Facial Masks

Aim of Task:

Learning about facial expressions and representing emotions with the body. Combining different emotions in the body and in the face.

Description of Task:

We all arranged into a circle. Steve started making a facial expression and maintained it. He called it a mask. Then he mimicked to have taken it off and throw it to another person. The next person had to imitate the same facial expression the previous person had made and then create a new facial expression for the next person to imitate. The proper mimicking to put the mask, take the mask off and throw it to another person had to be done always.

Our teacher showed us the characteristics of an angry, sad and happy facial expression. He showed us the main characteristics at four levels of each of these emotions:

• When being angry, it is important to curve the lips and frown the eyebrows.
• When being sad, it is important to frown the eyebrows and show a curved down mouth.
• When happy, mouth and eyes should be widely open.

He told us to make each one of this faces in increasing or decreasing degree of intensity: he would say either angry 1, 2 or 3 which would mean angry face at intensity 1, 2 or 3 or he would say happy 1, 2 or three which would mean happy face at intensity 1, 2 or 3.

It was weird to change from completely different emotions from one to another second: we would change from angry 3 to happy 1 in one instant.

Our teacher then asked us to break the circle and start moving around. He told us to make specific faces but combine these faces with their respective body expressions: for example, he would tell us to do a happy 3 face with a happy 3 body. I could notice that the corporal expressions almost came by themselves as I made the facial expression our teacher told us.

We kept on doing this exercise until our teacher asked us to do something rather radical: to combine different emotion faces with different emotion bodies. In that manner, we would have angry faces with happy bodies, sad faces with angry bodies and happy faces with sad bodies, etc. Before, as I did the facial expression that our teacher asked us to do, my body started to move in the corresponding emotion. However, now that I had to combine different emotions in faces and bodies, it became more and more difficult since my body was not "synchronised." I would try to make a sad face and a happy body but the movements of my body would not be as cheerful as before. It was quite a strange experience.

Reflection:

Our body is used to act according to different emotions. When we are happy, we are more likely to smile and move ourselves around than when we are sad, where we tend to have a very relaxed face and a slow body movement. This is part of ourselves. however, as actors, we need to be able to fake this emotions and be able to make different emotions with different parts of the body. Is part of being a good actor. Sometimes combining different emotions can be used in a very comical way, for example, seeing somebody oscillating between crying of sadness or shouting of anger when a catastrophical event happens can be funny.

Conclusion:

As an actor, we have to be able to fake emotions. As actors, we have to be able to make unrealistic as well as realistic expressions. An angry face with a happy body is very uncommon on a daily situation, but since this can be comical on theatre it is something that an actor should be able to do.