Mask Making Residency with Waxing Moon Masks

Pre-made masks from Waxing Moon Masks

As Returns and Remembrance: Diaspora Homecoming approaches on Tuesday, July 26th at 6pm, we would like to examine the physical theater pedagogy embedded in mask creation and play with B4 Arts Mentor and Education Coordinator, Tara Cariaso. The B4 team participated in a 10-day Mask Making Residency with Waxing Moon Masks. In this newsletter, Waxing Moon Masks facilitator, Tara Cariaso takes us through the process and the purpose of the residency program. 

Follow 'Waxing Moon Masks' on Facebook & Instagram @waxingmoonmasks

Follow Tara on Facebook @taracariaso

"In learning about masks I realized that all of the sudden I had a great diversity of characters that I could play, characters that previously no one would allow me to play on a stage."

"I was working to articulate part of my pedagogy at that time, pedagogy which is grounded in emotions and articulating emotions through the body."

Tara's experience working with masks:

I began working with masks in 2004 but had been exposed to some masked forms of theater earlier on in my professional career as an actor. It was when I hit graduate school that I started to understand how integral it is to train the body and not just the mind of the actor. 

My greatest need as a woman of color was to create my own content, and so I attended a school that allowed me to explore devising and theatre creation using my own voice and authorship. In learning about masks I realized that all of the sudden I had a great diversity of characters that I could play, characters that previously no one would allow me to play on a stage.

It's always difficult as a woman of color in theatre settings,  (in the US, theatres are in large majority predominantly white institutions,)  for people to see you the performer in many different capacities, and with a range of abilities. I can't tell you how many times in my life I was cast as a witch or as someone's girlfriend.  My abilities were vast, but expectations for my abilities were low, and that deeply limited the kinds of and number of roles I landed.

So masks became a way for me to increase the range of characters that I played.  Devised theatre, (which this masked theatre is also,) allowed me to have a voice in what our work imparted to our audience. After finishing grad school my partner and I started Waxing Moon Masks in order to produce the objects, the masks themselves, to facilitate other actors' journeys in devising and in masked performance.

Last year we celebrated 10 years as a company serving the DC / Virginia/ Baltimore/ Maryland regions with masked performance education and original theatre mask fabrication. This year we were awarded a grant from the city of Baltimore for just under $10,000 to rebrand our company and begin offering all new anti-racist performance pedagogy and all new original theatrical masks. So it's an exciting time!

History of collaboration with B4 Youth Theatre:

I met Jasmine Blanks Jones (B4 Executive Director and Founder) at a teaching artist workshop and was blown away by the work she described, work which she had been doing already with B4 youth theater. I had been in the field for over two decades as an actor and knew already that my passion for creating original work was grounded in theater as a tool for healing and community and communication. I knew immediately that I wanted to support what B4 was doing. 

I offered to create original mask sets for four of the program sites she was currently working with in Liberia. I was working to articulate part of my pedagogy at that time, pedagogy which is grounded in emotions and articulating emotions through the body. So the masks that we made for her were emotion mask sets, designed to facilitate storytelling using emotional experiences. 

After one workshop with her team here in the states, I realized that this would not be easily imparted to her instructors in Liberia, so we created a 10 video training series for the youth instructors which was completed and delivered along with instructor workbooks.

It was the following year that we started planning a trip of instructors from the US to visit Liberia. I visited in the summer of 2016 and I was fortunate enough to visit for three to four weeks.

Purpose of creating these masks:

Theatrical masks are not only an expression of the mask artist, but in our practice they are an expression of the actor and what they want to amplify in the character in order to convey an impactful experience to the audience. In my practice masks are meant to amplify. They facilitate transformation, and they amplify important dramaturgical information. 

The purpose of creating these masks with these actors was multi-fold.  First off I was just really excited to get to work with these actors, several of them for the second time. I wanted to purposely cultivate our mindset as theater educators who provide facilitation for creative expression, rather than thinking of acting training as imparting technique as a consumable good. 

It's that mindset of facilitating creative expression for others that comes along with the tool, which is the mask. If I simply say this is how you use this mask and then show you, then as a student you will likely try to mimic or repeat what I just did. However if I say I want you to find something in yourself that resonates with something in this mask and then amplify it, then your expression in the mask is going to be completely different than mine. And that's what we want! So creating the masks to allow for student amplification gives both facilitator and student opportunities for discovery. 

Making the masks allows our instructors a chance to understand how that data is embedded in the tool and how they themselves access the information in them, to communicate with an audience. My hope is that after manifesting that process themselves, then the instructors can facilitate and share unique research in masks with their students. In my model,  making the mask is making a tool that you really understand how to use.

Process of creating the masks:

The Masks we are creating with the B4 Youth Theatre instructor team will be made of paper mache and fabricated upon clay sculptures.  The clay sculptures are made on top of face positives of the instructors themselves. 

First we made plaster casts of the instructor's faces, and poured plaster positives of these faces, so that they essentially had working replicas of their own face proportions. We worked for the next couple of days in movement, developing instructor point of view,  and talking about student empowerment. These conversations then seeded the instructor as a designer for movement and character amplification.

Next instructors are creating a unique sculpture on top of their own face positive with amplified features that will create a character that interests them. By the end, actors will have a durable and customized-to-their-face tool, one that amplifies an original character that resonates strongly with their own interests and strengths. They will also take home a plaster face positive of their own face on which they may create numerous additional sculptures. Lastly,  they will have the skill of fabricating these masks in paper mache so that they can potentially share this style of character creation with their students.

"In my model,  making the mask is making a tool that you really understand how to use."

"There was so much love and pride generated by the young instructors in making stories for the stage that meant something important to them,  that articulated their agency."

Arts Instructor and Partnership Director Hannah McKay during the face casting process

"Masks are an expression of the actor and what they want to amplify in the character in order to convey an impactful experience to the audience."

Tara's experience in Liberia. It's contribution to the further development of 'Waxing Moon Mask' Journey:

In 2016 I had the great honor to fly to Liberia with a team of instructors from the US to assist in the free B4 Youth Theatre summer camp programming.  The theme this year was "Fight The Stigma" and the company and instructors were working with students to devise original theatre pieces on the theme of overcoming stigma on Liberian people,  stigma created in the global community against West Africans who had suffered the devastating effects of the Ebola epidemic. Not only had Liberian communities been shaken, having been robbed of so many of their beloved family members; but on top of that, media from western countries lobbed racist insults aimed at West African countries like Liberia, falsely laying blame on these communities for the impact of the illness. The theme, "Fight The Stigma," was a way of using youth voices to push back.

As a theatre pedagogue and mask maker, I wanted to use the masks as tools for facilitating not only the amelioration of student actor performance skills, (actor training,) but also to help facilitate personal storytelling through improvisation. I hoped that these masks would  make it easier for these young people to devise original plays that amplified their emotional truths.

That year, the training sites used the masks which we had made by my company, Waxing Moon Masks, and sent on to the training sites in the previous year. These were masks with emotions embedded in them, (joy, fear,  anger,  sorrow,  surprise,   disgust,  ambiance,  pretension, shame, pride)  and masks with familial forms embedded in them, (parent,  elder,  baby.)  My hope in making these particular shapes was that these forms would aid students in telling stories about their feelings in the wake of the horrendous illness,  stories about their needs,  stories about their families, stories that reflected their challenges, but more importantly, their strengths. 

Once we started working together at B4's Mt Barclay's program site,  I immediately started to see integral connections between movement and emotion. To release movement,  a young participant has to feel safe to express emotion,  and vice versa.  I began seeing that circuit between movement and emotion as deeply impactful, not only for training actors, but in empowering story tellers. 

Besides the joy of playing and training with the instructors and students, I was also gifted with the deep satisfaction of witnessing student instructors in action with their younger peers. There was so much love and pride generated by the young instructors in making stories for the stage that meant something important to them,  that articulated their agency.  Their growing confidence to say their truth,  and the very act of encouraging the other young people of the program to share their truths, was everything I could have asked for.  My years of work in the professional performance field had taught me that I had to be truthful with myself,  and now,  that message was being echoed and amplified through these brilliant young people in ways I never could have imagined, in service of their voices and their communities.   To say I was deeply moved is no where near adequate to express the joy and satisfaction I felt. 

I learned that SHARING ONE'S TRUTH is a powerful gift to give any community, and B4 was doing this and so much more.  Specifically,  in speaking to my work on creating pedagogy with emotion masks, one student's feedback comment seemed to speak my own experience so much.  They wrote,  "With the mask I am brave,  and I don't fear nothing." I couldn't have asked for a more affirming comment.  This student,  like me,  had realized that the artifice of a mask can offer freedom and play and strength to speak one's truth. 

It was after leaving Liberia that I started to develop words for the kinds of masks I had felt compelled to make for our storytelling that year.  Over the last 6 years, this work has evolved into a unique physical theatre research and training pedagogy that we call,  "Embodying Archetypes."  

Embodying Archetypes embraces the philosophy of creating expressive work from where and who you are, sharing your truth as a person with infinite possibilities,  and diverse experiences.  We are ALL filled with impressions,  understandings,  creative data that is unlike anyone else's,  if only we trust that what we have to say is already enough. It is important enough,  it is interesting enough,  it is brave enough.  This was the lesson I learned from working with the B4 team,  and it's a lesson that continues to grow in me.

The team of B4 Youth Theatre instructors that are visiting our Waxing Moon Masks studio this summer are making masks with deep engagement in the Embodying Archetypes pedagogy, using the body's keen intelligence to tell their truths in all its diverse splendor, and amplifying what feels important to them in this moment as they research the complex histories of Liberia and the US in relationship. 

At the end of our 10 Session Mask Making Residency,  we will host what is called in western theatre practice,  a "Mask Birth". This is a sharing and research Open Session,  meaning it's open to be viewed by guests of the organization. At this event, which is being generously hosted by The Strand Theater in Baltimore,  Maryland,  our instructors will try on the masks they created for the first time with the intention of giving them movement,  spirit,  rhythm... life! We will toast the accomplishments of the creatives who are sharing their truths,  we will welcome their emerging mask characters into this reality, and celebrate the "200 Years of Returns" project as a whole. 

I hope you can join us! -Tara Cariaso

About '200 Years of Returns'

“200 Years of Returns” is a collaboration between Burning Barriers Building Bridges (more commonly known as B4 Youth Theatre in Liberia) and the Museum Theatre Department of Colonial Williamsburg (CW) in Virginia, United States. This interactive performance juxtaposes past and present "returns" to Liberia since 1822 when Black American settlers first arrived encountering various African ethnic groups.

A team of five actors from B4 Youth Theatre in Liberia have shared the stage with actors from CW Virginia at Hennage Auditorium in the Colonial Williamsburg Arts Museum to commemorate the “200 Years of Returns” anniversary (Learn more about '200 Years of Returns'). They continue to speak history through the arts which you will see first hand in Returns and Remembrance: Diaspora Homecoming on July 26th and the next upcoming event on July 27th at Hosanna School Museum.

Upcoming Shows

July 24th:

African Artists Gathering with B4 Youth Theatre

July 26th:

Returns & Remembrance: Diaspora Homecoming

July 27th:

Join B4 Youth Theatre and our partner Hosanna School Museum as we showcase our next performance of '200 Years of Returns'!

July 29th:

A Mask Birth presented by Masking Moon Masks

Kindly donate to support the B4YT Liberia team with the activities in the United States. Every member of the team is confident about the upcoming events. Each person is looking forward to the lessons and experience to share with their colleagues upon return to Liberia, West Africa.