Mask-making, part I

Our work at the Accademia this fall involves a collaboration with the Arezzo Liceo Musicale on a production of The Persians, by Aeschylus. It's quite an undertaking--between actors and musicians there are something like forty performers. It involves three languages (English, Italian, and Ancient Greek), dancing, singing, instruments, and possibly some acrobatics. And as far as I can tell Italy is a nation without a single stage manager. Nonetheless, the whole thing is really exciting. Not least because I'm to play Atossa, the Persian queen. And it's going to be a mask role.

This afternoon Zach (who's playing Xerxes) and I had plaster casts taken of our faces. We were working with Taylor, an alum of the Accademia who lives here in Arezzo now. He played Don Giovanni as he worked, and opened the windows of the mask studio to let in the late afternoon sun.

Certain aspects of mask-making are a study in repurposing. For example, you have to start by coating your face--especially the eyebrows and eyelashes--in goop that will keep the plaster from sticking to it too badly. I don't know what's traditionally used, but what apparently works very well is...well, let's call it lubricant of a rather intimate nature. (Taylor said he got some strange looks when he bought it in such quantities.)

Anyway, once we'd slathered our faces in it, we further protected ourselves by sticking bits of toilet paper to our brows and lashes--when your face is covered in lubricant it's no problem getting toilet paper to adhere--and then covering our hair, baboushka-style, in saran wrap. So there's another entry on the long list of Odd Things I Have Found Myself Doing Because of Theater.

And then Taylor stuck the strips of plaster to us and let them dry. This involves sitting very still, blind, not talking, for about 30 or 45 minutes. I've heard that it makes some people panic, but I thought it was terrifically calming, not unlike a spa treatment. (In fact, the soap with which you wash off residual plaster and lubricant has sand in it, so I did have something of an exfoliating scrub.) Taylor steered us into the sun to help the plaster dry. I know we looked strange, two motionless, featureless creatures, draped in aprons, standing at the windows of the villa.

When the plaster dried, he peeled it off us. That gave him two shells shaped like us. He'll fill them with plaster to create positives of our faces. Then, for stability, he'll mount them on boards.

But the really exciting parts are that I'll get to keep a duplicate of the Atossa mask, that I'll be able to take home the plaster positive for further mask-making, and that I'm going to have the sort of role that teaches mask skills you can use all your life.