Gas-masks, masks and horses...

Now that there's less than three weeks before rehearsals start there's a scramble to get things made and finished in time. The workshop is full of weird and wonderful things all in a half-completed state. A volunteer, Amber, is finishing the gas-masks started by the Portuguese interns (above) - nightmarish things for the scene where Angus suffers his schizophrenic breakdown; Jonny is making backstage racks to hold the 15 masks we're using in the show; Alison is carving horses (below)

Christina is working on a fire-effect for the caisein-uchd, sheeps wool and tallow torches used on New Years Eve - Hogmanay, or Oidhche Chullaig. Vanessa Card has tidied up the set and I've been able to finish the painting. Finally, Loz has started work on the music, and Daniella and Ellie on the animations....

Back to masks

I've spent the past two or three weeks making masks; also reworking the masks I made in a hurry last summer to have with us on our trip to the Uists. The re-working has consisted mainly of deciding on whether to scrim them or not, and exactly what approach to use in painting the surface. 

These two things are related. Scrimming amounts to covering the papier-mache mask with a thin layer of muslin, and we do it to strengthen the mask but also to help protect the paintwork. Paint scratches easily off of raw paper-mache, but clings far better to the cloth of a scrim coating. But scrimming also tends to spoil, to some extent, the modelling on the mask as it fills in detail. So it's always a balance between strength and maintaining the quality of the paint on one hand, and the detail and quality of the modelling on the other. Scrimming is also more likely to spoil a mask that has a lot of fine detail (such as in an old, lined face) than one which has a smoother finish (a child, for example).

So part of the exercise has been finding a way of using paint that works with a partly-scrimmed mask. I've decided on part-scrimming to get the best of both worlds - partly protecting the paintwork and strengthening the mask, but not scrimming the areas of finer detail. 

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I seem to be heading towards a painterly finish, which can be seen in the lower photograph. I like painterly masks, and I'm often fascinated to see how alive a mask can be that has been painted with powerful brushwork, contrasts and colours. Many mask makers feel the need to stay close to skin tones and gentle modulations of colour, but my experience is that, especially in the context of stage lighting and backdrops, the painting of a mask can be pushed in surprising ways. 

Paint

The results of the first paintings of the 5 heads of Angus - the paint is still wet!

This is simply a rough coat; the idea is to use a painterly approach and keep the paintwork lively. So it's almost like painting a quick and expressive portrait sketch. Painting these 5 masks took me about 90 minutes, but there's a long way to go yet, as each one will be considered as an individual and then worked on in more detail - so each mask will probably undergo another 3 or 4 coats. Still, it's nice to have made a start and see them begin to come to life.

Ferry tickets have now been booked for our expedition to Berneray in May. There will be Loz, Alison, Christina (the technician), Mark (puppeteer) and myself travelling from Lancashire. On the island we'll meet up with Joanne (down from Caithness) and Chris (who lives on the island).

The ghosts of young Angus

Working back in time from the mask of the old Angus McPhee isn't easy. The only photographs I have seen of the young Angus are these:

(copyright: Calum Angus MacKay)

Angus at the age of 14 looking rather like, every one seems to think, the young Bob Dylan; and then this ghostly photograph of Angus in the Lovat Scouts, dated 1939 - so at the age of 23. 

A photograph full of mystery this, but a long way from being ideal for modelling a mask from. So in effect I'm inventing what the younger Angus looked like. The two older masks, still in their green undercoated glory, were relatively easy to model as there are several decent photographs of Angus in his 70s:

But going back in time from these two, looking to represent Angus in, say, his thirties, is a more difficult job. I've arrived at this, with the kind of hair I though he might have after his military service:

By the way, there's some very interesting photographs on Joanne B. Kaar's blog of her experiments with creating grass ropes in the manner of Angus for our theatre show. 

The Silent Weaver

Above, the first masks of Angus McPhee (the green is the underpainting), and the rough cardboard screens being used experimentally as a way of representing the garden at Craig Dunain Hospital where Angus created his woven art works.

There will be a series of masks representing Angus at different stages in his life. I've started with the mask representing the old Angus (it's the best documented period by far in terms of finding photographs as source material). The next will be a slightly younger Angus; you can glimpse that mask on the left of the lower photograph, still in the course of having its papier-mache layers added.

This week I've also heard from the novelist Roger Hutchinson, author of the acclaimed 'Calum's Road'*, who tells me that his new novel is provisionally titled 'The Silent Weaver, The Extraordinary Life and Work of Angus MacPhee' and it will be published by Birlinn later this year.


* For more information on Roger Hutchinson and Calum's Road click this link.

A list of jobs

Luke, who has been with us this past two weeks, has now returned to London. He used his time on a mini-internship with Horse + Bamboo making models of the Angus set, then turned his attention to shadow puppetry looking at ways of creating woven puppets. He finished his stay here by making an experimental minute long animation using grass... 

Meanwhile Alison and I continue with mask and puppet making. The table of jobs looks like this:

Set  Screens, lighting, sound Armchair Platform/s and bed Hospital trolleys and screens The hospital garden

Masks Old Angus with flat hat Mother Young Man Angus Nurse Middle-aged Angus  Mature Angus  Joyce Photographer Old sister Costumes for all the above

Puppets Sisters Baby Angus Boy Angus Horse Straw Man Straw Daughters Straw Red Calf Large Horse Angus Warrior marionette Horse marionette Dragon marionette The Hospital Season cranky show

Signs etc as Angus grows up Flat masks etc for the 'journey out of war' sequence/mirrors

Grass cap for opening Bridles and saddle, horse harness Hospital weavings – caps, trousers, jackets, harness etc Bonfire Large woven horse Woven blanket

Film 1a sea, family Film 1b Gaelic world, chart, hoods and caps, grasses, bridles Film 2 falling men, medical release papers, soldiers, ships etc silent section – home, rushes in a wind Film 3 a garden, weaving close up hands Film 4 horse/airplane, certificates, suitcase, airplane, home

Music

Masks and puppets underway...

  

ABOVE: The young Angus (covered in cling-film); the old Angus (covered in furniture polish) - both waiting for papier-mache; putting the paper layers on the young Angus; and experimenting with rush shadow puppets.

Alison favours cling-film whereas I prefer furniture polish as a release agent over the clay model. On a more detailed mask such as the older head and face, furniture polish allows more detail, as there's always the danger that cling-film will 'fill in' the small lines and holes in the model. 

By the end of the day I had managed 3 layers of paper - with luck I should have all 5 on by the end of tomorrows sessions. The remainder of the day will be a catch-up with Loz Kaye, the MD for 'Angus' and perhaps an opportunity for the first detailed discussion about musical ideas for the production.

At last...practical work really begins

It always takes a while, after a period of office work, to extract oneself and get to make a base in the making room once more. But it has finally happened. We've a visitor from London, Luke Davies, working with us for two weeks and he has been making a small model boxes of the set for us to experiment with. Alison has started making a head for a puppet of the (very) young Angus; and I've begun to model a clay head of the old Angus in order to make the first mask. Outside the sun is shining too...

Progress

This is the (very) rough set Alison and I have created in our workshop. We've done this in order  to work out the heights and levels we'll need as playing areas, and from that in turn we've worked out what size of puppets we'll need to make. In the course of doing this we were also able to decide on a number of other things - so the upper level (above the bar) will be a crawl floor which will enable us to operate marionettes from that level; equally we liked this unbleached, stained, fabric quality (Anselm Kiefer again). Each of the cloths can act as a screens for projections, film and lights, so much of the eventual colour we use in the production will achieved through the use of light and projection.

The whole exercise was an excuse, too, to go through the script and look at, in a very broad brush-stroke way, how the story would unfold on a stage. Doing this, a number of things were - as ever - changed, or added to. 

As a result of this work we have been able to prioritise the jobs we'll start on (next week). Alison on a puppet of Angus as a boy and a similar 'sister' puppet. I'll start making three masks representing Angus - one as a handsome young man, one in middle-age, and one as an old man. I'll also be able to send the dimensions of the set to Chris Spears on Berneray so he can create the wood frames that will enable us to reproduce this rough, full-size, 'model' set in the Community Hall on the island. The other piece of news was hearing, last night, that the hall committee have agreed to hire us their hall for a week in May.