POSTPONED - Mask Workshop: Human Nature and Transformative Potential

Learn about the wonderful breadth of possibilities that Mask performance can offer with teacher Adelka Polak.  

Participants will discuss techniques for mask and how to execute this ancient art form from the outside in.  Learn how physical form can affect emotions and psychology when in character development and conceiving of dramatic transformation.  

This workshop is intended for adult artists and makers. 

WHAT TO EXPECT

Plan to move from the start of the workshop where we will get into our own bodies’ natural potentials in order to transform, even if ever so slightly, by learning stylized stage movement techniques and then settling for the second half of the workshop for hands on mask-making that then you can take with you to continue at home as you like, depending on the process that you choose to proceed with from paper cutting, paper-mache to building up facial features using a variety of accessible materials that will be shared.

This workshop will be held at Sova Dance & Puppet Theater’s new studio in Bethlehem, CT, which was the town of the great late mask performer and Adelka’s mentor, Larry Hunt of Masque Theatre.

FEES: A sliding scale is available including a Pay What You Want option. All ticket tiers include all activities, and supplies. All are invited and encouraged to attend. No one turned away due to lack of funds.

ABOUT YOUR TEACHER

Adelka Polak, founder of Sova Dance & Puppet Theater, based in CT & mainly serving schools, arts venues and community organizations in New England and NYC, including performances at Madison Square Park and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. In 2023 we had our first tour that included Wolf Trap Children’s-Theatre-in-the-Woods, the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, and the Puppet Showplace Theater!  Adelka is a dancer, puppeteer, mask-performer and movement director whose work has brought her to Denmark, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Scotland and Turkey.

In an original theatrical production of "Ajijaak on Turtle Island” at the New Victory Theater she worked with puppets from the Henson Creature Shop in a show led by artists Heather Henson, Jim Henson’s youngest daughter, and Grammy-Award winner Ty Defoe. She also worked with Squonk Opera who went “from junkyards to Broadway” and performed at Lincoln Center Outdoors and LaMama, E.T.C. with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater of NYC. Ms. Polak was featured on CPTV’s “Spotlight on the Arts” with Masque Theatre & Larry Hunt in a segment nominated for a cultural Emmy in 2010 and produced by Ed Wierzbiecki.

She shares her knowledge of dance, puppetry and crossing artistic disciplines with audiences across the U.S. and abroad.  She has worked with children across CT & the east coast building over 10,000 puppets with participants over the years. She also teaches with Z. Briggs and the Jim Henson Foundation in order to train educators, therapists and special education professionals how to use puppetry effectively in the classroom.  She has worked as a professional puppeteer now for two decades, since she graduated from Chatham University with honors with a B.A. in Theatre and Cultural Studies in 2002.

A part of the Nature Makers series.