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. Step of observation, let yourself being absorbed by the information that transformed you. Actor that served a sacred object/spirit, that contains "somthing" more important then the actor.
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, you feel ready to become some one else, offering 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 (your face) toward the mask so your face meeting in contact with the back face of the mask. Important to adjust the look of the mask = your look, and your look for mask, look at the world no through the holes of the mask's eyes.
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 parts make one life speak through .....  Actor play? or played by the spirit of the mask ....hmmm what a task !!! a journey start...bon voyage !
To be one. To become someone.... the same one  (similar). If not...hmmm what a shame !
Life starts differently in you when the mask sticks on your face. Tapel=topéng= a balinese word, means something to cover your face.
Either you hide your self behind the mask (you lost time uselessly), or to give your life to the mask for a period of time (you become useful) as an actor, as a servant, to serve the desires of mask and you (mind the % ), the movement, life-energy, emotions, even the thought of the mask. Acting 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, devoted.

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 an honorable "thing", act of honoring 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.

if you write with right hand, right is active/yang, left is receptive/yin; or vice-versa.
Tapa Sudana, 13 oct 2000 11H46, up dated 20 january 2006.

a Ritual 

of taking off a mask, 

Balinese spirit guidance.

Here is one of my memories on mask, European tour of "La sorcière de Dirah" choreo/directed by Sardono W. Kusumo in 1974. In our Balines tradition, we used to give offering to the mask in Bali. Even when Mr. Pugra, the old master was in Paris, he gives offering 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. By giving offering, is also to awaken the spirit in the "object" being offered. It is one way to do daily "training/rehearsal". Actor ask permission first to the spirit of the mask before he performs, in order not being "condemned" by the spirit that dwells in the mask. Analogically give understanding also to actor, how they should honor words.....words can sentences actors.  A Balinese mask is made of wood, it was a living material, so living material can habited/dwelled by living spirit. Actor serves the spirit that carries actor.
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 for that particular mask. By chance or by miracle, later, her head ache is gone away. Believe or not, this could be also just a coincidence. To be lived 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. Actor has no choice than to believe what he/she does and give life to a dead letters that sleeps in book, give life to a mask, .... it is an art of unbelievable believed. Bon voyage. Follow the life with light that guide you to harmony with others around you.

who i am? hmmm Claude interviewed and Rizal did the filming and put it in youtube to share....once upon a time, in my family house garden in Montreuil....

Topeng dance (mask) in Paris in late 1980's ...
with Gamelan Indonesian Embassy directed by Dewa Putra Diasa.
with Yita Dharma, Elisabeth Cecchi (Théâtre Zô), Mas Soegeng, Tapa Sudana.