In Playing the Mask, 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, his experience as co-founder of both Trestle and Told by an Idiot, and his pioneering mask and clown work in many professional productions.
‘Brilliant, entertaining and accessible’ Paul Hunter, from his Foreword
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John Wright is an award-winning international teacher and theatre-maker. He is a former student of Jacques Lecoq, Monika Pagneux and Philippe Gaulier and a former teacher at Gaulier’s school in London.
He co-founded Trestle Theatre Company in 1980 and Told by an Idiot in 1990. He has a string of productions and projects extending over three decades in Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and the UK. John’s work has made innumerable contributions to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He won a Fringe First for Aesop (National Youth Music Theatre), the Peter Brook Award for Dr Faustus (Third Party Productions), the Spirit of the Fringe Award for The Fragility of X (Coal Theatre) and the Summerhall Award for Lost in Blue (Debs Newbold). In addition, he’s made a specialist contribution to productions at the National Theatre, the RSC, the Royal Court, the Almeida and the Royal Opera House. John was granted a Greater London Arts Award for his contribution to professional training; and his belief that teaching is the greatest source of learning has enabled his ideas to be shaped and moulded by generations of students with an open mind and an insatiable curiosity. He pioneered the teaching of Clown at university level and was one of the first people in the country to offer courses in devising.
His work with masks and physical comedy has contributed to the making of Rain Dance (Chicago Rep), Rhinoceros (Royal Court), Macbeth (Chichester Festival Theatre), Laurel and Hardy and Arabian Nights (Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent), Endgame (Liverpool Playhouse), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, American Psycho and Medea (Almeida).
His book Why Is That So Funny? (Nick Hern Books) is immensely popular, and is also published in Romania and the USA. His TEDx Talk Discovering Playfulness in Acting can be found on Youtube.
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