MASKS-PROGRAM

SHOW UP - DIVE IN - STAY AT IT

Bali Theatre Work Centre, is home to the world's largest and most unique collection of masks, all dedicated to the artists and the actors. The collection is owned and maintained today by members of the Theatre's teaching faculty.

But as a start to light the flame we use a small red innocent looking wooden nose placed on the tip of your nose.

It is hand carved and beautifully crafted by core Balinese mask makers... and we call them clown noses in everyday life, but don't be mistaken.

The red nose is a mask that moves the user's own personal center, a center that has been built up throughout life and which functions as an anchor that holds the body and mind fixed, created by the opinions of others and their own, beliefs, right and wrong, guilt shame and punishment rules. When it is dissolved and thus moved, other possibilities arise in the user and some other movements and forms of expression.

And it strengthens what we call the Actor's Imagination.

When I first started working with red noses I lived and worked in New York City. And some of my students had acquired the red noses that we sell all over the world. My students went to the cinema and when the Movie started, they put their red noses on and said that they had experienced the film more intense. There are many tools that can be added to the work and you can easily get hours of work and a really good dose of laughter which is important because it also releases you.

Next come the Character- masks. They are historical and were created for a student exchange between my Danish acting students and Russian acting students from GITIS in Moscow. And it was there in central Moscow that the three professors who taught the class told me that "your masks work like really good students of Michael Chekhov". I didn't know him, but I found out, and it is true that the majority of Michael Chekhov's exercises are found in the character masks. So, working with the masks is like slam to flies with one smash. Mask Character work and Michael Chekhov’s exercises and his ideas of character work.

Since Michael Chekhov also talked about the archetypes and their importance for the art of acting, we created a group of 9 archetypes: the King, the Queen, the Prince, the Princess, the Hero, the Clown, the Fool, the Seducer, the Witch.

The incorporation of the archetypes, which are located just below the character, is an eternal joy for all actors. After some training, the actor lets her/his character be guided by the will of the incorporated archetype and let them mature together.

Or in the training phase, the King as a character has the Clown as the archetype, well hidden away from his ruling job, and then all of a sudden, the Clown break through and take over the King's job and the Kings character then switch to the archetype King. Now the clown character rules and the king archetype sit under the skin and wants to get out‼ For this part they don’t use masks only in the beginning to find the King-Character/ Clown-Archetype and incorporate them.

Can you follow us? If not come here and visit us.

Yeah, it is a bit of a gymnastic to read as well as to play with. But it is wonderful for the artist to gain that dynamic and inspiration.

You will also get to know your own archetype during the work.

We have 11 special clown masks. They are designed as clowns and not as fools or the idiots. The fool is for us as for Shakespeare:

The character who has seen it all and knows everything. That is why Shakespeare calls the fool in the play AS YOU LIKE IT: TOUCHSTONE.

After the clowns, we can safely leave one's own primary mask and examine what lies deeper down and hidden in one's body. We call it the Antithesis. And now that we have the two, Irish writers Joyce and Yeats hidden behind the words and inspired by Yeats, we recently created a mask ensemble consisting of 5 masks that all represent the cycles of the moon. They are "downloaded" under the different phases: full moon, new moon, halfmoon etc. They are a good tool for the artist, but are not yet fully mature. They are fun and liberatingly healing though. 

Here two more masks arrive from the firmament, VENUS and MARS.

Each masculine and feminine oriented. Both have some rich inspiring qualities in them. For both genders of the actors, we use Mars, which stimulates the will, which in turn is important on stage for the correct understanding and expression of the body language and the words, followed by Venus, which with its feminine power also plays a role in body language and words.

Mars is the consonants and Venus is the vowels, and the spiritual force that unites the two, is the actor, who shapes the text into the stage language.

And now that we are talking about language, the collection consists of a famous ensemble, which has worked for many years. It is the theater's ensemble of Opera Singers, which does wonders for the voice. And which includes all vocal qualities except for the countertenor. YES, YOU CAN SING OPERA!

We also have a set of 9 VOICE masks that unite the voice with the different chakras, "energy wheels", which give the voice its esoteric energy and also set the voice free. It is a special creation, hiding a little bit under the shadow of the Opera masks, but they are here.

There is a special group of 7 Chakra masks in the collection that are healing and that operate on getting the energy to flow in the spine. There can be many reasons why it does not let the energies flow, but the masks can do that, and they help many people who are sick or have been in accidents.

That is one thing; another thing is that the actor can use his presence to nuance the language. Speaking from the dynamics of the Heart Chakra or from the Crown Chakra is a unique realization of the language many possibilities and the function of the body together, which is also a contributing inspiration for the actor's language on the theater stage.

And here follows the TEXT, which the actor uses or works on in relation to an upcoming Opening Night or simply as his personal tool. We prefer to use Shakespeare to expose his essence and power in his lines and his conscious construction of the word naked in itself.

We have created all the masks that fit the different characters in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night or What You Will. They are created after the street sketches from Florence by Leonardo da Vinci. They are wonderful, and the masks fit the character in the play and the lines - and that is the magic about them. They are Erotic and add much to the different scenes. And there is a beautiful story about that.

…and then we finish with the red nose and check out.

There are several masks in the collection. Here we have focused on the actor's, singer's and artist's material.

Check out for yourself under MASKS what the collection consists of, or look elsewhere in the Workshops category and find other Mask workshops.

The material is large and powerful, and it is up to you to contact us and talk a little about what your needs are. Then we make a schedule that must be approved by you, and agree on the individual price that best suits you, your arrival and departure days and time in Bali. We do not tour with the masks outside Bali, they are too expensive to

Welcome

Remember to love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.