BOYS (repeating chorus): This is the game we love, every night and every day, we play, this is the life, all the boys say, this is the game, this is the life! This is the time, we say, this is our time, we play, all the day is ours, we rave, this is the game, this is the life!
THE MASK CHILD: This is the life, oh yes, this really is the life. And I can play. I have the legs, and I have the head for it. See? My big and beautiful face with all its paint and terror? This is the play, this is the life. I can say it, I can say it so well!
BOYS (still moving constantly, surrounding him aggressively): This is our life, we say, this is our game, these are our heads and these are our knees, out of our way, we say, it’s not your time, we say, out of our way, out of our way!
[The BOYS dance around THE MASK CHILD, who twirls and leaps at their center. THE MASK CHILD’s movements become frantic, and he crashes his great warrior’s mask into the BOYS as they close in on him.]
THE MASK CHILD: Let me out, I say! I have a life, I pray! Let me out let me out, I have a life!
[Suddenly, his back to us, THE MASK CHILD’s mask comes off and falls to the stage. We cannot see his face. All action stops. The general lighting dims, the tall shadow of THE MASK CHILD is thrown across the backdrop. The BOYS shrink slowly away into the shadows. After a pause a single BOY comes back on stage, gives THE MASK CHILD back his mask and leaves.]
THE MASK CHILD (softly): Let me out, let me out, I have a life.
[Fade out on THE MASK CHILD. Fade in on the NARRATOR.]
NARRATOR: It is an unfortunate fact of life that our poor faces can only begin to reflect the light that fills and gives color to the heart. For what is a face but a few scattered knobs of flesh, the odd opening and some strategically placed teeth? A random toss-up of features out of that swirling genetic cesspool that your parents and their parents before them created out of the sweat and leak of their ancient passions.
Is this any better than a mask? In fact I think it is far less. At least when we create a mask for ourselves there is some thought put into it, even if those thoughts were derived second-hand from the originality of others.
But take it from an old judge, ladies and gentlemen—be careful what mask you decide to put on, because that is your life.
[Lights up on THE MASK CHILD, sitting alone in the middle of the stage. At first, his head appears covered by a huge (several times his body size), stony-faced mask with rough, forbidding features. In fact, his head is covered by a series of masks, one inside the other like nested dolls. These masks come off one at a time throughout the scene that follows, ending with the final mask: plain and white with large eyeholes. The masks should be of a variety of designs and materials, showing a wide range of emotions and effects. THE MASK CHILD also grows much taller during this scene, so by the time the last mask is removed it appears as if he has grown into young manhood right before our eyes. The correct musical accompaniment would be important here (a lot of discordant violins, for example).]
THE MASK CHILD: I had to write this essay for school, “The Nicest Person I Ever Met.” A lot of the kids wrote about their parents. Maybe a few more than that wrote about their grandparents. Every kid’s grandparents are nice. They have grandmothers who bake them these miniature cakes with their names on them, and grandfathers who take them fishing and teach them about the different kinds of trees. My grandparents have never seen me, as far as I know. Certainly I have never seen them. But I hear they are very nice, just like other kids’ grandparents.
I’m sure my parents are very nice too. Most kids’ parents are nice, if you believe what the kids say. Nice is like another word for mother, another word for father. It’s like you can’t separate the two. They’re nice because they’re your parents. They’re nice because they gave birth to you, which is a very nice thing. They didn’t have to give birth to you, you know.
My parents and I don’t talk very much, but I’m quite sure they’re nice, just like real kids’ parents.
But the nicest person I ever met was an old lady who lives at the end of our street, there where the pavement ends and the trees and the fields begin. I’ve heard some of the other kids in the neighborhood say she is a witch, just like in the fairytale books, and that she does awful things to people—kids especially—in those woods, at night, in the dark, when everyone else is at home in bed thinking they are safe.
Once they looked at me when they were telling that story and I knew exactly what they were thinking. They were thinking that was what happened to me. That old witch lady happened to me.
Of course I didn’t tell them I had already met that lady and talked to her a number of times. I used to walk down our street but I always walked toward the woods because there weren’t any people in that direction. And that’s how I met her. She was sitting up on her porch and she said to me, “Nice mask!” I don’t remember what mask I was wearing that day but I guess that doesn’t matter.
I went up to her porch then and she gave me a little piece of cake and I went up to her porch again every day after that. But the nicest thing she did for me was that every day she asked me this same question.
She asked me, “What do you do with your day?”
She didn’t ask me how was or how is your day. Or what I did the day before. She asked me what did I do with my day. That was the nice thing.
[Pause. The GIRLS begin drifting into the stage area. They have small heads and large dresses, which they occasionally twirl. They resemble flowers. They move quietly around the stage in a kind of slow-motion dance during the following speech.]
So what do I do with my day? I had to think about it. School takes a large bite out of my week, of course. I sit in classes for hours, mostly aware of how hot and itchy my face is under the mask. I get terrible rashes, and sometimes I’m afraid things are getting worse under there, in the damp and heat, in the dark where no one but I can see. The itching feels like skin disintegrating, my face slowly dissolving so that someday there won’t be a face at all, and I will have nothing left to support my mask and then where will I be?
Sometimes I am aware that the other children stare at me during class. Most are so used to my presence and the five different masks I wear to school that they pay little attention to me, but there are always a few who wait for the tiniest slip of the mask, like voyeurs waiting for the smallest revelation of flesh.
Occasionally I am aware of the subjects the teacher discusses, and try to remember them generally so that I can read up on them when I am at home in my room alone.
After school I walk the long way home and look for animals I have never seen before. Sometimes I find one, but most of the time not.
And of course I work on new masks every day. If I could, I would have a different one for each day of the year. I feel lucky that I have as many as I do.
I make up lists of things I would do if I only had the courage. Such as give each of my classmates their own mask and encourage them to wear them for a day.