The Three-Faced Mask

I sit at the kitchen table cutting out thin cardboard pieces along their solid outlines. I do not cut the dashed lines – those are for folding. This will be a three hour operation (“operation?” why not) whose final result will be a three-face theatre mask inspired by (but nothing like) the Venetian three-face masks I lust after but can’t afford. I wonder what it would be like to do a play with serious money, without cutting corners, without saying “this is Poor Theatre, people!” during each rehearsal, without making do. “Mend and make do” like it's World War II forever on my stage. Theatre on the barricades and all that.

The idea of the masks was there from the beginning, not just because Fugue quotes passages (or images) from many of my previous plays, but because it is a play about writing plays, about theatre as I know it, the end-all of all things. Somebody did ask me once if I'm capable of doing plays that aren’t meta-theatre and I got upset, and then I did a few just to prove that I could, and then I thought, why am I trying to prove something to someone other than me? I do theatre because I love it, so why not do it the way it makes sense to me? Fugue is very self-indulgent. It reminds me of that Anatole France quote, "Gentlemen, I am going to talk about myself on the subject of Shakespeare, or Racine, or Pascal, or Goethe—subjects that offer me a beautiful opportunity."

So: masks. How could I not have them in a play about theatre, in a play that talks about the “naked masks” I wear every day. There are gas masks in Fugue, and a White Rabbit mask (because the Master Builder calls the girl who’ll be the death of him “Little Alice”), and some weird steampunk Doctor of the Plague-like masks, and others. I chose the gas masks because they seem to me the best representation of an introvert forced into society. I think of my horror of idle conversation, of small talk and the boredom and the exhaustion that comes with it; I think of me during endless social events having to interact, to smile, to talk about the goddamn weather – in other words, to hide behind a mask. The girls have cakes and sandwiches in Fugue and, at some point, put on black gas masks and pick up delicate tea cups, and wait for the ordeal to be over. They are my characters (in the play and in reality), so they’re trapped inside my indecision, waiting. “The waiting is the worst,” says Liz.

I’m always in a state of waiting. It’s like a mode of being only in slow motion. Right now, I’m waiting for the original music for Fugue. It was supposed to happen at some point at the end of December. Then in January. Then later. The fragments I’ve heard, the ones composed in my presence, are exactly what I’ve imagined, and also a little surprising, which is always good. But the final recording never came, and there are only so many rehearsals I can do without sound. As I wait, I wonder how someone who knows me rather well can do this, knowing that to hurt a play is to hurt the most alive part of me.

I pick up a book by a Romanian director I’ve always admired, a book of memories, and anecdotes, and meditations on the nature of theatre. The first chapter called “Scene,” tells of the director’s production of Gogol’s The Government Inspector that was closed (by the government) after three performances, and resulted in the expulsion from the country of both the play’s director and the director of the Bucharest theatre that allowed the show to be performed.

I read: “Because it is ephemeral, and because we carry it inside us, theatre cannot be truly understood if it is not considered life’s double. This is why telling stories about theatre is, in a way, telling our story. Only inside us does theatre continue to live because, ultimately, memory is the best critic, and if disappointments leave behind the intimation of deception, we always carry with us, inside us, the exemplary shows we have witnessed. We live with them.”

Fugue is my story. Not an autobiography –  the story of immigration, career, or love – but the story of my love affair with theatre, our on-again off-again relationship, probably the longest relationship I’ve ever sustained with a living, breathing organism. I cannot stage it without sound, without rhythm – without a pulse. So I am waiting.

I’m waiting, and cutting along solid outlines, and assembling a three-face mask meant to capture deception, ambiguity, and indecision, wondering if, maybe, I’ve been wrong this time. But one side of the mask is smiling, and I think that tomorrow I’ll be ready to believe six impossible things before breakfast, and everything will be all right.

The waiting is the worst.