The Masks

BEHIND THE MASK

THE WILL FORCE

GOD'S WILL

One of the first and most important implements that all living beings are equipped with is what the Balinese call "God's Will". It makes sense to describe it as God's Will because all living beings use the will to "be born" and to survive. Just look at a seed’s will and how it breaks the soil, bringing its creation into the light.

The kids’ entrance into life requires an enormous will, accompanied by equally great care from the mother, and invaluable support from the father. The will is the child’s base for its existence, and instinctively the kid fights for its right to maintain it, in its own way. Care and love are important fertilizers.

And if the child doesn't get what it needs, the child knows how to express it in a scream or a cry that tells the world around it that it needs attention.

If we, as kids, don’t get it, anyway, we feel it as a NO. Or even worse, the neglect. And it is the no and the neglect the child remembers, and maybe transform into a trauma and seek attention, the rest of its life. And it creates what we call a Primary Mask.

In Bali, the child is not allowed to touch the ground until after three months and will be constantly carried during that time. Only after 105 days will it carefully, during a special ceremony, make contact with the Earth. 

At this point, the child’s spirits still belong to the divine and are taken care of by their Nyama Bajang, or 108 spirits. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Balinese people adore babies with utmost adoration.

The ritual bids farewell to the 108 spirits and thanks them for having protected the baby throughout their first three months in this life.

The ceremony marks the baby's passage into a settled existence, and it is a way to seek blessings and protection from the gods and thank the spirits that have accompanied the baby this far. The ritual helps to ensure the child's health, well-being, and spiritual safety as they embark on their journey in the physical world.

It is important to note that the Balinese know that God resides in the heart of every Balinese. So the word NO, is not polite and is seldom used, even though it is heard now and then in the daily routine with the child’s upbringing. Loud arguments, either.

It can’t be recognized as a picture or feeling in the street, but it makes a slow impact, so around 14 days after a guest’s arrival to Bali it starts to get into the body.

THE PRIMARY MASK

Further into our lives, we start to create individual characteristics by ourselves. Still, we also obtain even more from others; for example, we mirror our parents to get acceptance or get what we want. 

It is evident that when a human being’s dress code becomes a visible label, it is sending clear signals to the world: "Look who I am." Slowly, the ‘costume signal” and the development of our characteristics start to create our Primary mask.

The primary mask is what we transform our face into when we leave our private sphere and step into the public sphere. We must fit the tribe we are a member of. With or without our "own" will. Or we can’t thrive. For some, it is acceptable. For others to live by others’ will is a hell that they are forced to live.

The Primary Mask is dominated by a character center. It isn’t a fictitious idea, but a real observation that can be visible. It can be found inside the body, on the body, above, and even 10 feet behind the body. A human being’s own whole character is created from one center. To begin with, we call it the “Gordian Knot” because it’s often very difficult to transform, unless we use special tools.

At the Borobudur Temple, an old Buddhist temple in Central Java, Indonesia, the entrance to the temple itself is a large, open mouth in the middle of a monster's head, warning the visitor that it is associated with a certain danger to enter here.

At the very beginning, carved into the base of the whole temple complex, one will find images of dance, drinking, love, and much more from the lust life. {Karmic law}

And many live there or are placed there and can’t or won’t find a way out, other human beings are in a different place and will cross the threshold and walk inside the monster’s mouth. 

The warning mask tells us that if we leave the lust life, there is no return. Even if you do, you will be marked forever.

After the first walk-round of the first gallery of stone reliefs, where the upper part depicts the biography of the Buddha, while the lower part of the wall tells the story of the Buddha's former lives. If we walk through the gallery with a soft focus, the images will impact our body, and we will feel a soft transformation.

Returning to where the walk started, two handrails with scary faces stop the visitor from going back down again. Symbolically. You can’t! You are spellbound in your development, 

By the first impact, you must go forward.

The objective of the stupa-mandala is to raise the level of consciousness to the full enlightenment of those who come in contact with the temple.

At the entrance to the Mask Rehearsal Room, there is a teacher to greet the actors. The Teacher will be the guide, the caretaker, and the provocateur, and there are no warning signs.  The actors are already informed by others about what they can expect.

As a guide to the actor’s enlightenment, we use a Red Nose, which looks like a clown nose in everyday speech but is quite different in function.

It is the first mask the actor will be confronted with in this special work.

When the actor places the red nose on his own nose and, with crossed eyes, focuses on the nose, a theatrical transformation occurs that sends the actor into a euphoric liberation of an unknown magnitude. Technically, that little nose automatically loosens up the actor's Gordian knot and restores some of the actor’s original freedom, and gives the Gods Will back.

The actor has been freed from the Primary Mask and the Gordian Knot in a split second. The two essentials that are joined together.

The Gordian knot can remain a fictional idea for a while, until it is revealed through one's own intense liberation-training, and continue using the red nose.

During this process, the actor can begin to sense where the private Gordian knot is. It takes time! The journey to Nirvana at Borobudur Temple is the same and not easy; it is a long walk.

As the primary mask is loosened and the body, face, and especially the eyes begin to radiate qualities of SELF and FREEDOM, the actors are inspired to explore different imaginary centers. When a large part of the Gordian knot is so loosened that it is no longer an obstacle, we begin to call it a CENTER and the actors are instructed to explore different centers inside, from above and behind, and then begin to play with the many inspiring possibilities inside the hand around the knees on the sternum, above the head etc. for the inspired actor it is a joyous expedition into the body’s function. 

The work will start to inspire the actor's imagination, and consequently, open up for the creative actor to realize that a center can create various characters and access different important qualities to be used for an actor on stage. 

The red nose is the key to the breathing space of character creation.

However small it seems, the red nose takes the first step towards the free movement of the actor's body and imagination, and is a playful introduction to the following mask work.

And with each participant and with the Gordian Knot disappearing, different qualities emerge. A quality of sadness, hate, anger, joy, and jealousy that emerges. And the register is huge.

It is important to know that all these different expressions, many of which are taboo, are mentioned and treated as qualities that exist in the individual. They are all greeted with “welcome to the surface” with joy and acceptance.

When we release the Primary imaginary center, all participants get their will force back, and it gives everyone great freedom to allow themselves to "go crazy" without meeting a NO and without being neglected. It is childish, but it is liberating to be a child again.

RED NOSE

As a transition from the red nose to character or quality masks, we have created a special ensemble of 11 unpainted masks. They function partly as red noses and partly as a character mask. There are 11 clown figures with 11 fixed centers. Where the red noses have a center in the nose, these 11 clown masks have one characteristic center on/in/out of the body. And anyone in the world who uses such a mask will automatically be led to this "clown mask center" that dwells on this specific mask.

The center is very strong and specific and forces the body to use it as the base for the clown figure they have on their face. And at the same time it informs the actor about what can happen when they create and use such a powerful center and transform.

It is a theater of work that is far removed from the private center and tries to twist the body out of its private form into something very radical ... and it cleans the last remnants of the Gordian knot.

The Gordian knot has, before its demolition, a diabolical, constricting effect on the spine that can block the flow of our life force. A very heartbreaking reality that inhibits the spine, so that the necessary healthy flow in the spine is blocked, and this causes a lot of illness in the body. But it also prevents the actors from performing fully. When the last remnants of Gordic are released, the body takes advantage of it and moves freely and wildly once again, but this time as a character.

And there is no escape. When the body wants to return to its former body with all the lifelong NO’s  and Neglects, it is forced by the character mask and it’s center to move on until the consciousness finally begins to understand what is going on.

A massage on the spine from the neck to the sacrum is very helpful to ease any tension that arises during this work. It is possible to feel where the blockage is, a pain often occurs and an intense heat, and the massage can loosen the tension. And here it is a reminder to the body to focus strongly on the feet and the will, to help the process of incorporating the mask and its center. 

The mind tries to pull the body back to where the primary mask was, destroying our newly gained freedom... And as it goes on, the primary mask crack even more and we become more and more free, using the body and its power to create specific strong characters, through the mask, or through our own liberated imagination.

You can feel how the tensions deform, and the appearance of the mask reaches the sacrum and finds its passage into the body and transforms it. we are there, the land is open and free, and the will-power is fully back to the body to build the Actors Imagination create characters and meet more specific characters in or outside the mask. God’s Will is back. Welcome to another life.

And now we turn to the audience.

PS

The dynamics we master, and which are described here, using just two mask ensembles from the world's largest collection of active quality-masks, provide a good insight into which aspects of the art of acting we work with and constantly develop together with our guest actors and our Balinese faculty. But also, that the collection and thus the wide spectrum of dynamic material is unique and exceptional in our offer to the world's theater and for the benefit of its audience.

I Wayan Erik Wahyudi

CLOWN MASK

CARL JUNG ARCHETYPE-MASKS