Masks

This last week, we’ve been working in the school play as always, but we have also went to see “Los musicos ambulantes” from Yuyachkani.

For our luck this played used masks, (half masks), which by the way gave the play a really “catchy” effect. I think that as Roberto said, working with masks includes lots of characterization, and movement  as they cannot see your gestures and you have to transmit your feelings by your body.

We were talking in class that in order to use a mask you must always look at the public and in this play we saw the effect, that this gave on the audience, yes, we have to look at the public and avoid looking to the back or next to you.

This play was very interesting as they used lots of instruments, and very  nice Peruvian songs, which I liked, because they used different types of instruments, but all Peruvian. I really enjoy the characterization of each of the characters in this play, but if I had to talk about one, it would be the dog which was called “chusco”. I enjoed more this character as, in my opinion it was well developed and had a very good use pf the body and transmited us (the audience) all the feelings  without showing the gestures in her face.

This also made me think about the physical work, that we did in class, as we have to explore every part from our body, would this help in this kind of acting? As they use masks?, I think that yes, it would help a lot, as you have to move every part from your body and show what you can and cant do.

I have never watched a play with masks, and I truly believed  that masks was a bad idea, and that it would be very boring, but after watching this play, I changed my mind and now, I think that masks will be very interesting to see I our play, and something “different” to work with, but just as every new technique it is difficult to developed and we must face the truth, and we have very little time. So apart from physical work, what does it take in order to make the school play as interesting as “Los musicos ambulantes”?