Who We Are

Ultimately, the use of the spiral model starts to pull its nectar from the Actor's subconscious and brings it up to a consciousness that allows the Artist to create their own experience and wisdom and bring life and joy to the training hall and later on stage.

It is only then that the proper individual teaching really takes place. In the process, there is a sense that the last days are beginning to unfold, let’s call them Shadows, and we get a sense of a higher unity.  We reach TAKSU, we reach Beyond the Beyond, and in that higher state of mind, we add text, often Shakespeare. The conclusion of the experience is gently handed over to each participant for their own conclusion.

All of Shakespeare's plays, Molière, Anton Chekhov, and August Strindberg. And film directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven Spielberg. Antigone by Sophocles. The Gospel of John, etc. use the central scene. Most of the material points toward the I Am as in the Bhagavad Gita

Enjoy the journeys into the central scenes.

THE MAGIC TINDER BOX 

TAPEL. TOPENG. THE MASKS.

“Your masks work like very good students of Michael Chekhov, say all three professors with overflowing heartfelt joy.”

Chekhov who?

Then more laughter. Michael Chekhov, of course, The Actor. The Teacher.

I have just finished the first three hours of my teaching at GITIS in Moscow, and the enthusiasm of the three professors is incomprehensible.

They call it a Theatre Historical Sensation.

And it was!!

The weight behind the words came from:

The leaders of the master-class are Leonid Yefimovich Heifets, Natalya Alexeyevna Zvereva, and Oleg Lvovich Kudryashov. Never before and never after would such wisdom appear in front of me. They were real Doctors and Professors in the arts of theatre and life.

большое спасибо

Many Thanks

And here it is, storytelling from my heart and how it all began to move rapidly.

Follow me, please, into the wilderness full of danger, failure, laughter, and love. 

It has been 14 months since I went to Bali for the first time. And another Bali odyssey coexisted in between create those 18 masks that just wrote history in Moscow.

The original Balinese word for a mask, particularly used in traditional dance and theatre, is Tapel. 

Tapel: Refers specifically to the hand-carved, sacred masks used in Balinese performance (such as in Topeng Pajegan or Topeng Panca dance dramas).

Topeng: While TOPENG is often used to describe mask dances, it is derived from Indonesian and frequently refers to the performance itself, meaning "mask" or "to cover".

Undagi Tapel: The traditional, high-caste craftsmen who carve these masks. 

In Balinese culture, masks are considered sacred objects that hold spiritual, ancestral power. 

The masks crafted for this exchange in Moscow are Masks made in Bali, when I have collaborated with an artist and used his knowledge and skills to create what I imagined.

It was day 14  IN 1988 of my search for the mask maker in a haystack of them.

Wherever I asked for the best mask maker in Bali, nobody could tell.

On my tours to and from the tourist spots, I often passed a village named Mas that contained, like pearls on a string, house after house and poster after poster named MASK MAKER

The day before my last attempt, I went to a very good homestay in Ubud, and at the so-called BEMO CORNER close to the Royal Palace, I spotted two young men less hardcore than the other drivers, and their cigarettes pointed towards heaven when they were happy and joking foolishly around.

I had brought my thick sketchbook, “THE IMPONATOR”, just in case, to impress the great Balinese Artist, I was about to meet, whose name I did not know, or whether I would even be able to find his house.

I had given myself this last day and had decided that if I did not find the mask maker now, I would stop stressing my physical body and mind and never return to Bali again. And just admit the failure. All previous images of Bali stood in their way, all Antonin Artaud stories piled up in front of me, so I could not see what I actually had in front of me. And while I was spinning my back to the island, a bright spirit began to shine.

The two young, happy drivers I had arranged for this final, “Searching for the Mask Maker,” lost their patience, and their cigarettes turned the opposite, pointing straight to the ground. And with a bit of unusual anger, they drove up and down the street searching in every house that could look like the quality of masks. House after house was full of masks, but not the ones I was looking for. “What about this one?”!!!

I am looking for individual artistic mask carvings full of charisma and artistic individuality.

But how to explain that? A mask is a mask is a mask.

In a final desperate attempt, we stopped at Ida Bagus Tilem’s house. Ida Bagus TIlem was a woodcarving sculptor and artist who was born in the village of Mas. And grow into fame because all foreign dignitaries had to visit his gallery on their way to visit the royal family in Ubud.

It was a sales assistant in Tilem’s gallery who became the great hero.

He started to show me around, and, truly enough, the carved sculptures were amazing and expensive, but as we walked from sculpture to sculpture, I could not hide my irritation at having to go through this sales procedure again.

He could sense my reluctance towards expensive sculptures and my increasingly desperate state of mind. That mind was also waiting in the car outside, and a couple more attempts would raise more anger and fail the whole odyssey. I already saw myself kicked out of the car, ploughing around in a depleted rice field, screaming “A mask, a mask, a kingdom for a mask maker”.

I had mentioned masks a couple of times, when he finally realized what I was looking for.

“Now I know what you want. He guided me back to the street, and there on the other side, 50 meters up the street, right by the football square, was a name, I.B ANOM MASK MAKER. Go there, this is the man you are looking for!

I, like other heroes in fairy tale stories, could not sense the Hero’s Journey and the important initiation that would take place in a few minutes. But I am actually the poor but brave soldier in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy tale THE TINDERBOX.

Now it was a matter of finding the gallery first and hoping that it wasn’t too crowded with vendors.

The gallery was empty! The walls too!! Just a single row of very artistic, charismatic masks.

It must be him!

But where is he?

I found a man sitting on the floor in his workshop, shaping final details on some odd-looking masks.