A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler, 15: Masks

I've just been working on Benjamin Britten's Abraham and Isaac with my students. Here are the puppets artist Douglas Paisley made for us.

The great thing about these puppets was that they were handled by the singers of the roles with the singers fully visible. One saw the mask and one saw the face of the singer at the same time. I saw at the beginning of the performance eyes switching back and forth from one to the other. By the end the audience seemed to be looking at one thing. The puppets have faces which are impassive. The only manipulation possible was some movement of the head and one human arm which came out through the fabric of the costume. When this is all there is though, it's a lot. Great puppets are tragic objects. They cannot respond; they must go quietly. I can think of no story better suited to this kind of performance than Abraham and Isaac. Britten's music always seems to me to be caught in some kind of dead-honest structure, even rigidity, which makes the characters blank out their faces.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller



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