Oh! Theater!

Last night we had a class excursion to the Familie Flöz show Teatro Delusio. Flöz uses full-head masks and no dialogue; the result is sort of a combination of clown, dance, mime, puppetry, and drama, and it's entirely moving. It's a story of backstage drama at a haunted theater, and (I think) the way disappointed hopes and dreams can haunt a place even more.

From the Flöz site, here are a couple of the show's masks. The one on the left is an unsavory choreographer. The one on the right was one of my favorites--a stagehand, and the low-status clown in the clown-y sequences:


The subtleties the performers achieve with these faces--which, after all, can't move on their own--are incredible. Part of it is good mask construction; the masks catch the light beautifully, and there are times you'd swear a character is shedding a tear or sweating. But most of it is just good performance, actors who allow the mask to inhabit the body fully, using economy and clarity and scale of gesture to present a being that is heartbreakingly alive.

The show is an impressive feat of stagecraft as well, because there are only three performers, who in the course of the evening create a cast of twenty-seven. That demands not just flawless quick changes but also amazingly precise body/mask work.

This is the first show I've seen since leaving Chicago. Of course we're immersed in theater here, we're surrounded by posters of different productions and the classic prints of the commedia characters, and everyone has seen and worked on hundreds of plays and is planning or writing or rehearsing hundreds more--but it's still a breath of pure oxygen to encounter an actual show. Oh, right: that's what we're all doing here.

Much as I love this training, I am impatient now to use it.