Mask play workshop

Mask play - discovering your own faces

The play of masks makes these astonishing and countless transformations possible: from young man to mature woman, from sedate gentleman to lively girl. Whether enamoured or self-conscious, cheerful or melancholy, thoughtful or superficial - the entire spectrum of emotions can find expression. The truth that is to be conveyed through the play is condensed in the mask. We want to be as pure with a mask as we can rarely be with our real faces.

The workshop is introduced with games from theatre work and exercises to sensitise body awareness.

The training develops an understanding of your own body language so that you can respond sensitively to yourself and your team-mates. Together we seek access to a clear presence in the room. The joy of playing and curiosity are the best companions in this search.
Tools for finding characters are taught in individual and group improvisation and gradually lead to a better understanding of mask play. The aim is to embrace the mask, engage with the moment and find freedom in it. Figures and scenes develop out of free play and increasingly open up insights into the hidden interior behind our masks!

Since 2007, dialogue and encounters have been at the heart of TheatreFragile's work. Within the productions and the various projects, the focus is on people and their very personal experiences.

During the last 10 years, mask making and mask play in an intergenerational and intercultural field have become an integral part of our work.

People of all ages and cultural backgrounds are given the space to tell their stories, visions and emotions and bring them to the public in the form of interventions. In the heart of cities, market squares and streets become places for playful encounters.

Under a mask, a fictional space is created in which skin colour, origin and language become insignificant. Players and audience experience a change of perspective: social roles are discarded and redistributed.
The play creates a platform on which the participants experiment with new social interactions. They take part in a collective process that makes their own experience, strength and potential visible.
Visions, longings and undiscovered sides of the personality come to the surface through the mask and allow the "deeply human" to become visible and tangible. It conceals our habitual masking in everyday life and translates the hidden truth into poetic form.