Lesson video

Hello, my name is Adam Milford, and welcome back to the fourth lesson in this unit.

So far, we've been looking at the story of Noto Hanto, and we've been using puppets and storyboards to help us tell that story in different ways.

In this last lesson, we are going to be making and using masks as we tell our story.

So why do we wear masks? By removing the use of an actor's face and of the voice, because it's difficult to talk when you're wearing a mask, actors have to find something deeper within themselves.

They have to become more physically expressive, using their whole body.

Some keywords that we're going to be using today.

Masks are a sort of a character face that a performer wears.

Sometimes this is just to disguise themselves, but usually it is to take on a new role.

Greek theatre is one of the oldest examples that we have of masks being used in theatre as we know it today.

And identity.

Masks have their own unique identity or character, and they help actors to become something more when they're wearing them on stage.

There are a few things that you will need for today's lesson.

We're going to be making our masks out of paper plates, so you need at least one paper plate.

You need some art and crafts materials, so pencils, pens, crayons, paint, anything that you have to hand.

You need some scissors and, if you have it, Play-Doh would be quite useful for when we're cutting the holes into the, for the eye sockets into the mask.

You will also need some string or some elastic to tie it on with, and some sticky tape to hold it all together.

Today, we might recognise masks as something worn by superheroes in films and cartoons.

Characters like Spiderman and Batman wear masks to hide their real identity.

Some characters, like Superman and Wonder Woman are like gods, and they are these super powerful characters.

That is who they are, so they wear masks when they're being normal people, to help them blend in and live a normal life.

Either way, masks help us to become someone else.

There are two types of masks, full masks and half masks, just like these ones here.

Full masks cover the whole face, making it very difficult to speak clearly.

It may be possible to make some sounds, like shouts and grunts, but an actor's performance has to be very physical to express the character.

Half masks free up the mouth so the actor can speak, but when wearing either of these masks, an actor's performance has to be very physical.

But with a half mask, the shape of the mouth and the sound of the voice must also reflect the mask's character.

Historically, masks meant storytellers could portray gods, animals, and mythical creatures in the stories that they told.

Later, they were used to present archetype characters from different cultures, like a hero, a villain, a mother, and people who are mean, kind, innocent, and greedy, et cetera.

The masks you can see here are from a type of theatre called Commedia dell'Arte, an Italian theatre tradition which you can still see today if you go to places like Venice.

By wearing these masks, actors are able to step into a character, almost like wearing a costume.

Each mask has its own unique characteristics, which demand something different from the actor.

These masks are called theatre masks, and they show two different emotions.

They're often used to represent the range of emotions that an actor performs on stage.

Now, our mask today isn't going to be as complex as any of these masks I've just shown you, but you can make your mask any way you like, and then you'll have a go at playing with them.

Before we get started, I have a game for you to play.

Masks help actors take on a new character or put on a different emotion, so I'm going to make some different faces by putting on some imaginary masks.

Then, through the magic of imagination, I'm going to take off that mask and zap it through the computer screen, just like that.

And they're going to travel through the ether, and land on your face, and you have to show that same emotion.

Are you ready? What should we do first? Which emotion? I think I'm going to put this one on, which is a happy face.

Let's take it off and send it through the computer.

Whoosh! Did it work? Do you have your happy face on now? Excellent, I'm glad that worked.

Now, peel it off, and magically it will just disappear.

Okay, so let's try another one.

This time, I'm going to do the opposite.

I'm going to do a sad face.

Okay, here it comes.

Whoosh! Did that work? Do you look very sad now? Okay, take it off and let's try an angry mask.

Ooh, it makes me want to growl and snarl.

It's started to affect my whole body, too, and it's not just my face that changes, it's my body feels all tense and my voice sounds all deep and gravelly.

Right, here it comes, are you ready? Oh, that feels better.

How are you feeling? Okay, well take if off, quick, before you get too angry.

Okay, I have a couple more to try with you, so let's speed it up a little bit, but when I send it to you, let them affect your whole body, and your voice, too.

Perhaps you can make some different sounds to go with them, but no words, because you can't always talk very well with masks on.

Okay, this one is a scared mask.

Okay, I'm going to take it off.

Do I have to take it off? Oh, I don't want to.

Oh, okay, okay, here it comes.

Whoosh! Have you got it? Okay, okay, well take it off if it scares you.

Take it off.

Okay, good.

Now, here's an opposite one.

This one is a brave mask.

Ah, I like this one.

It feels good to have this mask on.

Do you want to try it? Yes? Okay.

Whoosh! It feels good, that one, doesn't it? Brilliant, okay, take it off.

I like the way that you're starting to use your whole body and not just your faces with these.

This is how actors work with masks.

They have to have an impact on your whole body, and give you lots of energy and power to your performance.

Okay, so this is everything that we need to make our masks.

The first thing we need to do is work out where our eye holes are going to be, which are going to be roughly here, kind of just above halfway.

I'm going to use a coin.

I've got a two pound coin and I'm going to quickly draw around our eye holes.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

We're then going to draw around the second eye, here.

So that's roughly where our eyes are going to be.

We then need to cut this out, using some scissors.

Now this is where you need a grownup to help you, because scissors are very sharp and we don't want anybody to get hurt.

We also don't want to damage the furniture, the table that you're working on.

So if you get some Play-Doh or something similar, if you don't have any Play-Doh a folded up tea towel will do just fine, and place that underneath where the eye is.

You can use your scissors to cut into the hole.

I'm going to do the same on the other eye, here.

We can then use our scissors, helps if they're the right way around, to cut into our eye, like so, which makes it a lot easier to cut the eye shape.

It doesn't have to be perfect, because we're going to decorate this afterwards.

So we do both eyes, watching our fingers underneath.

As I said, your grownup should be able to do this with you.

Very good.

Put our scissors away carefully.

And there we have our basic eye shape.

We then need to attach some string or some elastic to the back of it to make sure that it will stay on in place.

I'm going to use string, but you could use elastic, and I'm just going to stick that down.

I'm then going to make my mask string adjustable by tying a little slipknot into one piece of string and then into the second piece of string, which means I can then adjust the size of my mask, to make it tighter or looser as I need to.

There is our basic paper plate mask.

All we need to do now is decorate it.

Now, do you remember the story of Noto Hanto from the last three lessons? Excellent, then you'll remember that the villagers made masks out of wood, bark, seaweed, and anything else that they had to hand.

They wanted to make their masks as monstrous as they could, to scare off the invading samurai.

Now, we don't know exactly what they looked like, but here are some examples of some modern Japanese masks inspired by other ancient stories from the Japanese culture.

Now, this is where our lesson gets really fun.

I want you to use your imagination to design your mask as a scary monster, just like our villagers might have made.

You can use pens, crayons, tissue paper, or anything else that you have to hand to make your mask.

You could give it a big nose by using a toilet roll tube, big, ugly teeth by using macaroni, or horns made out of cut out paper or card.

Pause the video, have a go at making your mask, and then press play when you're ready to carry on and play with it.

Okay, so this is my mask.

This is the one that I've made.

What do you think? Do you like it? Is it scary enough? Not sure.

How's yours looking? Now that we've decorated our masks, we're ready to start playing with them, so this is the fun part.

But before we do, I have a quick exercise that I want you to do first.

When we're wearing a mask, we need to be led by that mask.

So put your mask down for just a moment, and I want you to explore a few different ways of moving.

This will help you to work out how to move when you put your mask on.

It will also help to make sure that you are wearing some comfortable clothes, that you aren't wearing any shoes, and if the floors are slippery then take your socks off, too.

It will also help to make sure that you have plenty of space around you so that you can move freely without bumping into any of the furniture.

So pause the video whilst you clear that space and sort your clothes out, and then press play when you're ready to carry on.

Right, so the first thing I want you to do is stand in neutral.

That means standing tall, with your hands by your sides, feet shoulder-width apart, and everything nice and relaxed.

Good, now what I want you to do is to imagine that you are being led by your chest.

I want you to move around the room that you're in as if your chest is guiding you.

You're not going to throw yourself around, it's just that you're moving as if your chest is leading you.

So like this.

Explore the space that you're in.

Pause the video and have a play with that now.

Good, now let's take it from the chest down to the stomach.

How does that change the way that you stand? How does it change the way that you walk? For me, it makes me a little bit bow legged, and I think I move a little bit slower.

How about you? Pause the video while you try that out.

Now let's try the nose.

Think about the nose leading you.

Now, we smell from our noses, don't we, so perhaps we might be sniffing like a dog, because they're led by their noses as well.

So pause the video and have an explore around the room that you're in, as if your nose is leading you.

Great, now, what other parts of your body can you lead with? Pause the video and try moving around the room as if led by different parts of the body, like your knees, your shoulders, the top of the head.

Think about how it changes your energy, your posture, and your general physicality.

Pause the video and have a go at moving around the room, and then press play when you're ready to carry on.

Welcome back.

Now, if you remember, our villagers in our story wanted to scare off the samurai warriors, didn't they? So how do you think they might have moved in their masks? Now, this is a full mask, so we can't talk very easily, but we can make sounds like growls, roars or snarls.

If you first have a look at your mask and ask yourself what noise do you think it will make.

I think my mask would make a sort of a snarling, hissing sound like, this, so, sort of sounds.

Next, I want you to think about how your monster will move.

Is it a monster that jumps, creeps, stomps, or prowls? I think my monster will prowl like a lion on a hunt, so I'm going to do lots of big sort of shoulder movements like this, moving quietly, but with purpose.

Now, do you remember the puppet lesson we did, and how we pretended someone was controlling us with strings? Well, when you're wearing a mask, as I've said already, all your movements have to be guided by the mask.

So you need to do what you think it is telling you to do.

It needs to lead you.

In a moment, I'm going to ask you to pause the video.

What I want you to do is put your mask on, and just like we've just done, I want you to play with a few different ways of moving, to find the right one for your mask.

We've all got different ones, so we're all going to move differently.

It might help to use a mirror so that you can see how you're moving differently to normal.

Let the mask's character change the way that you stand and move, and the way you move your hands and the whole body.

There is no wrong way of doing this, so whatever you decide to do is absolutely fine.

And if you decide to change it, that's okay, too.

So pause the video and give that a go.

Great, now that you have found your way of moving, and you've thought about the sounds that your mask makes, we can put our masks into the story.

So the children have gone off and they've made masks using bark and seaweed.

They have to then show them to the rest of the village.

Now, they don't just show them to their villagers, they put the masks on and try to scare them first.

So let's set up this scene.

What I want you to do is to imagine that you are one of the children from the village, and you're probably a little bit excited about your idea.

Now, you need to pretend that you're hiding among the trees and the bushes by the beach.

If you have a grownup or a sibling with you, then ask them to be one of the villagers.

Tell them to be building log piles to make big fires, and arranging the drums, and to be a little bit scared about what's going to happen that night.

Then, you need to decide what you are going to do.

Do you start with a sound first, or do you make some strange noises, rustling the bushes? Do you let a little bit of your mask be seen, or do you burst out from your hiding place with lots of noise and energy? I want you to pause the video, set up that scene, and then, when your villagers are least expecting it, you burst out and scare them.

Pause the video now, while you do that, then press play to carry on.

How did that go? Were they suitably surprised? Good, I hope so.

So now, Kenshin, our samurai warlord, and all of his samurai warriors, are out on the boat, approaching the bay.

Imagine the drums are pounding.

Dum, dum, dum, dum, boom.

Dum, dum, dum, dum, boom.

The fires are on the beaches.

You know that coming up behind you are the giant puppets made out of sticks and fabric, and you are on the shoreline, waiting to scare off the samurai with your masks.

You can feel the excitement creeping in.

You see a couple of your friends move forward onto the beach, running around, making strange movements.

The drums are getting louder.

Then a few more of your friends enter the beach.

They look amazing in the sunset light.

The drums are getting louder again.

Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum.

Suddenly, the fires start to come alight.

Now there are about 20 of your friends on the beach, dancing, monstrously, around the fires.

The drums are getting louder and faster.

You know that in about 10 seconds, the rest of you, about 100 children, in masks, are going to run forward, screaming, snarling, barking, howling, to scare off the samurai.

The drums are getting louder.

Are you ready to run forward and be a scary monster? Okay, you are going to rush forward in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

You run, pounce, creep, growl, explode onto the beach, and chant and howl at the samurai.

You see the boats out in the bay.

You hear the drums getting louder.

You see the giant puppets emerging from the trees.

The drums get louder and you see the boats turning away, then leaving.

It's too early to celebrate just yet.

You dance and leap around on the beach and the fires.

And now the samurai have gone! It's over.

You've done it! Well done, you've just defeated one of the greatest samurai armies in Japan.

Well done! Before we finish, I have a quick quiz for you.

Why do we use masks in drama? One of these answers is not correct.

Can you find the odd one out? Is it option one, so actors can do less work because their faces can't be seen? Is it option two, to portray gods, monsters, magical and mystical creatures? Is it option three, to create strong character emotions and personalities? Or is it option number four, to go deeper into our acting of a character? Which one of those is not right? Which is the odd one out? It is of course the first one, option number one, so actors can do less work.

If anything, we use masks so we can do more, and go deeper into our acting, and make much stronger characters.

As I've said before, it would be amazing to see some of your hard work, and we'd love to see some photos or videos of your masks in action.

If you want to share your work, please ask your grownup to share it on Twitter.

You can tag Oak National, or use the hashtag LearnwithOak.

My name is Adam Milford.

I've really enjoyed working with you on these four lessons.

I hope you've enjoyed it too, and I'll see you soon for some more lessons.

Bye for now.