Mask & Movement Retreat November 5-7

Mask & Movement
North Woods Weekend

Retreat to the North Woods and discover the many characters that reside within yourself! Mime and mask maker David Braddock, and character-storyteller Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux lead you through casting a plaster negative and positive of your face and using modeling clay and papiere mache to craft a unique, dynamic mask with techniques used in the commedia style. In this three day weekend you will also work on filling the form: using movement and story to explore musicality, depth and weight to bring your new character to life. This workshop is highly participatory and collaborative and is fitting for both veterans and novices.


November 5, 6, 7
Wilderness Canoe Base, Grand Marais, MN
$150
Includes six meals, two nights in comfortable group cabins, and all instruction and coaching (materials additional cost)
Please arrive by 5pm November 5th (supper at 6pm).
Retreat ends after 12:30 lunch on November 7th.


About the Teachers

David Braddock is a renaissance man of the theater; he has studied mime and physical theatre styles and techniques with international artists including the likes of Marcel Marceau. He has co-founded Giant Step Theatre for youth, and lent his versatile voice to the radio waves. He has trained in both the Decroix and Lecoq styles of mime and is experienced in Commedia style mask making.



Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux is an international storyteller, character artist and teacher. She has developed characters and story-programs for museums, history centers, festivals and schools since 2001. She lives at the edge of the Boundary Waters and is featured on WTIP’s North Shore Weekend telling the Saturday Morning Story.



About Wilderness Canoe Base
Wilderness Canoe Base (WCB) is located at the end of the Gunflint Trail, on Fish Hook and Dominion Islands in Seagull Lake at the edge of the Boundary Waters. WCB includes hiking trails, newly constructed cabins with homemade quilts (four bunks to a room), wood-fired sauna and plenty of open water for paddling.
Mask making will alternate with movement, with time also allotted for enjoying the remarkable quiet of the wilderness. Leave your cell phones in the car--there’s no reception here!
Located 55 miles from Grand Marais: 12477 Gunflint Trail, Grand Marais, MN, 55604
WCB is a Lutheran site, but there is no religious focus to this retreat.

What to Bring
Bring comfortable clothes for movement and “painting clothes” for casting the mask negative (a somewhat messy process).
November in Northern Minnesota is unpredictable, so remember what your mother told you and bring clothes for fall and wintery weather. Bring a sleeping bag; quilts and pillows are provided but sheets aren’t. And don’t forget your swim suit--Saturday night will include a sauna and polar plunge for those who dare!

How to Register
Email Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux (rose[at]rosearrowsmith[dot]com) with the following information:
Name
Phone Number
Address
Dietary Needs
A Note About Your Interest/Experience with Mask and Movement
Workshop Requests
Make checks payable to “Alchemy Storyworks.” A minimum deposit of $75 and the above information will complete your registration. You will receive a confirmation email from Rose and a paper copy receipt on November 5th. Full balance and materials fee (approximately $15-$30 depending on number of participants) must be paid upon arrival.

Questions
Contact Rose with questions pertaining to Payment and Wilderness Canoe Base.
Contact David with questions pertaining to Mask Making and Movement.

Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux
H (218) 388-0181
rose[at]rosearrowsmith[dot]com

David Braddock
C (612) 644-0522
daveb383[at]gmail[dot]com

On TV: The Tomte & The Troll on KMOT

The Trolleri Players, (David Braddock and I) shared "The Tomte & The Troll" for the third time at the Norsk Hostfest and in North Dakota schools. This was my tenth year and David's seventh at the festival, and though I feel I'm an old hand at it now, this was my first year traveling with a baby. My seven-month-old son, Ennis, was fantastic! (Worthy of his own tv spot, really.) While David and I performed for hundreds of elementary students, my sister, Abbey, entertained the little guy. While I walked the festival on stilts as Alfhilde the Tree Spirit, or as Tomte Kajsa the Good Elf, Abbey and Ennis looked at the booths and listened to traditional Scandinavian music (and not-so-traditional country music, which the festival is also known for--this year included Alan Jackson and Vince Gill as big ticket entertainers, as well as the Temptations).

KMOT, the North Dakota NBC affiliate station filmed our program at Longfellow Elementary School. You can also read about it here.

The Tomte & The Troll:
Tomtes and Trolls are as old as the dawn of Scandinavia… and they are sworn enemies. So how is it possible that Tomte Kajsa and Thorkelson D. Troll are friends?

Hear the stories, straight from the fairytale characters themselves; stories that will amuse you, bring you closer to your heritage, and maybe even save your life! Kajsa and Thorkelson will tell you all you ever needed to know to outsmart a hungry troll, and take you back to ancient beliefs of Sweden and Norway on a charming, enchanted adventure.

Moira of Iseldel: Preface

[SYNOPSIS]
Moira is awakened from a decade-long state of slumber to find her family, captured and perhaps killed long ago by Ragnar’s soldiers. When sets out to find them, she soon discovers her quest and responsibilities are much larger; as she learns she is both a Rememberer and a Binder with the birthright of Fire, one of the four forces that brought the world into being, she is drawn closer to Ragnar, an evil man with the heart and power of the Ice Giants.

She journeys with Shep, a beast of mysterious origin, into the Land of Spirits where she finds the Book of Remembering. At the port city of Lirea, Andrius, on a quest of his own, joins them. Their joint destinies become clearer, taking them across Iseldel and back, until at last they must face Ragnar himself at the edge of the world. Moira or Ragnar must join the two halves of the world together again to gain power of the rejoined land, but neither knows what they will find on the other side.


[PREFACE]

There is still a grove of fig trees on a side street near the city center of Lirea. The town itself is built upon a hill, everything crushing down to the port where ships with sails from every coastal province are docked. The smell of the wharf, of damp and salt and rotting sea plants and fish inhabits the city. It has always been this way.

A merchant arrives to open shop as the sun comes up. He is dark-skinned with a fine, smooth black mustache. The wrinkles by his eyes are from smiling, bargaining with customers and raising eyebrows high. He does well, shown clearly by his generous waist and the way his silk trousers hang in rich folds. He is a fig seller. He was born outside the city in a hut no bigger than a thimble. When his younger brother arrived in the world, out went Marishi Reb to seek his fortune and grander accommodations.

“Oh, Mr. Reb and his fig trees—The fig trees,” people say. They say it knowingly at each other’s houses for tea, strong but paled with milk and sweetened with dark sugar. The word travels from ship to ship that enters the harbor and those who do not know of the fig trees step onto land and go in search of them. Even the Seer can no longer claim as many visitors as the grove of fig trees that sprouted and sprang so mysteriously out of the stones in the center of Reishi Street.

On this morning it is cloudy to the east, but the wind is carrying the gray away. Lirea is waking, half in shadow and half in sunlight. The sounds of the people begin like a flock of starlings in a tree—first only one branch of roosting noisemakers feels the warmth, then the next and then the next. The air is jabbed and stitched in an improvised garment by the sounds: doors, blankets, creaking cart wheels, coins against pockets, street vendors crying out, the storks on the temple roof flapping and settling, sailors and dock workers and the heave of muscles against crates, breakfast being made, sugar stirred into tea, the same tea slurped hastily and the day begun. Lady Morning puts on this crazy cloak and welcomes her gypsy people to another day, another life, another story.

“Figs! Figs!” Marishi Reb is looking fine today. He runs a thick hand over his black hair, thinning now, but his mustache more than makes up for that. A woman walks up the cobblestones with a little girl in tow. A child rests on her hip.

“Figs for the lady—good for the complexion and for keeping a happy husband!” She does not stop. Marishi Reb claps his palms together.

“Good for children, for growing and clever thinking in the school house.” The little girl, barefoot, turns to look back at him.

“Good for even the youngest—sweet to make him good-tempered, rich to bring good fortune, savory for interesting character. To eat a fig each day before speaking, before dressing, before the day begins is to have good luck, good love, great happiness.”

The little boy in her arms is leaning out to the side, out of his mother’s hold, looking and listening to Marishi. They have stopped nearly underneath a fig tree. The child tilts his fair face up. There is a fig, ready, ripe, plump and within arm’s reach. A smile plays at Marishi’s lips beneath the fine mustache. His silk trousers ripple with the breeze coming up off the harbor. “Go on,” he seems to say, “yes, yes.”

The boy reaches up one hand, quickly, and the fig is plucked from the tree; the branch sways as he lifts it to his mouth.

“Antony, no!” His mother lets go the hand of the girl and reaches for the fig.

“No problem! No worries—it is gift from the trees. I only tend them. I do not own them—who could own these trees? They are for all people, to help with the remembering. I do not charge for figs. Once I did, but not any longer.” The woman sets the child down. His sister, seeing him bring the purple-brown fruit again to his face and bite the tender surface hesitantly plucks one of her own. The woman’s face is furrowed, questioning.

“But you must make a living like the rest of us. If we do not pay you, how will you survive?”

“Oh, madam, you must be a stranger to this city! I do not charge for figs, though once I did, it is true. The very first tree in this grove came from one of my figs one day years ago. What I ask money for is for the story. It is a good one.” The woman does not move, but she does not reach into the purse tied about her waist. Marishi Reb is not deterred. He rubs his palms together and stands taller.

“I will tell you first. If it is worth a coin or two…” he pats the bag of coins in his pocket. “If not…” he holds up his hands, “you go on your way. You will have only given me a morning of your listening ear.”

The little girl tugs at her mother’s dress, she looks at the man. The boy is too young to wonder about the story, but he is happy playing with a stick in the cracks of the cobblestones. The woman nods her chin once, and Marishi Reb begins.

“This was back in the time when the battles were lost—the beginning of the Dark Time. The capitol was taken, the people forgot; even here in Lirea—the fig trees bore [no] fruit [and times were hard for a fig seller]…But that is not the story I will tell you.

“This is the story of Moira…”

Florence Nightingale Finds Love

The VA hospital was different than she expected—for one, no one saluted her when she came in. Where were all the handsome, wounded soldiers waiting for their Florence Nightingale?

“Well, shit!” she said. It was her favorite expression and it conveyed so much with only the slightest change of tone, the hand on a hip or a raised eyebrow—as in, “Well, shit, don’t you look good tonight?” That wasn't how she meant it now.

She sighed. What a way to spend her Tuesday afternoon. She flicked a piece of lint off her jacket with a flamingo pink fingernail and let her gum have another round before spitting it in the trash next to the weak coffee, white powder and dented Styrofoam cups.

She cleared her throat at the counter and tossed back her hair without meaning to—it was another favorite habit that had become as inseparable as “well, shit.” Besides, if the handsome, wounded soldiers came in, she had been told more than once down in Reno that she had a very pretty throat.

“I’m here to volunteer,” she said.

The woman at the counter was black and maybe twice her age—calm and unimpressed by her pink fingernails.
“You’re gonna hafta fill out these forms—and put some gloves on those,” she said.

Bernice stopped and looked at her. “Gloves? For what?”

“Bedpans,” said the receptionist. “We need a whole lot of bedpans changed.”

Bernice took the clipboard and the blue gloves that did not match her its-almost-Easter outfit at all (pinks and lavenders—blue just threw the whole thing off).

She rolled up her sleeves and followed the orderly down the hall and spent the rest of the day “elbow deep in asses” as she planned to tell Iris, who was the one who put the insane idea into her head to come here in the first place.

It was the second to last room and she was ready for the day to be done. Her hair clung in wisps to her forehead but she didn’t dare use her hands for anything until she found a bucket of bleach to soak them in.

“Well aren’t you a regular Florence Nightingale?” said a voice, handsome before she even looked up.
Her heart seized, one eyebrow raised, a blue-gloved hand alighted on her breast and she breathed, “Well, shit.”

February, 2008.

Rubber Boots: Then & Now

When I was a kid—about eight years old, I’d say—I got stuck in the mud wearing a t-shirt, underwear, and fuscia rubber boots. It was spring, and I could not resist.

Our land was primarily clay. I don’t know how things went when my parents actually farmed our small field, but the lowest part of the yard could never absorb all the rain that fell, and, after our ice rink melted, we had our own wading pool.

And so, one Saturday morning, my younger sisters, Josie and Abbey, and I went out to play in the mud. Our dad yelled some sort of warning but spring was in our ears and we didn’t hear a thing.

We ran, we splashed; we certainly soaked each other kicking the brown, ankle-deep water. It was only a matter of time before we industriously churned the giant puddle into thick, creamy mud.

The water clouded and thickened around us. The mud was caramel-colored; the same color as our house. It had a tantalizing suction and made an immensely satisfying sound when we pulled our boots out. We pumped our feet faster, marching in place and nearly falling over, laughing at the indecent noises we were making.

At last, tired, we stopped, still giggling. We were soaked. Our clothes were all various tints of brown. Life had never been better. Until we tried to move.

The clay had sealed around our feet and would not let go. We each tried one foot and then the other, nearly toppling over with the effort it took. We were stuck.

We were also too far from each other to lend a hand, and too far from the somewhat drier ground to hop out of our boots and still be allowed to walk barefoot in the house. Emboldened both by our silliness and our fear, we shouted in unison for our dad.

He came out of the house like a thundercloud—like a just-released-from-its-cage lion of March! He must have been watching the whole thing through the window. He stormed over to us and grabbed us, one under each arm like sacks of potatoes, and pulled us straight out of our boots!
He dumped us, unrepentant but chastised and quiet, back at the house. Our boots remained in the clay—pinks and fuscias in the thick toffee mud.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” he said. “Those boots can just stay there until you can get them out yourself!”


On Tuesday, I bought myself a pair of rubber boots—black; the largest candy-pink pair was just a bit too small. On Wednesday I wore them out for a walk with Jay, hoping for puddles and muck. Since the road was disappointingly dry I was perfectly well-behaved for the first half of our walk, looking at moose and deer tracks, inspecting the silver crop of pussy willows. But on the way back…

Jay asked me how my boots were for walking, and there was, perhaps, a hint of smugness in his voice. I had been wearing my new boots nearly non-stop for the last twenty-four hours. He was wearing his new and very comfortable running shoes. My socks kept sagging and my boot tops thwacked against my legs. Rubber boots do not “break in” quite the way running shoes do.

“They’re great!” I exclaimed with exaggerated enthusiasm. “It’s a good thing I wore them,” I continued, slopping down into the ditch that had become a small, gravelly stream.

“My feet would be totally soaked without them!” I stomped and squelched, heading straight for an especially gooey part.

“You’re going to get stuck,” he warned. I just smiled. There was no way. I was bigger, smarter, and my boots were taller—they were made for this!

“Oh, really?” I grinned triumphantly at him as I pumped my feet up and down in quick, sloppy staccato…and nearly pulled my saggy-socked foot right out of my boot! The flashback was instantaneous!

“Help!” I cried. The dry bank was too far away—I would have to dive out of my boots and walk home with dirty socks! Or worse, I was going to get hauled out and carried home under someone’s arm like a sack of potatoes!

But Jay, more like the lamb than the lion of spring (which is one reason I’m so glad I married him), reached out his hand. With some careful tugging and foot flexing, I escaped, boots and all. He shook his head and smiled. We walked on, staying on the solid, dryer high ground.

But somewhere—in a time and place that does not seem very far away when I feel the thwack thwack of rubber against my shins—Spring’s messiest child calls to me. I can still see a pair of size five boots in all their glorious pink, standing proudly in the mud. And I, thankfully, have still not learned my lesson.

April 23rd, 2009

Spring: Rubber Boots & Pussy Willows

I walked the driveway and picked pussy willows this morning. I had rubber boots for the muck and a buck knife for the unyielding stems; a dog for company and spring all around.

Of course, here late April spring is not the same as it is farther south. Here, closer to Canada than to Duluth, spring means still-frozen lakes ringed with cold water, animal tracks in the mud, and much-longed-for sunshine. It means birds—warblers who have been so long-absent their utterly decadent trilling stops me in my tracks; the echoing percussion of woodpeckers and the pileated’s other-worldly kuk-kuk-kuk-kaa! cry; the accelerating drum beat of the male grouse in love.


I was in town on Tuesday as always. I ran my errands, stopping at the post office and the library; I bought groceries…and black rubber boots. They were twenty dollars at Joyne’s Ben Franklin, and, as is my policy with all new shoes, they were worn at once. I kicked off winter without a backward glance and left my imitation Sorrels in the car; it was time to test my new boots out.

I went to Artist’s Point on Lake Superior, named for the beauty of the views it provides: sweeping clouds, glittering sunsets, November storms and a marina full of sail boats with colorful Grand Marais sandwiched between the water and the Sawtooth ridgeline. I had been gone so much in April that the last time I was there the lake was a splintered field of heaving blue ice. The rocks had been covered in frozen white like bridal giants or silent, hulking elephant seals—but now everything was alive! Everything was moving, pushing, pulling, sweeping back on itself and playing with the wind and the sky!

I couldn’t help myself—in those black rubber boots I became impenetrable. I became a child. At first, I splashed sensibly through small puddles with my jeans rolled up to mid-shin. But then I grew bolder; I strode confidently into the lake, misjudged an oncoming wave and soaked my cuffs! There was no point in trying to stay dry after that.

I did handstands on the rocks—moving closer and closer to the wet warning line that turned the pale stone to deep brown laced with red. The wind and the waves competed for my attention and then joined forces, the waves pulling at my ankles, the wind pushing insistently at my back, closer to the deceptively inviting blue-green water. The sun glinted off the big lake and I had to squint to see the Sawtooth Mountains extending to the south as if they would never end (and as if cities did not exist).

Why do we need more than this: lake, sun, small town, rubber boots?


This week, the first week of spring that I’ve been home, we’ve gone walking almost every evening. (“We,” being some combination of me, Jay, Kati, and the dog, Taffy). Last night we all took a new route and saw a moose as reward. We had turned around just before dusk and were less than a quarter mile from our driveway when Jay spotted it—a mangy-looking cow with half her winter coat, grazing in the far ditch. Taffy didn’t see it until we were only a hundred feet away. Jay had her collar in his hands and she went suddenly stiff. This was no deer! All the fur stood up on her back, from head to tail, and for the first time in our 3 ½ years together, she growled!

The moose looked up calmly, having heard us long before we saw her. She was as big as a horse, but still didn’t look full grown. Her nose was long, her dewlap a little brown tuft that dangled like an ill-fitting necktie, her legs spindly. She moved off into the evergreens a few paces; if we hadn’t watched where she went we would never have been able to pick her out—she blended in almost completely.

Jay took the dog home, and the moose reemerged, having found a good spot to munch on both balsam firs above and salt on the remaining heap of snow below. It was almost dark. She faded slowly into the shadows and the sound of her massive teeth on the balsams echoed down the road after us as we left.


Perhaps she followed us home. The pussy willows lining our driveway had already been picked over when I arrived with knife in hand this morning. Massive coffee bean imprints in the soft gravel matched the height of the nibbled off bushes. Taffy got one whiff of the tracks and let out a low growl.

There are no daffodils or crocuses or snowdrops yet, no blueberry or strawberry flowers, and only buds on the most impatient trees. But the lake is melting. The animals are out. The paths to the cabins are muddy enough for black rubber boots. And in between the burned and soot-black trees, gleaming like faery silver, there are pussy willows.




April 23rd, 2009.

p.s. Now the lake is completely open, save for a few nomadic floes of ice pushed our way by a westerly wind.

Rabbit Mittens

Old Missus Rabbit,
What do you do when
Winter comes?

Why we bundle up tight!
Snug & warm with our
warm fur muffs and our mittens.

But what do you eat,
you & your children
when the darkness is long?

Why we eat aspen & birch
& we nibble the bark
& we sleep in our nest & dream.

What do you dream of,
Missus Rabbit,
when the snow is thick?

All of us all, we dream
of Spring! Of tender
green shoots & running streams.

And when it has come,
the final Spring thaw,
what then?

Then we throw off our coats
& our socks & our muffs
& we hang our mittens to air in the sun.

Where do you hang them,
Good Mother Rabbit?
Have I seen them in the woods?

Yes, you have seen them
if you know where to look;
they are silvery bright & many.

Do you hang them on the fir trees
to dry on their
wide boughs?

No, no! Their needles
would stick in our paws!
We do not hang them there.

Do you hang them on the primrose
with thorns as clothespins?
Is that where I may find them?

No, no! My little rabbits
would be pricked by the thorns.
We hang them somewhere better.

Then tell me—
Where?

All of our mittens, every
silvery soft one
hangs on a branch of pussy willow.

And then Mrs Rabbit wiggled her nose & hopped off
to find her children
& Spring.