Foreman Friday - Masks

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 The mask in drama has its double in life. 

This is something I wrote in reaction to a comment from a Year 11 student.

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 The Mask I Wear

This mask I wear can be so claustrophobic – it closes in all around me, enveloping me, inhibiting me. It cuts me off from all outside contact. It determines how I must behave and allows little freedom. God help me if it ever becomes moulded to the real me.

Its there so often that I sometimes feel that very little would be needed for the graft to take and I’d be stuck with it.

The expectation of you, the student, for me to act in some specific way, the ideas you pick up about me from someone I taught last year, your conception of how a teacher should behave, all are pressing me against my  will, into this idiotic mask.

Why should the mask be more effective than me?

Maybe the only reason I wear it is because, much as I like to, I don’t trust you. Its much easier to allow you to rip into my mask, make fun of it, laugh at it, and to degrade it, because I know that it is only a mask and that I am safely hidden camouflaged, protected. 

Perhaps the times I get so upset are when I’ve accidentally allowed my mask to slip and your barbs strike home at me.

I wish the mask wasn’t necessary. I wish I could trust you with me. Life would be so much easier. Instead of being mask to mask we’d be face to face – for I’m sure that you, too, hide yourself behind a false façade.

John Foreman Albany SHS 25.6.80

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 I find it interesting to revisit this piece of reflective writing of the inexperienced teacher that I was back then.

The further I went in my teaching career I found there were groups, classes where there was more of Me. Part of that I guess was the development of that ‘trust’, part was being more comfortable with who I was in front of a class.

That trust in the students to treat me with, I guess, respect came more readily from my Drama classes. And that is perhaps because I gave far more of myself in those classes. Much of what we did was a shared journey. 

Do you see me or the mask?

Early on I was a step ahead of the kids. Later I was putting my heart on the line in the scripts I wrote, and the classes grabbed them and happily ran with them. And of course, once there was success before an audience students were vying to be in the class, especially at City Beach. In the rapidly shrinking school I wound up with two classes in Year 10 and a double cast Panto.

At Armadale SHS there was one student who refused a role because he didn’t believe the play was achievable. He was the first to approach me afterwards and admit he was wrong. I found it difficult to trust him with a role later.

There were, of course, some classes – in English, or HASS, or Multi-Media, where a version of the Mask was evident.

Commedia masks from John M Foreman collection

Put your face on…

So, whilst that mask I wore was metaphorical, it was, for all intents and purposes, real. And needed.

Many masks can be ephemeral. 

Robin reminded me that my Mother and most of her generation (the females, at least) would never leave the house without ‘putting her face on’.

This ‘mask’ was what she considered a better version of herself, one that she was happier to show the world. Some women would never leave the house, or even the bathroom, without applying their make-up. 

Has anything changed in the past sixty, seventy years?

Make-up has changed. As have the ‘masks’ that some apply.

As a long-time lover and collector of masks, when my old email was inundated with spam, I invoked an Italian version in my new address; mymaschere.

What are the masks you wear? In Life? In teaching? In drama teaching?

Which masks do you reveal in drama teaching?

Foreman Funnies - Naming the Parts

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 DICTIONARY ENTRY

Drama Teacher: [ drah-muh, tee-cher] Occupation

Duties include: 

Classroom Teacher, 

and… 

administration liaison (whisperer),  

choreographer, 

costume acquirer, 

copyright negotiator, 

costume conservator, 

costume designer

dance teacher liaison, 

designer, 

director, 

diva,

driver, 

excursion organiser, 

front-of-house manager, 

front-of-house supplies purchaser, 

improvisor,

lighting designer, (climbing ladder to hang them)

lighting operator,

music department liaison, 

media department liaison

miracle worker

negotiator, 

nurse, 

painter, 

parental liaison, 

professional theatre liaison, 

program producer, 

promoter, 

props acquisition and management, 

psychologist, 

rights negotiator, 

saint,

set builder, 

special effects organiser, 

spinner of magic

stage manager, 

student councillor, 

visual arts teacher liaison, (every other teacher liaison), 

wounded feelings soother

wonder worker

writer

zealot

Foreman Funnies - Some thoughts about school productions...

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……and building a theatre culture in a school.

We took the bold step of including a Theatre Excursions Fee on Booklist (arguing that as there wasn’t a textbook, it was a reasonable ask). Students then opted to draw down on this account when they chose to join the excursion. The fee was set to allow for two or three productions. 

So, onto the school bus (and sometimes our cars) students would pile. Thankfully, we could call on other teachers (like Dave) who had a bus license. While mostly we focused on the productions in Perth International Arts Festival, we also  took students to see productions in nearby schools and also the local amateur and community theatre groups.

If you want to learn drama (and teach drama) you need to experience drama.

The spin offs from seeing theatre were many. Seeing professional theatre encouraged us to inject a stronger sense of expectation in our productions.

Performance seasons ran for two weeks

By the following year, 1986 we played our productions Wednesday to Saturday for two weeks after having run only a single week in the first year. The two week runs continued until I left the school in 1989. And the first four shows were originals or original adaptations.

We loved giving the students the experience of backing up their productions for a second week. It gave them a hint of ‘professional’ theatre. And playing Wednesday to Saturday meant many of the cast had to negotiate with late night shopping employers for evenings off. (Sometimes a note on school letterhead helped.) This was yet another life skill the students needed to develop.

Casts learnt the different moods of crowds: Wednesday – quiet, I have work in the morning, Thursday – damn, I should be doing the weekly shop, Friday – starting to relax for the weekend, and Saturday – letting go, let’s party. And for the earlier days in the run they knew they had to work harder.

They learned the importance of a ‘laugher’ in the audience. You always want that one person in the audience who gets the jokes and laughs loudly. It gives everyone else permission to let go. I loved one of the cleaners at City Beach. She got EVERY one of my stupid jokes and roared with laughter every time.

Why productions are important

For drama students being in a production is sometimes as important – and often times more important – as classwork.

Speaking of City Beach, we did an Upper School Drama production each year and a Year 10 Panto (where roles were included for students who didn’t get into the class because of class size limits (there was always some kids hanging round rehearsals even though they couldn’t get into the enrolled class. And we included the odd ex-student as well in performance roles). Several years, in addition, we managed a whole school production.

Very few of these were ‘mainstream’ plays, over half were originals, but we always had audiences. 

What sorts of productions

In an earlier post, Robin Pascoe wrote about the approachability of Broadway Junior shows. And I agree, they have lots to recommend them. They have become the staple of the Specialist Performing Arts program at Wanneroo Secondary College. They provide excellent challenges for the students. 

The ‘plus’ is that once they reach Year 11 & 12 Drama, they are then in a position to then attack more broader works, some of them devised.

The one thing that schools have lost is the ‘Whole School Production’. There are always students who don’t take Drama for any number of reasons; timetable clashes, pathways, parental reticence… and the Whole School Production gives them an outlet to participate. 

Mind you, in a program like that at Wanneroo, with up to 12 productions a year – Dance, Drama, Music – where in the world would they be able to fit in a whole school production?

Foreman Funnies - Pranks

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The ‘Last Night Prank’ is a staple of repertory theatre. You read about them often enough. Robin Pascoe has some doozies he might share one day (from the Merredin Rep Club).

I witnessed a couple in the Albany Light Opera Company: Mikado – Koko’s ‘little list’. The actor in the role never learnt it, always read it. On the last night, the name of a local celebrity was added. The actor read it flawlessly, the chorus broke up. 

In Puss in Boots, one character was to present the queen with a small bush. He’d been working on his farm that afternoon and brought in a twenty-foot sapling. (How did he get it upstairs and backstage?) The ‘bush’ stretched from one side of the stage to the other. 

There was a few that happened in school productions once I started teaching Drama. 


In Dust in the Air, one character sat on a throne for the entire second act. Just before lights up, someone slipped a packet of frozen peas onto the seat.

In our Cyrano, the character of ‘Chris’ had to read a letter on stage. Sitting in the balcony I noticed cast members in the wings watching intently. I looked at Chris as he opened the letter. “Don’t read it!” I thought. He knew the lines. 

He read it. And cracked up. Thankfully he didn’t read it aloud.

After The Mysteries, where a disgruntled crew member took the Third Shepherd’s gift of a tennis ball for the baby Jesus, and the cast member tearfully substituted an apple, I was adamant that there would be no more pranks in my productions. 

From then on I always advised cast members to check any hand props, especially folded paper before going on stage. I was guilty of a sort of prank in one show where two girls had to take a paper bag with two cream buns onstage and eat them. 

The final night I replaced one bun with a matchstick – layers of puff pastry, jam, and cream. They checked their prop before entering. Onstage, the inevitable happened. The matchstick exploded. The second girl ad-libbed, “You’re such a pig, Monica.” 

I cracked up backstage. 


But I don’t believe it is fair to young performers to put them in the situation where they may be embarrassed by someone else.

Yes, audiences love those obvious stuff-ups on stage. But in the end, I want my students, my young performers to be able to do their very best, and to do justice to the script…