From the book Mask Makers and Their Craft, By Deborah Bell
An Illustrated Worldwide Study, 2010
Faust credits his delight in “the act of play” as well as his ability to savor the wonderment of playfulness for much of his success. “Play/fun onstage is indeed very important but linked as well to my approach toward living and developing my masks,” he says. “Several clown workshops I’ve taken over the years with Philippe Gaulier, Avner Eisenberg (Avner the Eccentric), and Sue Morrison have strongly influenced my work. Clowns wear their hearts on their skin; reveal reveal reveal; and have fun on stage so that the audience will too. Clowns work the room and consider accidents such as ringing cell phones, subway rumbling, babies crying, and latecomers as gifts to acknowledge, use, and play with. These accidents keep us all in the present, in the room. The audience feels as if anything can happen. The Mask Messenger is play, not a play. I will stop performing it when the work of it outweighs the joy of it” (Faust, April 27 2008).
Although his work is hugely popular with young audiences, Rob Faust considers his public and corporate masked performances a “thinking man’s form of entertainment” that builds on the premise that we are all fifth graders at heart. “Young and old audiences alike want me to mystify them, trick them, play with them,” he says. His corporate presentations utilize his mask projects in order to illustrate the human face of business. He considers his workshops most successful when corporate audience members recognize the childlike aspects within themselves when they see or wear his masks. “We all want permission to believe in magic again” (Faust, April 27 2008).
It took me a long time to define myself as an artist,” he continues. “I find my mask work fun and compelling. I’m not sure why. Before making masks, I used masks as a training tool in physical theatre performance preparation. My masks evolve from my instincts and natural abilities as dancer and actor. I can make them as art, or use them as tools, toys, and craft. They serve as my inner dialogue, ‘my take’ on people. I have great fascination for the fact that people are so similar, yet so completely unique. Masks and masked performance encourage a playful way to see human nature and engage the world. The motivation behind my mask work is not so much a spiritual quest or a search for the meaning of life; it expresses, in the words of Joseph Campbell, ‘the experience’ of being alive” (Faust, April 27 2008).
Faust savors this experience of ‘being alive’ by bringing a playful attitude not only in the final activity of formal presentation but earlier when he is actually creating the mask and developing the character for the mask. Like any artist, he has recognized this sense of wonderment inherent in the act of play from his earliest years of artistic development. No doubt this has been historically part of the creative process for typical traditional mask makers though I have never heard of any mask makers I’ve interviewed specifically describe this activity as an important consideration for them.
For Faust the act of play is as simple and as crucial as the act of fishing. Indeed he considers these terms synonymous in terms of the creative state they generate for him. He experiences the same level of curiosity and unpredictability inherent in a typical fishing excursion as he experiences in the act of play. “I’m not sure what is under the water,” he says. “I must be totally in the moment and improvise at will. My imagination becomes crystallized with the moment of reality. I escape the pressures and concerns of my life.” Most people describe the consciousness of fishing as similar to dreaming. The actual experience of fishing induces a heightened level of awareness yet still allows for an awareness of the actual act of fishing. Faust describes fishing as an activity where “I must see and read the wind, the light, the currents, the surface of the water, the birds, and the other critters around you. These elements become the pressures and demands of that moment. For me fishing is serious but playful; technical but imaginative; and most of all, restorative. It allows me to empty out, and then to refill with a re-energized imagination. I re-engage with my life with a more playful spirit. This playful quality invariably surfaces in my mask work” (Faust, April 2008).
At first glance, the act of fishing might serve as a rather unusual way to describe anyone’s creative process. But, though seemingly far-fetched, Faust’s description of the creative state that fishing encourages, recalls the centuries-old rites of Nyau Secret Society in Malawi, which also require initiates to undertake fishing activity before they create their masks. These initiates also rely on dreams and dream-like states generated by this activity as part of their creative process.
Growing up in New Orleans, Faust has vivid memories of “mask madness” while masquerading during Mardi Gras every Carnival season. The sense of play in these annual events help to conjure dream-like images of grotesque devils juxtaposed with angelic or seductive sirens on every street corner. A semblance of fishing also occurs at these events when the masquerading parade participants throw their beads out into the streets for delirious masked, costumed characters to grab.
Rob summarizes his continuing inspiration from childhood memories of New Orleans. “I think I’ve tried to stay a free spirit, and the masks help me to that end…. Something in my blood and hometown… nature and nurture both conspire, as always, yes? Don’t forget that New Orleans is the ‘city of sin’ and ‘the city that care forgot.’ Carnival season and Mardi Gras are as sacred as you get in the Crescent City. I was a rebel. I tuned in, turned on, and didn’t quite drop out; I found dance, theatre, and masks instead. I derailed from the track that would have had me working at One Shell Square in a seersucker suit. Randy Newman sings ‘nobody from dere never come to no good.’ It’s too easy and too hot to hustle. We make do … set a spell in the shade … have our ambition wilted, settle for fun or rest or just getting by. So I guess you could say that I’ve put my urge for fun and play to work for me.”
He goes on to say that he does not dwell on spiritual issues in his work, but he tries to capture a spirit of joy, laughter, amazement, and transformation. I’m an athlete who found dance and physical theatre and a class clown who found red noses and masks. I’m a Southerner who doesn’t want to work too hard unless it’s fun. Turns out I had a knack for mask making and the stage … and a good business sense as well. The masks,” he concludes, “are both an end in themselves and the tools of my theatre trade.”
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