Masks have been a part of entertainment for centuries, and remain a central part of the way people think of drama and the arts. Faustworks’ the Mask Messenger brought masks alive in different Yorkton schools, to entertain kids of all ages and teach a bit of history of the masks in the process.
Chris Sigurdson stepped into the role of the Masked Messenger for Faustworks. While he has been performing with the company for just a year, they have been celebrating the art of the mask since 1983. Yorkton was the first stop in the Saskatchewan tour for the company, with 34 shows at the province’s schools.
Sigurdson might be relatively new to Faustworks, but he’s been working with masks and making his own for 20 years. He was working in physical comedy and mime before joining Faustworks, but says he has always wanted to do the Mask Messenger.
“I met Faustworks Mask Theatre about twenty years ago, and they were doing a version of this show. I said if there was ever an opportunity for me to perform this show, let me know, and to finally do it after 20 years.”
The chance to tour Saskatchewan has been a homecoming for Sigurdson, as he has lived here before, as have his parents in the past, so it was an added incentive to take the opportunity.
The masks themselves are the stars of the show, and Sigurdson says that makes his job easier, because they have their own character and own personality before he puts them on.
“A lot of the challenges are taken care of because the masks are so compelling... It is magic, to see one person perform all these different characters, and transform from one completely different character to another.”
There were also teachers who volunteered to be part of the show as part of the finale, and Sigurdson congratulates them on being able to throw themselves into the roles.
“For me, the real stars are the volunteers that got up, they were really fantastic and jumped into the characters fantastically... Your job as a performer is to look at the mask, connect to it, and then transform your body so it is embodying what the mask maker has put into the mask.”
As a performer, Sigurdson says that everyone goes through the same process, as they find the character in the mask, something that he says doesn’t come immediately even for a mask maker.
“For me, they’re like instruments. A guitar player will play a guitar has a certain timbre to it and a certain liveliness to it. When someone else has made a mask it resonates in its own kind of way. When I make a mask, I don’t know what that character is until I put it on, learn about it and study it.”
Performing for elementary schools like Yorkdale, M.C. Knoll and St. Paul’s can be a challenge, Sigurdson says, because you have to be able to entertain a wide range of students, and kids from K-8 are very different.
“It’s a challenge to find the right balance. You want to entertain the older kids but you don’t want to freak out the young ones.”
The tour of the province is put together by OSAC, with two of the Yorkton performances sponsored by the Yorkton Arts Council. Tonia Vermette with the Yorkton Arts Council says that they are sponsoring the shows to encourage schools to get back involved in live theatre, and bring it to a larger audience.
