Alfredo Iriarte’s Mask-making Workshop 2019

THREE PEDAGOGIC APPROACHES TO NEUTRALITY AND NEUTRAL MASKS

WITH

ELLIE NIXON, AMY RUSSELL AND NORMAN TAYLOR

I am facing the sea, watching it, breathing it. My breath moulds itself to the movement of the waves and gradually the picture shifts as I myself become the sea.

Jacques Lecoq

“Neutrality” is not a neutral topic…

Be it a state of physical preparedness, of spiritual receptiveness, or simply of calmed nerves, the notion that a performer should achieve a pre-performative state in order to transform into the character, is as old as theatre itself.  However when this state is qualified as "neutrality", it becomes as difficult to define for the actor as it is for the politician - it depends on the observer's point of view. Moreover, what might be the politics of suspending individual identity? Arguably, the identity of the individual is as relevant on the stage as on the street, and theatre pedagogues may find themselves in confusion and difficulty when they teach “neutrality” to performers whose individual identity has become an inseparable aspect of their success.

Developing the neutral mask from Copeau’s “noble mask”, Lecoq suggested that the neutral mask is the persona of our common humanity. Initially, however, Suzanne Bing simply covered the actor’s face - encouraging them to express with their bodies instead. Neutrality, rather than an essential or perhaps ideal identity, could also be considered as imaginative and expressive capacity. What might the use of a neutral mask be in that case?

In our three-week Pedagogic Intensive, Amy Russell, Ellie Nixon, and Norman Taylor will guide their own approaches to the theme of neutrality and the use of neutral masks. Time will be set aside for pedagogic discussions and a pedagogic practicum every week, so that those who wish to teach using neutral masks, and indeed those who teach with reference to a different pre-performance practice - such as Alexander Technique or Feldenkrais - are assisted and affirmed in their own pedagogic stance.