Electra is a play about a woman who despises her mother and stepfather, as they both contributed to the killing of her father. She hopes for her brother to return, as her sister doesn't completely side with her. However, she is told that her brother is dead - a plot planned by the brother and Old Man. Electra and Orestes are reunited, and take revenge on the parents, murdering them both.
Mask Rules
1) Puttting it on and off in private - provides the mystery element. As soon as the mask is on, you are immediately in character.
2) Treat it like a real face.
3) Face forwards as much as possible.
4) Treat it with respect.
5) Don't touch your mask face when it's on.
Workshop
At the start of the workshop we created a character in our minds. I was shy, with a sense of paranoia, and therefore didn't enjoy crowds, so being surrounded by more than a few people (our whole class) built a lot of tension in my character. It led to me travelling the room in a stiff manner. I was overly upright and fiddled with my hands, sometimes twitching when someone would come close to approaching me.
We did an exercise which explored status. Everyone entered the space one by one and put themselves in a position that represented their character, I began the exercise and knelt to the floor with my head hidden into my hands. Next, Rachel gave us the instruction - if tapped you had to stand next to people who you thought were familiar to your mask (character.) I was tapped and chose to stand next to Sophie. The emotion of my mask was quite neutral, with a straight lip. Sophie's mask had a small open mouth, with its eyebrows raised, which presented a fearful expression. Although she wasn't on the floor, the use of her hands suggested she was low status like myself. Sad (negative) masks seemed to bring the actors inwards, which I certainly felt, and gave us a low status. I think it was easier to find someone to match with if it was a mask with more of an extreme emotion, for example the angry masks were clear and ended up all together at the end of the exercise. They had a high and powerful status.
After the starter exercises with masks, we were given the scene between Electra and Orestes. The story of the scene was Electra is carrying her brother's ashses in an urn, and is on her way to distrubute them. Along comes Orestes, who unaware to Electra is her brother, he insists that Electra knows him, however she is so distraught that she fails to think straight for a while. The scene ends on her realisation of Orestes is telling the truth, and is her long-lost brother, who she believed to be dead.
We read it as a group first and then did the following: modernised it, translated it as a soap scene, mime without and then with masks. Modernising the scene was challenging because the language is difficult to get to grip with anyway, obviously a lot of the words aren't used today, so finding substitutes for the words was fairly difficult. Performing it as a soap scene was one of my favourite readings, this is because we got to perform it overly intense, putting in dramatic pauses for effect. I also liked it this way because we got to speak in the way we would in day-to-day life. In the miming tasks, I found it hard to restrain myself from using my mouth at all. It's also hard to make miming look slick and professional, because as an actor it is funny to perform as everything is incredibly overexaggerated. For example, me and Sophie had a prelonged moment of shock and excitement facing eachother, before hugging. Miming with and without masks was very different. Once under the mask, you are reliant on just your body parts expressing your emotions. Despite my face being hidden, I found myself using my face, still acting behind the mask, which really helped me to stay in character. I hope in the future I can perform with a mask without moving my face underneath.
I played Electra and moved around the space a lot in every task as I was headstrong to get away from this 'stranger' and just be left to mourn alone. I was very snappy in telling Orestes to leave and also through my actions, for example in the miming with masks, I stomped my foot on the ground and threatened to hit Orestes, to effectively show my anger.
At the end of the lesson, I felt a lot more confident with the mask and had a better understanding of Electra.
Mask Workshop Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYvB71quMe4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kMrWScdhOA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwyzF8gifB4
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