Before Cave Walls… at the National Storytelling Network Conference 2012

Thank you to the Jaguar, Liz Nichols, for her very positive description of my presentation at the NSN Conference, which she posted in Tim Ereneta’s blog: “Breaking the Eggs — Performance Storytelling in the 21st Century”. See the full post http://storytelling.blogspot.com/2012/07/conference-reflections-liz-nichols.html An excerpt:

“The show was called “Before Cave Walls… The Story on Our Skin”. … About 25–30 of us sat mesmerized as he started with a lecture/demo on the human history of self-transformation through mask and body art, calling up volunteer after volunteer to be painted as he talked. Then he wove several stories in, some traditional and some in a folktale mode that he and his kids had created – and he used us as his canvas to show characters like jaguar, snake and lizard, and settings like tropical island and African savannah.”

Liz also talked about how the volunteers I painted during the program wore their new faces into the evenings events, for which I am especially appreciative — a mask-maker always hopes that the wearer will bring the mask to life like that. When Willa Brigham took the stage to MC that night’s Oracle Awards presentation in the very unusual looking Picasso/Nuba face, I’m sure many folk in the audience wondered what was going on, why were these people on stage with their faces painted in such strange ways? There were several hundred people in the audience, only a hand full of which were at my afternoon program, so most of them had no context for the painted faces they saw on stage. That uncertainty about what to make of a painted face is intrinsic to the art of transformation. Part of the power and function of the mask is to introduce a sense of mystery about the transient nature of form, to make us wonder what else is possible.