LIBERATING MASKS
For actors, masks can help them lose inhibitions of state and mind, Simone Tani tells
THE Italian has been travelling the world with his expertise in mask work — using it, making it — for theatre practitioners.
“It’s fun,” says Simone Tani who started teaching about masks, improvisation and drama in 2010.
“Masks definitely help actors to be more in their body. Body tension is something that makes actors interesting to watch. Would you be more captivated by watching a cat that is still and relaxed or by the same cat that is still but looking in a precise direction and with every muscle tense and ready to jump? Probably the second, because we know something is going to happen soon.
“I work mainly with two different mask techniques. With Trance Masks, you learn how to use tension in your body instinctively, while Full Masks is more technical and a trial-anderror approach.
“Masks also help you to understand the range of characters you can play, that it is always surprisingly wide.”
Tani, 43, became interested in improvisational theatre after watching a show in Milan, before studying it in Rome.
“After a few years, I founded Bugiardini with some very good friends and talented improvisers. They are still running the company and they just won the Sold Out award at Edinburgh Fringe (Festival),” he says, adding that reading Keith Johnstone’s book, Impro, especially the second part on masks “shocked me”.
“To read how it is postotally sible to become a different person, or I should say creature, by wearing a mask, really fascinated me, so I booked the first improvisation Johnstone workshop available in Europe which happened to be in London,” he recalls.
Johnstone no longer taught masks but put Tani in touch with Steve Jarand. Other than the workshops, Tani also travelled from Denmark to Canada and Bali to find out more about masks, “until one day Steve, at the end of a workshop he was leading, suggested that I start teaching as well.”
Tani has taught at many festivals around the world including the New Zealand Impro Festival and Finland International Impro Festival, both in 2014, and has given mask workshops to theatre groups in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan and France.
His best memory with masks was a 15-minute show he did with Daniele Pettinau in Napoli for the AltoFest.
“We were in a boxing training centre, performing on top of the ring. One of the actors had to drop out the night before because he had lost his voice. He was the one intended to provoke with the masks. So we had to find someone else to take his place, and we asked an actor of another show in the festival, Erik Sogno. We told him what the show was about, the fact that it was totally improvised and that it was the mask playing, not us. He looked at us as if we were crazy,” says Tani.
“We explained again that, yes, we were wearing the masks, but the masks would behave as totally different creatures from us, so he had to deal with them. He gave us another strange look, so we decided to show him the masks in action.
“After 10 seconds, he understood what it was about and jumped on board. The show was about two masks trying to learn the lines of Waiting For Godot. The masks gave a hard time to the provocateur and started misbehaving and playing with the audience. It was a big success.”
Other than all things to do with masks, Tani has co-founded Teatro Pomodoro, with four other international performers, which creates shows that mixes bouffon (jesting), clowning and other styles.
“Bouffon is normally included in the same realm of clowning,” explains Tani, a graduate of the renowned Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, “but it possibly represents the opposite side of the spectrum from clowning. Bouffon is a great theatrical style that allows you to go far in exposing what the mainstream ideas or behaviours are and mock them and destroy them.”
The multi-talented Tani feels the mask workshop will be useful for everyone, not just theatre people. “To surprise yourself and just enjoy playing without inhibitions is liberating and makes us more curious about what we can learn and how we can challenge the idea that we can do just a limited set of things,” he says.