Playing the Mask - Acting Without Bullshit

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"Masks are empowering They enable you to take risks. They provoke you into working with the reckless logic of a six-year-old or the enigmatic stillness of someone wiser than you'll ever be. But above all, masks let you be you without your habitual limitations"

Award-winning theatre-maker and teacher John Wright explores and demystifies mask-work:

What masks do

How they do it

And - above all - what they can teach us about acting

This book is a wonderfully accessible introduction to a fresh and innovative acting technique for actors, theatre-makers and teachers to use in training and rehearsal

A mask releases the actor to be playful, and playfulness generates ideas, finds meaning, develops characterisation

And is infinitely more fun than traditional training

Rather than a dry guide to making masked theatre, it is about, for instance, playing Lady Macbeth in Red Nose

Or Hamlet in the mask of The Victim, The Ogre or The Fool

Or even Romeo and Juliet in grotesque half-masks

All in the name of liberating your creativity

And, ultimately, improving your performance

Extensively illustrated with a rich variety of masks, this inventive and pragmatic book is full of invaluable games and exercises drawn from the author's own workshops

John Wright is co-founder of both Trestle and Told by an Idiot, and his pioneering mask and clown work has been used in many professional productions

REVIEWS

"Brilliant, entertaining and accessible" ~ Paul Hunter from his Foreword