Keeping up with Jake in April

My Mum turned 87 this month.

That in itself wasn’t surprising – she has a birthday every year – but it struck me that when Mum was the age I am now, I mumbled something to her about going to a mask workshop.

I can’t remember what she replied. I definitely know at some point she would have said: “Have you had something to eat?”

But, unbeknownst to her or me, that workshop was about to change my life.

I hitch-hiked (that was a thing back then) from Wellington to Auckland. I arrived, as instructed, with 2 half-masks that I’d made and spent the next 2 weeks in a roomful of strangers, laughing, weeping and gasping at the transformative power of these crude papier-mâché faces.

Our teacher, the funny and wise John Bolton, coaxed the characters to life – finding their voice, mining their fears, their obsessions, their hopes, their joys.

John’s genius is that he’s a brilliant bullshit detector. He knows when you’re lying and gently calls you out on it. That’s the thing that dawns on you after working with the masks for a while – they don’t conceal you, they reveal you.

I know I’m starting to sound a little woo woo, and my Mum would probably agree with you, but what I experienced in that workshop has informed everything I’ve done since.

Masks are absurd, loveable, terrifying, glorious – a distillation of our humanity, of everything that’s good and bad in the world. The annoying and kind of wonderful thing about masks is that they don’t work on T.V. or film. It’s something about the live audience’s collective act of imagination that brings the mask to life.

Like everything truly beautiful you have to experience it, you have to be in the room. It’s the difference between singing happy birthday to your Mum face to face or doing it via Zoom.

Blessings to everyone having a birthday in April (John Bolton included).

And to those looking for the perfect birthday gift, nothing says “I love you” like tickets to the theatre – just sayin’.

 

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