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For the curious, this page is all about your obedient servant, that lil' old maskmaker, me... |
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| Here's my actor's bio: | |||||
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John was most recently seen onstage in the L.A. revival of Meryl Friedman's THE WASPS for Stinger Productions, and TAMING OF THE SHREW for Shakespeare Festival LA. Also in HISTORY BOYS at the Ahmanson and DURANGO at EastWest Players, THE IMAGINARY INVALID, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, and THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW at San Francisco’s A.C.T., Vaclav Havel’s TEMPTATION and LARGO DESOLATO, Chekhov’s THE WOOD DEMON, and SEX PARASITE for Center Theatre Group, 36 VIEWS at Laguna Playhouse, and a season as Scrooge in the Dallas Theatre Center’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. A 30-year resident of Los Angeles, his many appearances onstage there include the original production of THE WASPS at the Getty Villa in Malibu, a new musical version of Lynn Seifert’s LITTLE EGYPT, and a revival of Odets’ THE BIG KNIFE. He’s a founding member and past co-artistic director of The Antaeus Company, L.A.’s classical theater ensemble. Antaeus appearances include THE WOOD DEMON, CHEKHOV X 4, PATIENCE, TRIAL BY JURY, Balzac’s MERCADET, Brecht’s MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, and the first American revival of Arthur Miller’s 1944 Broadway debut THE MAN WHO HAD ALL THE LUCK. John has also made many television and film appearances: features such as “High Crimes,” “Point Break,” and ”Just One Of The Guys,” and TV shows including “The West Wing,” “The X-Files,” “NYPD Blue,” “Friends,” and “Freaks and Geeks.” |
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So what was it that got me started with maskmaking? I'd been fond of mask work and improvisation for most of my life, but when we were forming the Antaeus Company at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, actor Michael Gross suggested we do some Commedia work together as a way to get to know one another. I did a little reading on the history of the Commedia dell'Arte and was fascinated -- I really hadn't known much about it before -- so I volunteered to organize the project. We got a group of about ten actors together and met every Monday night for twelve weeks. |
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Here's who my first company was composed of: As Pantalone, Lawrence Pressman. Dottore was Andrew Robinson. Harry Groener and Dawn Didawick took on Capitano and Columbina, and Peter Sagal was Brighella. Eric Allen Kramer was Oratio and our Isabella was Penny Fuller. Janellen Steininger as Arlecchino and I as Pulcinella rounded out the troupe. I knew my friend John Achorn had a background in Commedia -- he had been a co-founder of the DellArte Company in Blue Lake California, working for years with Carlo Mazzone-Clemente and the other luminaries of that famed troupe. John agreed to come work with us and pass on a bit of what he knew though his many years of experience. |
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But I soon realized that to do Commedia one needs masks. This was Los Angeles in 1991, and there was no friendly neighborhood Commedia supply store. You couldn't just go online and search Google for "commedia masks" -- there was no graphic world wide web, and no Google! So if we wanted masks I realized I'd have to make them. That first set of masks was sculpted on a wig form out of Celluclay, finished with varnish and lined with fabric. They were very successful and fun, but I felt something was missing, that we needed to be working with accurate period masks of leather. |
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I found Thurston James' excellent book on maskmaking, which got me started. My first attempts were crude but I quickly got the hang of the techniques, and when I brought my masks to show Dr. James he gave me a couple of pointers and a great deal of encouragement. Antaeus' next Commedia project was done with traditional leather masks, and we all felt the difference -- not only the comfort and lightness of leather, but the real sense of connection with the performance traditions of the Commedia Improviso! |
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That early Commedia work was extremely valuable in creating our ensemble, and personally I discovered a new love in crafting these leather masks. I continued making new designs and developing my own technique as a maskmaker. In the late 90s I had the opportunity, thanks again to my friend John Achorn, to spend an afternoon with Carlo Mazzone-Clemente. I showed Carlo my masks one by one and he commented on them and pointed out where they were right and where they were wrong -- and also where it didn't matter. He encouraged me to honor tradition but to forge my own way, as well. The session was filmed for a biographical film of Carlo which John is producing, and which we hope will be completed someday soon! |
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| Also along the way, with my friends Rob Watzke, Helen Slater, Laurie Kilpatrick and Alice Vaughn and others, we developed our comic troupe The Bubalaires, and many of the masks in my collection were designed for various Buba projects over the past fifteen years. |  |
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I've made masks for many more Antaeus projects, as well as schools and theater productions, and for friends and collectors. It was always as a casual sideline to my acting career. But lately I've had the urge to dive more deeply into maskmaking again -- primarily for an ancient Roman mask project I'm hot on at the moment. And my first love has always been hand crafting these leather masks in the centuries-old styles rediscovered and refined by Amleto Sartori after World War Two. |  |
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It gives me so much satisfaction to be a part of the transmission of these ancient arts of the theater -- not only of the traditions, techniques, and tricks of the Commedia dell'Arte itself, but also of the nearly-lost but thankfully recovered craft of elegant Italian-style leather maskmaking. If you're interested in having me make a mask for you, drop me a line. Please email me: apicellamasks @ gmail.com. Best, |
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