THE MASK- DEBORAH CORREA

On Tuesday we stayed after school and had a didactic talk with Deborah Correa about masks. She started talking about the column. The column helps you to get the age, the weight and the volume of the character. To get a presence in the stage, you need an extraordinary amount of energy.
When you first see the mask, you should treat it as a face, examine it, and ask: what is he? What does he do? Where does he come from? What does he want? We should get around the idea of us lending our bodies and the mask lending us its face: complement each other.
She showed us different masks that she used all through her carrier in Yuyachkani.

EL CAPORAL in ‘Contra el viento’

the mask has trashy blond hair, light blue shadows over its eyes, swollen pink lips and its teeth are made of little mirrors. The mask covers the whole face.

El Calporal is shown as a military old evil man, what is behind the mask it s supposed to be the devil. He uses a chaleco of golden colors and a full suit in white color, uses coins around his costume to make sounds. Deborah used martial arts to get the character because it helped her energy. The movements of El Caporal are between strength and decrepitude.

After she puts on the mask, I could see a drastic change. You no longer see the person behind the mask; it’s an absolute transformation of the actress. The costume without the mask looks incomplete, I found myself, repulsed by it but at the same time drawn to it.

EL BOCON in ‘Encuentro de Zorros’

The mask has a stone color, it is cover in brownish fabric. The character has a candle which causes in the audience a mysterious atmosphere. He plays the quena to have an Andean air.

To get a humble and bended character, Deborah bases her performance in a dream that Pongo, the character, had about his master. Pongo is a servant and his master treats him like a slave. He dreamed of the master and him, both dead, they were in heaven with St. Peter. He called two angels: one was young and beautiful, while the other was old. St. Peter asked the young one for honey and the old one for feces. The master was covered in honey while Pongo was covered in feces. And so St. Peter said: You are to lick each other for the rest of eternity.

We could see the character again and not the actress, the character made slow movements of the head, that she later on, explained as a way of getting the audience see the movements: if they were too fast, the audience would be lost.

UCUCO in ‘Encuentro de Zorros’

the mask, is practically a waqollo. It has horizontal lines in blue, red and cream, and it is blushed. Its hair is blonde and made of alpaca. The costume is made of alpaca as well; it is black and has horizontal lines of different colours.

After she put on the mask, we could see a funny character, very playful and part child, part adolescent and a tiny part of adult. There’s an extreme interaction with the audience. She pulled three people from the audience and asked to be the godfathers and one to be the Baptist of a little doll.

LA GATA in ‘Los musicos ambulantes’

the mask is a half mask, inspired in la commedia dell’arte from the 16th century.
Since the mask isn’t completely covering the face (in which case the appropriate thing wouldn’t be speaking because the voice doesn’t sound good), Deborah had to focus on the eyes, which could be seen, and the mouth/voice expressions. The costume is the one of a woman from the jungle, a green blouse, a black long skirt and many lazes around her ponytail.

She used the cat’s personality to get an idea of how she would move, and also the way people of the jungle spoke and walked.
Again, the costume without the mask looked incomplete. When she put on the mask, the transformation was amazing.

POCHOLO in ‘Un dia en perfecta paz’

Pocholo also had a half mask, yellow, big cheeks, with big, sort of Chinese eyes, you could not differentiate between a man or a woman. This was done by the costume, he had long trousers with tirantes and a blue shirt.

Two friends fall asleep and have a dream. The story is about a world upside down (I related it to a carnival in Andean theatre), and pocholo (old man) was working in a circus. When the manager asked them if they wanted to stay of leave to the real world, Pocholo wanted to stay, but his friend, Baluco, convinced him to leave.

There is a lot of contact with the audience. Deborah first dressed as a clown/magician and asked someone from the audience to do malabares.


After all this I wonder, if we have so many personalities in the next play, how can we interact in different ways with the audience? It’s obvious that since we are inspired by the Paucartambo celebration, we MUSy have interaction with the audience. The question is how or how much?

It´s all business

I swear I had never sweated so much in a rehearsal! Everything was done, lights went out and, what seemed to be like five minutes of applause, ended. Every face I saw was covered in sweat but they were smiling so big that it was almost stupid I was thinking about it. We were changing clothes when Miss Alicia came and congratulated us. “You did great guys!”


It was so frustrating to try to perform Mrs. Middleton. First it was the move… or the NOT-moves. I tried the best I could to not move, don’t move your feet Claudia, don’t separate your feet Claudia, don’t move your hands Claudia…Then we realized that it would be so boring to watch if I didn’t move. So the voice, facial expressions and partly hands should be my focus. It wasn’t that easy. At all. My accent was so strange that when I focused in getting the accent right, I actually didn’t pronounce the words correctly and people ended up not understanding what I said. Then the monologue. Good heavens, why do you do this to me? I could have easily died before performing that part! First of all, the sentences were so similar to each other that it was really hard to get them right. Then it was the intentions of what I said, I couldn’t get them right. The energy! The hardest thing ever! I tried so hard that I couldn’t get it right! Or at least right enough.
Then in the main presentation, the props failed me. I couldn’t find the money! Money! Money! Money! Fifteen minutes searching for money! Well, honestly, it would have been worse if the others wouldn’t have felt Felipe and me. We were arranging the props we couldn’t find. Felipe came finally with an improvisation of a rat with waipe. We tried to make it look like a rat and we finally did. But when we arrived, the money wasn’t there!


The start point in which I finally became aware of the fact that it was it, it was the real thing, was when three girls came into the theatre and I started to feel nervous, my heart, which at that point was at its normal-rehearsal speed, was pounding much faster. That feeling was doubled when I heard all the people in the audience. Too late to go to the bathroom now. Fortunately, my glasses we used as props so I couldn’t really see the people and their faces, but their voices were much more frightening, I say fright because I had a new feeling of disappointing people. What if I didn’t..? What if I forget..? What if? What if? Even in the muted parts I couldn’t really say my lines right. It was when the third scene was up when I finally found my voice and started. I messed up a few parts and I tried to cover them up as smoothly as I could. I guess you can’t expect accurately how something is going to turn out if a factor is not present. The simple presence of the audience is a huge factor that changed a great deal of not only my performance, but all of ours. I really wonder in what ways did the character limit me from showing energy and to what extent I did it?

It´s all business

I swear I had never sweated so much in a rehearsal! Everything was done, lights went out and, what seemed to be like five minutes of applause, ended. Every face I saw was covered in sweat but they were smiling so big that it was almost stupid I was thinking about it. We were changing clothes when Miss Alicia came and congratulated us. “You did great guys!”


It was so frustrating to try to perform Mrs. Middleton. First it was the move… or the NOT-moves. I tried the best I could to not move, don’t move your feet Claudia, don’t separate your feet Claudia, don’t move your hands Claudia…Then we realized that it would be so boring to watch if I didn’t move. So the voice, facial expressions and partly hands should be my focus. It wasn’t that easy. At all. My accent was so strange that when I focused in getting the accent right, I actually didn’t pronounce the words correctly and people ended up not understanding what I said. Then the monologue. Good heavens, why do you do this to me? I could have easily died before performing that part! First of all, the sentences were so similar to each other that it was really hard to get them right. Then it was the intentions of what I said, I couldn’t get them right. The energy! The hardest thing ever! I tried so hard that I couldn’t get it right! Or at least right enough.
Then in the main presentation, the props failed me. I couldn’t find the money! Money! Money! Money! Fifteen minutes searching for money! Well, honestly, it would have been worse if the others wouldn’t have felt Felipe and me. We were arranging the props we couldn’t find. Felipe came finally with an improvisation of a rat with waipe. We tried to make it look like a rat and we finally did. But when we arrived, the money wasn’t there!


The start point in which I finally became aware of the fact that it was it, it was the real thing, was when three girls came into the theatre and I started to feel nervous, my heart, which at that point was at its normal-rehearsal speed, was pounding much faster. That feeling was doubled when I heard all the people in the audience. Too late to go to the bathroom now. Fortunately, my glasses we used as props so I couldn’t really see the people and their faces, but their voices were much more frightening, I say fright because I had a new feeling of disappointing people. What if I didn’t..? What if I forget..? What if? What if? Even in the muted parts I couldn’t really say my lines right. It was when the third scene was up when I finally found my voice and started. I messed up a few parts and I tried to cover them up as smoothly as I could. I guess you can’t expect accurately how something is going to turn out if a factor is not present. The simple presence of the audience is a huge factor that changed a great deal of not only my performance, but all of ours. I really wonder in what ways did the character limit me from showing energy and to what extent I did it?