Shadow Album

Author’s Notes ^{(from Gravity Wells short story collection)}

“Shadow Album”: In the 1980s, I did a lot of theater: writing, acting, directing, and improvising (which is writing, acting, and directing combined). Somehow in the middle of that, I got involved in a mask workshop—possibly because said workshop was taught by my wife, Linda Carson.

Masks are powerful things, which is why they feature prominently in shamanistic religious traditions. Donning a mask is often the first step to donning an alternate personality. Masks are therefore used in some types of theater training to help students learn to set aside their mundane selves and become something Other.

If this sounds hokey when you read it on the page, let me assure you it’s very effective in practice. Masks can have a powerful psychological effect…if you let them. In some sense, you can “become” the mask: someone you’d never let yourself be otherwise. There are obvious risks in this process, which is why mask workshops should always be led by people who know what they’re doing; but taking risks is one of the great exhilarations of acting, and when it works, you can be transformed.

In this particular workshop, we constructed our own masks. The mask I built, and the personality I discovered within that mask, are exactly like the character ToPu (pronounced “toa-poo”) as described in “Shadow Album.” The mask of poor sad ToPu still sits in my study as I type these words—the closest thing to a magical object I’ve ever made.