Vocabulary word of the day:
vizard - No, it's not what Durmstrang students call Harry Potter. A vizard is the term for a mask on a stick! You know, the sort that ostentatiously-dressed lords and ladies carry and hold up like a freaky lorgnette at a masquerade ball.
(Bonus word:
lorgnette - Glasses on a stick! Usually foldable.)
My graduate course this fall covers the engineering and production of masks and armor. As such, i've been reviewing various texts in the interest of determining what i'm going to require my students to own, and what's just going to be suggested or supplemental reading. As I've done in the past with
my millinery course and
my shoemaking course, i thought i'd post a quick run-down of some of the titles.
The Monster Makers Mask Makers Handbook, by Arnold Goldman.
This is a wonderful resource for a very specific kind of mask technique: full-head latex masks cast in a negative gypsum mold (think "Halloweeny rubber monsters"). It's a large-format 42-page booklet, like a full-sized magazine with a stapled binding, full color cover, and black and white interior. It is written in an easy-to-read, conversational tone, and is full of step-by-step illustrative photographs. It's got a nice troubleshooting section for problems you might encounter, and a glossary at the back of technical terminology.
My only criticism of the book is that once you get to the section on airbrush painting of the cast latex mask, it's a bit hard to envision what's going on colorwise with only black and white photography to look at. It would have been perhaps a better choice to insert a page of color photos for that section alone--the other sections on sculpting, mold-making, and casting are fine. All in all though, this is a great reference for negative casting in latex--it specifically deals with full-head masks, but the technique could be easily modified to do partial shapes as well (backless full-face or half-face masks). If you plan on making masks of this kind, this publication is well worth the money.
Masks: Faces of Culture, by John W. Nunley, Cara McCarty, et al.
Originally published as a companion volume to a vast exhibit of masks--first assembled in St. Louis, MO in the year 2000--both modern and historical works from cultures and traditions all over the world, this huge coffee-table-sized book is an amazing resource. It's filled with a wealth of information and an enormous number of full-color detailed photographs of all sorts of masks.
It's loosely divided into six chapters: prehistory and the origins of masks, rites of passage masks, festivals of renewal masks, theatrical masks, transvestitism masks, and masks worn for offense/defense purposes (including full-face armor helmets and sports masks). Each chapter reads like a thoroughly-researched academic treatise on its given subject. This volume is a great source of inspiration, historical and cultural research, and information on authentic materials--each mask photo's caption lists what the original is made from. It touches very little on how particular masks were constructed or on culturally-specific mask-making techniques, but has fascinating information on how and why the masks were worn in their original context. It carries a fairly spendy price-tag, so unless you do a lot of maskwork, costume design, or cultural anthropology research, you might rather look for it in libraries than purchase a copy.
The Prop Builder's Mask Making Handbook, by Thurston James.
This "industry bible" on the subject of mask-making, originally published in 1990, is now out of print. It is a useful text in many ways, but not ideal or up-to-date. Over half the 200+ pages are devoted to the masks of the Commedia dell'Arte and Italian leather mask-making techniques, which are certainly fascinating subjects but perhaps not of common use for the modern theatrical crafts artisan. (It would, however, be a great help if you found yourself doing a production along the lines of Julie Taymor's reknowned
King Stag, in which every character wears a variation on a Commedia mask archetype.) The book presumes a free hand with the design of a mask on the part of the artisan, which in my experience is hardly ever the case with practical mask-making for theatre, of the sort practiced by folks like me.
There is a chapter on life-casting, which is a good basic grounding in the subject, but due to the age of the book does not address technological developments and process improvements that have occurred in the past 17 years. (For example, no mention is made of different grades of alginate and their varying set times.) There is now much more useful current information on life-casting to be found on the internet and through SFX industry resources, if that is where your interest or professional needs lie. Check sites like
FX Supply and
Replicants.org for info on modern prosthetics and FX casting.
The book is also a minefield of health and safety pitfalls--there's a chapter on celastic, a material now not commonly used due to chemical hazards associated with its manipulation, and my favorite: a photograph of a bare-faced man airbrushing with leather dye while smoking a cigarette. Hi, Hazard County! Makes me want to pencil in a caption in my copy: "Right about now, them Duke boys was sprayin' leather dye without no respirator..." It was published in an era before OSHA took serious notice of the theatre industry, before there were widely available resources such as the publications of the
Arts, Crafts, & Theatre Safety watchdog organization. As such, the onus is on the reader to check for up-to-date health and safety precautions for the processes outlined therein.
Mr. James also doesn't address the mask design development process (which IME is best approached by way of maquettes--miniature 3D sculptures or "clay sketches"--as a basis for discussions with the costume designer and sometimes the director as well), probably because he is writing from a position of presumption that the artisan is also the designer, and at times he even implies that the artisan will also be the performer wearing the mask being created. I am certain there are several troupes in existence where the performers are also the mask-makers (local masque/mummery group
Paperhand is one example that comes to mind), but by and large, it will be someone like me making another person's mask design for an actor to wear. It's important to understand all the R&D that leads up to the making of a mask--though it only addresses one specific method of mask-making, the
Monster Makers guide reviewed above is a bit better on this front. Goldman at least addresses maquettes, though he does so in the context of haunted house/rubber-monster horror-film production rather than theatre.
I don't mean to sound like i'm completely denigrating this book and all copies should be chucked in the dumpster--it's got a lot of great process information, many illustrative black and white photos of steps in various techniques, and it's the only book that really addresses specifically a range of construction techniques within the context of masks for professional theatrical performance. It's simply written from a prop-builder's perspective instead of a craft artisan's, and is nearly 20 years old.
Costumes and Chemistry by Sylvia Moss
This is the best reference book out there, hands-down, bar-none, for those in the field of crafts artisanship. It is an indispensable bible of fantastic resources and, despite its high price tag, i highly recommend that anyone interested in costume construction buy it ASAP, PDQ! It was published in 2004, after years of grant-sponsored research and development, and thus may be the most up-to-date resource of its kind in the field of costume production.
It's divided into two halves, the first half comprised of materials and safety information, and the second half devoted to process explanation and documentation.
The first half covers an enormous range of products, divided by purpose (paint, adhesive, dye, etc.), type (cold process dye, acid dye, disperse dye, etc.), brand name, and so forth, and then goes on to test the efficacy of the product in a variety of situations (washfastness, lightfastness, dry-cleanability, etc.). As an aside, now would be a good time to reiterate the value of the website
This-To-That, where you can plug two different surfaces into a form and get a list of recommended adhesives that will glue them together. But i digress.
Moss lists proper protective equipment for all potentially dangerous materials, clean up information, and warnings if applicable (i.e. "Do not clean up with bleach!") She worked with industrial health and safety advocate Monona Rossol to make absolutely sure that the information in the book was vetted for safe process instruction. The book would be worth its weight in gold as a reference volume just on the strength of the first half alone. The second half, however, is the gravy on the biscuit.
The second half is a compendium of an enormous number of specific costumes--walkaround mascots, monsters, masks, wings, crowns, body padding, armor--with precise information on how they were built, often with process shots, original design renderings, construction methodology, and tips from the artisans who made them. Some you will recognize from film and television, theatre, dance, advertising, all kinds of sources. There is no better insight into the costume engineering process than reading about how someone has done something and seeing steps along the way. Many incredible-looking costumes are demystified--once you read the process outlay, you may frequently find yourself thinking, "Hey, I could do that!" or "Wow, so THAT'S what they used!"
Seriously, i cannot sing enough praise about the quality and scope of this textbook; don't be put off by the title--it's not full of equations and molecules! It's a wealth of amazing, helpful, illuminative information for costume engineers, both veteran and aspiring. (Can you tell this is one of my required textbooks?)
So, there's an overview of four of my prospective texts, all of which will play some part in my course this semester. Pick and choose--one or more of them may be just what you've been looking for.
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