Another week gone already?

Closing in on the end of Week 3. Only four more in this term. This year is gonna fly.

Back to the Future is coming along, as are the other platform pieces. The teachers gave us one more week to work on them before setting them aside for a while. Meanwhile we've been playing with masks in class this week. We got some feedback on the ones we made, which we'll start to use next week, and have used some of the school's masks twice so far. One day it was leather commedia masks, another, wooden Korean masks.

It's remarkable how you have to tell a story differently when you wear a mask. Movement and language have to be used much more economically; messiness and rambling are laid bare. In a way, we're being asked to do two almost opposite things at the same time: keeping an openness to improvisation and creating on-the-spot while also moving and speaking only when and as it serves what we're making up in the moment. There's also a necessary moment-to-moment awareness of how to hold your head so the mask plays its best. And since these are half-masks, ending just below the nose, how you hold your mouth becomes part of the mask itself, so that too becomes essential and magnified. So much to be aware of without being so focused on it that it blocks your spontaneity. It's a tremendous discipline to develop, and just watching others struggle with it has been an education in itself.

One story we were to prepare for last week was that of the crucifixion of Christ. (A rather ballsy choice to assign in an intercultural school, I thought. Then again, it's probably as well known a story as any.) The storyteller was to tell it from the perspective of 3 to 5 characters (which could be completely made up), switching back and forth between them, speaking directly to the audience or the other characters they were also creating. This we did without masks. Then yesterday those who hadn't had a chance to go the week before were given the same task, but with the addition of using the Korean masks. Instead of quick-changing between characters as those of us who went the week before did, these storytellers were to pause between characters, turn around, take off one mask, put on another, change character, and then turn around again to continue the story in that character's body and voice. They weren't to hurry, but had to make sure the energy/tension/atmosphere/magic of the moment didn't drop. Whew!

When you can't use your facial expression, everything else becomes magnified. And the abstraction of the mask moves the whole thing into a fantastical (transposed) world, where the artifice of the whole thing is apparent but also has to enhance the experience. It's almost like alchemy. I'm learning a lot. Again.

I'm also having to set up appointments with the osteopath. Again. This 54-year-old back of mine has bedeviled me of late. Acrobatics, as you might guess, is going very slowly. Some days I just do the conditioning exercises and spend the rest of the hour and 45 minutes stretching while everyone else works on handstands, straddle ups, and all sorts of other moves I don't even know the names for. My accomplishment of a 2-second handstand this past summer will probably turn out to have been the high point of my acrobatics career. But I can live with that.

Isabel passes through town twice in the next two weeks. It'll be a joy to see her. And I hear that it's about time for Thanksgiving again, since one American friend is hosting a turkey dinner this Sunday and my house is having our own gathering the following weekend. Christmas decorations are up in London stores (though much less so than back home). But the weather here doesn't give much clue as to the season. Weak sunlight, trees slowly going bare without much color, rain as often as always, I suppose. Not every day, but the air's always damp.

Here's hoping Isabel gets through immigration without a hitch this time.