Fuck Your Shitty Technique

I have done neutral mask before. Oh yes I have.

You sit for hours watching people move about on the stage. It is generally a long, precise, and delicate process. And it takes a very long time.

The person is searching to express, through their body, the elements, the colors, animals, materials. How do you express glue through your body so that all of us can see it by watching just your body? Can you make us see oil? Olive oil? Truck oil?

What about
Acid, vinegar, a lake, the ocean, a spring, mud, quicksand, fire, cotton, a tree, a fly, a cat, a lion, a leopard, pink, blue, orange, red,…?

It is a very long process, in my experience.

But with Monsieur le professeur, it is a bit different.

You work in your body for a few minutes. Zero feedback about how you use your body except maybe “too stiff” “too heavy” “wrong rhythm” “not strong enough.” No painstaking feedback about how you use your spine, your fingers, you pelvis.

M. le professeur doesn’t give a rats ass about your shitty movement techniques.

Do you have the pleasure to pretend to move this way? Do we see your pleasure to pretend?
This is what is at stake with M. le professeur.

And how do we see your pleasure? Well, we back up a bit. We back up to the exercise. You have the mask removed from your face. Then you stand up as the element/material/element. You go backstage. Then you come onstage and perform in a cabaret. That’s it. Go out and sing, speak a text, dance, what-fucking-ever. Just do it. And be beautiful. Have the pleasure to pretend you are that element/material/whatever.

Professeur doesn’t want to teach us how to be good at the neutral mask. He doesn’t care if we can perform the neutral mask well. If our neck is held or free. If the spine is flexible. If the body movements are precise and revealing of something larger. No. He is using the neutral mask to teach us another way of playing.

I thought I would come here and do neutral mask. Learn the technique. But I am learning something I could have never anticipated: I am learning what it means to approach theatre techniques as different ways of playing.