“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” Oscar Wilde
In 1981, my final year at university, I took a course in Greek Tragedy. In November of that year, Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia opened at the National Theatre in London. The five-hour production was performed on a bare stage, by an all-male cast in full masks. The play was scheduled for a limited run but became the unexpected hit of the season and twenty performances became sixty-one.
The following year the company was invited to Epidaurus, where The Oresteia became the first non-Greek language production of a Greek play ever to be performed in the ancient amphitheatre.
Director, Peter Hall, first began work on The Oresteia in 1974 and auditions were open to anyone willing to give it a try. “Odd things happen when an actor puts on a mask,” Hall explained. “You become it and must go with it.”
Future cast member, Peter Dawson, for example, chose a female mask. When a fellow actor handed him an ashtray and said “These are the ashes of your dead children”, Dawson found himself weeping uncontrollably inside the mask.
Greek tragedy focuses on elemental human struggles – vengeance, betrayal, love for one’s children, loyalty, obligation and justice. Masks give voice and shape to feelings too powerful for the human face. If an actor emotes inside the mask, he begins to shake. It is the mask and the formality of the verse that contains and disciplines. An actor’s job is to tell the story and generate emotions in the audience.
The actors were not only denied the use of their own faces, they had to speak directly to the audience. No character in the play ever looked at or touched another.
The Oresteia, together with a six-hour staging of Philip Pullmans’ His Dark Materials, also performed at the National Theatre, are unquestionably the highlights of my theatre experience. My daughters were 12 and 14 when I took them to see His Dark Materials. When the final curtain came down, the younger one said: “I could see that all over again.”
My own reaction to the end of The Oresteia took me by surprise. I was completely absorbed by the action on stage – the masks, which were both expressive and oddly ambiguous, the bare stage, the strange verse and the rhythmically complex music – a combination of percussion, woodwind and harp. It was compelling and I was hypnotised, almost from the beginning.
Then, suddenly, it was all over. The house lights came on and the actors lined up on stage. Too quickly, the spell was broken. In one synchronised move, the characters pulled off their masks to reveal sixteen sweaty, bearded, twentieth century faces.
I felt so strongly about it that I wrote a letter to Peter Hall. He wrote back. “I’m sorry we spoilt the end for you by the removal of the masks. This is an interesting point and I shall certainly raise it with the cast when I next see them.”
Twenty years later I was working in a primary school where I ran lunch clubs for children who were struggling, academically and socially. I explained to a group of ten-year olds that in ancient Greek theatre the actors wore masks so the audience couldn’t see their sadness, anger, worry and fear.
We talked about how faces can deceive. Someone may smile at you but the kindly expression doesn’t feel true. Instead of feeling happy and safe around the smiling person, you might feel threatened and anxious.
I brought in some white, full-face masks and gave one to each child. I encouraged them to paint the masks to make them their own. If someone grew frustrated or was finding it hard to say something difficult or painful, I suggested they hold up the mask and speak from behind it.
Similar to the cast of The Oresteia, the children were given the opportunity to tell, not feel. They knew, from their daily lives, what it felt like to be angry, resentful and unhappy. Speaking through the mask provided them with an opportunity to generate those emotions in the listener.
“Masks are like magnifying glasses”, said Peter Hall “they concentrate the mind.”
Reference:
The Oresteia by Aeschylus, in a version by Tony Harrison, directed by Peter Hall. National Theatre, opening night 28 November, 1981
The Oresteia at Epidaurus
In Search of Greek Theatre: The Oresteia (1981)