Vamos Theatres’ Mask Making and Performing Residency Workshop

About.

Vamos Theatres’ Mask Making and Performing Residency gives school, college or university students a thorough and rounded experience of full mask. Students and their teachers design, make, and paint their own masks and are introduced to full mask performance, learning about focus, character, movement, and stillness.

Students are guided in how to devise work, creating a series of theatre scenes that will become a short performance at the end of the week. A special feature of our residencies is the chance to work with a professional theatre musician, who provides a live musical accompaniment to the performance elements.

The residency will:
• teach students how professional performance masks are made
• develop practical skills in molding clay, turning the clay mold into the mask, painting, shading and finishing the mask
• inform students’ understanding of character and how to reflect this on a mask
• encourage calm and focused attention to detail
• give students a solid grounding in full mask performance and an understanding of it as a genre
• develop students’ detailed knowledge of specific performance elements such as movement, gesture and pace, and how these practically help in creating character and communicating intention
• give students practical devising skills, building confidence in the devising process, and encourage them to think creatively and clearly
• teach students important mask techniques such as internal monologue, clocking, punctuated movement and stillness
• encourage students to consider, and be able to critique, the importance of the performer/audience relationship
• encourage teamwork and group trust
• teach the importance of music and sound in mask performance
• encourage shy or under confident students to shine within the protection of a mask

Key Information.