The children were appearing stuck in representing their ideas of the boy and girl masks and the teachers were wondering how they might support them with materials beyond paints. Following a West Coast Collaborative tour with Clarissa Esguerra of the LACMA exhibit on the work of artist Marc Chagall, the teachers were inspired to share with the children his visions for his costume designs for operas. A small group of children met in the Atelier and Cindy shared the LACMA curator video and images of the exhibit.
When the curators spoke of the costumes as they appear on stage and the video showed the stage, the children stopped their side conversations about noticing eyes, padding, ‘boobies’ vs. ‘chests’, and focused intently.
Archer: I want to be him.
Teacher Cindy: Pan? Why do you want to be Pan?
Archer: He can hold up all the friends. He is so big.
Reflecting on what they noticed in Chagall’s multiple materials (fabric, paint, feathers, hair, cages, and padding), a dialogue began with naming the purple girl mask “Violet”.
Archie: She’ll have ponytails going up.
Archer: And ponytails in the back too.
Archie: And lipstick.
Leah: A dark pink bow.
Madeleine: Red cheeks, too.
Archer: And when she smiles, they light up. We can add little lights.
Archie and Archer agree and suggest we call the boy Steven and the rest of the group agrees.
Leah: He is going to look cool and have a hat, sports stuff, and sneakers.
Archer: Glasses, too.
Archie: And a hat.
Miro: Cool glasses and brown hair.
While the inspirational video re-invigorated the mask design, we reflected that the children have specific ideas related to boy/girl identities: Violet brought out their focus on fleshy indications of happiness and color-coded femininity. While designs for Steven revealed all things covered up: eyes, hair, head, and feet with no mention of Steven’s feelings or emotions, only that he will “look cool”. We consider their personalization with the characters in the video against their designs for the masks and we believe the children have a more complex understanding of themselves than their designs indicate. We anticipate addressing discrepancies as they wear these masks and act out the characters as Violet and Steven with a goal of integrating who the children are with what they convey. We will be finalizing the masks as a group soon and placing them in the EW theater area for interactions. -Cindy & Kristin