The mask and the chorus are powerful tools for strengthening the fundamentals of theatrical expression on all levels: directing, playing, writing, teaching, devising original pieces in different theatrical genres. Their meanings, functions, uses, its constant demand for truth, all require a deep study of technique as well as a generous desire to play.

 

Becoming the mask

The mask, covering the face of the actor and all its myriad possibilities for expression, completely transforms our way of researching the body’s expressivity and its relation to the space.

This gives the actor a new sense of his own presence, an emotional fluidity, an amplified and richer dramatic expression, a gestural language full of emotion, a return to a more global perceptual experience, and it allows us to rediscover the innate dimensions of play. 

The body and the space are the truly essential referents which allow us to find a deeper authenticity in stage presence and in performance.

 

Becoming part of the mask

The chorus is a collective mask. To be part of this mask means to become part of others, and to allow others to become a part of us.

Choral awareness helps us become conscious of our movement patterns, offering us the possibility to transform them in service of the movement of the group. It guides us toward symbiosis with directions in space and time. It allows us to experience becoming these directions themselves, and, through movement, to transcend them.

Choral work puts us back in touch with our connection  to society, to the cosmos and to the “senso tragico.”

It is a return to the roots of theater.

​

​

THE PROGRAM

​

• The structure of the body.

• The relationship between body and space: the presence and the state. 

• The body in action: movement analysis and technique

• Advanced technique of mask articulation

• The mask in play.

• Improvisation.

• The journey trought the theatre mask

  • ​Neutral Mask  by Donato Sartori

  • Larval Masks by Matteo Destro

  • Full Expressive Masks by Matteo Destro

  • Primary Monodirectional Masks by Matteo Destro

  • Human Tragi-comedy Half Masks by Matteo Destro

  • Satiric Masks by Matteo Destro

• The collective mask,

  • The chorus as a single body: 

  • The common breath,

  • The choral movement.

  • The bodies creating dynamic architecture in the space

  • The chorus body becomes lines, planes, volumes, feelings, qualities, stories.

​

​

​