, looking at it, the mask lower than the level of your face.
2= Identification/ “to be”= like the spirit of the mask: When you get some information about the life of the mask then rise the mask until the level of your face, so you start to explore by walking together, making the same expression with the mask, to follow the mask as your guide “to be” lively present. Exploring the voice, the process of adjusting your self with the mask physically, emotionally, mentally (spirit and thought). When you feel that you have given life elements to the mask, necessary elements that the mask asked you, only then you are ready to put the mask on your face, facing the world, the life surround through the look of the mask.
3= Entering the spirit:Holding the mask with one hand, higher than the level of your face, both mask and you facing the same direction, and then holding it with both hand, so you find yourself in the position of honouring the mask with profound respect. The mask stay fix in a place, you move your self toward the mask so your face meeting in contact with the back face of the mask. Important to adjust the look of the mask and your look for mask that has eyes designed. For half mask, to adopt the form of the lips of the mask with yours so the upper lips of the mask meet harmoniously with the lower lips of yours. Speaking then becomes the articulation of both (mask and you). Two make one.
To be one. To become someone.
Life starts differently in you when the mask sticks on your face.
Either you hide your self behind the mask, or to give your life to the mask for a period of time as an actor, as a servant, to serve the desire, the movement, even the thought of the mask. The act then become the way to be, or not to be as the mask, the character, the spirit ask you how to be, become another but you still in, completely in.

How to detach a mask from your face: first release the elastic link by moving the elastic/robe from your back head with one hand (active hand*) then hold the mask with both hand steady on the same place the same level, move your face and your body lower backward so you find yourself in a posture of holding-honouring the mask (the manifested spirit) above you.
Hold the mask with your passive/receptive* hand, face to face, the points of the active* fingers meet the third eye to release and move the spirit of the mask back to the third eye of the mask.
This ritualistic gesture is necessary to refine the quality of “to be” in acting, so a way to ceremony, celebration, building up a tradition, rooted deep toward the centre, the origin.
Tapa Sudana, 13 oct 2000 11H46, up dated 20 january 2006.
if you write with right hand, right is active/yang, left is receptive/yin; or vice-versa.

Here is one of my memories on mask: We used to give offering to the mask in Bali. Even when Mr. Pugra, the old master was in Paris, he gives every morning food to his masks, coffee and bread with butter and jam before he eat his breakfast. He put his mask on a higher place always, because he (like all Balinese) consider the mask as a sacred living object that has a spirit in it. Actor ask permission first to the spirit of the mask before he performs. A Balinese mask is made of wood, it was a living material.
While touring with a show in 1974, with Balinese masters and dancers, actors, musicians, singers, 4 children from Java and Bali with the group of Sardono W Kusumo,"La sorcière de Dirah", one of our singer got a headache. No way to get rid of her pain in her head. Then one night, she dreamed about a mask in our show. She did offering. By chance or by miracle, later, her head ache is gone away. Believe or not, this could be also just a coincidence. To be live or not to believe, anyway actor act, start from "if", that invisible, it could be an idea on an imagination, that not yet born into reality. How to be, Ahh, there are many ways. Bon voyage. Follow the life.