THE FORCE OF THE FACE: Mask Making Workshop with LOUISE SMITH

Mask Making Workshop
Dates: Six weeks-March 6,13,20,27, April 3,10
Time: 2-4 p.m.
Location: Nonstop Institute in Millworks, 305 N. Walnut St.
Fee: $50 for 6 session, $10 Drop in fee

For further information contact Louise Smith @767-2718, lou422ns@woh.rr.com

Participants will learn the techniques of making plaster cast life masks and paper mache full and half masks. Designs will come from our own lives, the inner and outer faces that we wear, imagination and ancestry. Materials are included with the fee.

The face we wear throughout our life is both indelible and plastic. We are recognized and recognize others by the faces we present to the world. Experience changes us and these changes can be seen in our face over the years. Our face betrays that we are both the same and changed with time. Sometimes there is a disconnect between who we know ourselves to be inside and the face that we wear on the outside. Sometimes we take on a purposeful mask to conceal our vulnerabilities and wear the face we think we need to in order to get through life in the manner we are accustomed to, thus hiding our true selves.

This workshop begins with the face that we wear. Working with the notion of masks, we will first create life masks that will allow us to see ourselves as we appear to others and then work to change and transform those images to reveal how we experience ourselves internally. We will explore the face as the portal to the emotions, as archetypal characters that we carry within us and as icons of the spirit.

About The Instructor: Louise Smith, M.A., M.S. Ed., LPC is an actor, writer, community arts activist, educator and therapist. She was the chair of the Antioch College Theater Department from 1994-2008. In that capacity she directed and produced numerous events and taught classes in acting, directing, ensemble theater, collaboration, solo performance, voice and speech and 20th century avant garde playwrights.

Professionally, Smith is an award winning actress (Obie 2003, Bessie 1990). She has worked with Julie Taymor, Meredith Monk, the Talking Band, Ann Bogart, Big Dance Theater, and Otrabanda. She was a member of Ping Chong and Company for eleven years, touring nationally and internationally. She has received funding for her work from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ohio and New York State Arts Councils.

Louise holds an I.M.A. from McGregor School of Antioch University in Playwriting and an M.S. Ed. In Community Counseling from University of Dayton. Her interests include solo performance, dialogical and community based art practices and the intersections between theater and therapy. She is passionate about theater as a transformative experience for both the audience and the performer.