Masked Performance: the Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre (review)

Despite its title, John Emigh’s Masked Performance does not offer a comprehensive overview of the use of masks from either historical or cultural perspectives, nor does Emigh contrast their use in ritual and theatrical contexts. Rather, Emigh’s text stays closely to the personal, offering a reflection on the interplay of self and other through his engagment (as an actor, director, and teacher of Western theatre) with performers and performance traditions other than his own, specifically those in Bali, Papua New Guinea, and Orissa, India.

Emigh begins with his observations of ritual performance in New Guinea, where he was struck by the use of the mask as an “instrument of revelation,” in contrast with Western notions of the mask as a tool of concealment and deception (7). Although his descriptions of the rituals in New Guinea seem incomplete, coming across like the observations of a learned tourist, they serve as a catalyst towards a reflection on the ontological status of the actor. What happens to one’s consciousness when one’s identity is transformed? Emigh explores this question in the Western context, citing the transformational skills of such popular actors as Tomlin, DeNiro, Streep, and Hoffman, but finds the question most interesting when confronted with the extreme situation of trance performance, a state of consciousness he terms “visitation.” This performative state is “characterized by a loss of the sense of ‘me’ and an engulfment of the self by an entity that is considered ‘not me’—with an attendant loss of conscious control and a scanty memory of what took place while performing” (29). While visitation is more commonly found in the ritual and theatre of New Guinea, Bali, and India, Emigh suggests that Artaud provides the theatre of the West with a link to these shamanic traditions. Of course, in the non-Western traditions which Emigh explores, the performer’s state of visitation sustains the community, whereas avant-garde attempts at such a performative consciousness are, generally, politically transgressive.

The containment of chthonic or demonic forces, for the security of the community, by the performer in trance (or at least feigning trance) is explored in the Orissan Prahlada Nataka and Balinese Cupak. In both ritual performances, extravagant masks are used to not only personify, but to incarnate mythical personages. Most fascinating is the discussion of the Orissan actor who plays/becomes Narasimha. If visitation will occur, the actor detects “an unnatural weight to the mask, a feeling of heat on his face and a general sense of ‘wildness’ setting in” (59). If these sensations are not felt, the performer continues in the mode of a character actor. In both Prahlada Nataka and Cupak, the narrative structure of the performance may be violated by the visitation. Though the story may be altered radically, such an occurrence is considered both theatrically exciting and ritually effective.

The most thorough and detailed passages in Masked Performance are when Emigh focuses on two individual performers with whom he studied extensively. The first, I Nyoman Kakul, was a performer in the Balinese tradition of topeng pajegan. In this tradition, a single actor uses masks to portray characters that are human or divine, tragic or comic, male or female, and from the past or present in as many as seven languages in the span of one performance. Though he spent several months studying with Kakul, Emigh limits his discussion to a single event, with a complete transcript of the performance following the narrative description.

The second performer, Hajari Bhand of Rajasthan (India), came out of retirement for two months to enable Emigh to document the activities of a bahurupiya, a wandering mimic and comic. While the work of Kakul provoked terror as much as laughter, Hajari Bhand’s performance is primarily comedic. Although a bahurupiya does not use masks in the manner of the New Guinea and Balinese performers, Hajari Bhand disguises himself with makeup and the...