I have been a mask performer with Vamos for six years. It’s taken me this long to work out what to say when people ask, “So what do you do?”. It used to go something like this:

"We wear masks."

(“Oh, like the Greeks?”)

"There are no words... "

(Blank look as they imagine a really dull play they won't understand)

"...so we use our body language."

(2 hours of Greek masked expressive movement, no thanks!)

"...but you'd love it, it’s really realistic and natural and subtle and it’s a real life story."

(Glazed look as they attempt to imagine this ...and…..nope.)

“Ah well", they'd say, "at least there are no lines to learn!”

I needed a better approach. Until you've seen a piece of mask theatre, it seems an impossible thing that must be difficult to watch. But after a show, the audience comes out buzzing - “It was like they were speaking, the masks seemed to move”. This is down to a lot of hard work, including learning our lines! Without them our actions would be meaningless, and the audience wouldn't have a clue what was going on. We have an ‘internal monologue’ running through our heads which gives us the correct intentions, pace and clarity to convey the story using only our body language and the piece of plastic on our face. This is written into a script, which mixes stage direction and ‘speech’ without distinction. For example:

Stupid old coat. Sees empty chair. Excuse me, can I sit there?

The first sentence is inside the character’s head, but is expressed as a movement referring to the coat she is wearing. The second is a stage direction, the third a ‘spoken’ line. Richard won't hear me speak, but he will see me indicate the chair. We often can't see each other on stage because of the restricted vision in the masks, so we use other methods such as sounds (eg. the rattle of a box of matches) or a touch on the shoulder to tell each other when we have ‘spoken’. In rehearsals, we speak our internal monologue out loud, so that we know the conversations inside out, know when to make eye contact, and when to react. This makes it look like we are having a conversation, but it relies on us doing what we have previously agreed on to achieve a seamless effect. We take time to select the right wording so that it matches our actions and will help us to recreate them accurately. It is essential that each movement is really clear and precise, as the audience has no text to fall back on to understand the story.

I'm much better at this sort of conversation than coming up with a convincing, concise job description; so now when people ask what I do, I say, "it's like watching a silent film", and that seems to do the trick.

Sarah Hawkins

The Best Thing runs from January 28th to June 4th 2016. For the latest tour dates, click here