An actor’s technique workshop by Fiore Zulli about the use and the meaning of the traditional mask.

 

There is an ancestral knowledge about the origin of the mask, linked with the need to let the community enter into a direct relationship with the metaphysical world and, on the other hand, to represent the different types of human psychism.

 

Therefore, what is a Traditional Mask? ... What are its specific meaning and purpose? ... How a traditional mask, be it African, European, Asian or American, can help the actor to find a better

relationship with his body in search of that special quality of presence needed to tell a story through actions even when working without a mask in his face?

 

These are some questions that will animate the workshop directed by Fiore Zulli with the artistic collaboration of Carla Robertson.

 

Participants will be guided to experiment a practical, precise path, in which the actor's body and mind approach the mask as something that is far beyond our normal ordinary perceptions, as a Higher destination, where experiences and living symbols reside and speak us about the deep nature of the Human Being.

 

The comic and the tragic, the sacred and the profane will be explored from the objective point of view of the traditional mask that, once worn, takes away from the actor his subjective personality's mask, thus allowing him to reveal and physically transmit to the viewer the essence of the staged story.

 

An approaching work in which techniques, voices, music and ideas of different traditions merge in search of the magic moment when the actor manages in giving life to the traditional mask of this or that culture set in a new expressive context in the present.