Grade Level: 7th – 12th

Content Focus: Learning about Japanese Noh Theater by using a hands-on project to create a personal Noh mask.

Time Period: 5 -6 class periods

Objectives: Students will learn about an ancient theater art of Japan. They will use their learned knowledge in clay to create a personal “Noh” mask with their own face as the model.

Vocabulary/Concepts:

1. Slabs of clay are thin, flat pieces of clay.
2. Fettling knife is a long flexible or not flexible knife, depending on its use. It is used to cut the
3. clay darts, ‘v’ shaped cuts into the clay to give a closer fit of clay to objects, as in sewing.
4. Slip is clay glue made from clay and water.
5. Scoring is cutting lines or using a toothbrush to create lines to make the slip better suited to gluing the clay together.

Resources:
First and foremost, the student uses his/her imagination. The internet is a valuable source for viewing and is available for use. However, with this project, the student was encouraged to focus on his/her own face and to form their own individual design idea.

Lesson Abstract:
While in Japan over the summer, I was exposed to various forms of Japanese theater. One of them, Noh theater, is the most ancient, where all characters will wear a mask, portraying them as women, old men, supernatural beings, such as ghosts, deities, demons and divine beasts. In general, masks have a more or less neutral expression with the play of light and shadow on it as the actor changes slightly the tilt of the mask.

I printed out pictures from the internet of Noh masks in the five categories; gods, warriors, beautiful women, miscellaneous figures, and supernatural beings and showed them to the students during my explanation. I explained my intent, which is to have them exaggerate, to the extreme, the facial features, completely reconfiguring their face.

Lesson Development:
I photographed each student twice, with two different expressions. Then each student made plaster masks of their partner. By the end of the second lesson, each student had a plaster mask of their face drying on the shelf.

I developed the film at the one hour photo, so I was able to bring the photos to the next class period.
By the third lesson each student had a dry plaster mold of his/her face to work from and two photos to choose from. We began getting the clay ready to begin working with. Each student prepared a container of water, sponge, fettling knife and wooden tool at their workspace. I showed them how to use the slab roller to roll out thin slabs of clay. They then covered their masks with plastic and lay the clay down over the mask, using a damp sponge to smooth and shape the clay over the features, cutting away excess clay from the sides and cutting darts under the chin to fit the clay around the mold.

Once they got the basic clay ‘face’ down, they began to use their photo as reference material. They added clay, cut clay out, twisted, squeezed, used crumpled paper to form bulges, coils to make wrinkles, eyebrows…the sky is the limit when it comes to embellishment!
One of the added educational lessons to this project is the inadvertent anatomy lesson the student is learning. They have a basic face and a stretched out photograph of their own face. The actual ‘creating’ or building up of a mask requires that the student instinctively ‘know’ what the face looks like. During that process, they also learn how muscles stretch, turn and strain, where facial bones lie and how muscles work over the bones. They are not learning names for the different parts of the face, but they are learning concepts.

Lesson Extensions:
I created two lesson extensions for this project. The first was with our photography teacher. He was teaching portraiture to his students, which happened to be in the same classes and during the same periods. We set up a week where my students modeled their masks and the photography students used them as models, setting up black screens, heavy lighting equipment and using the traditional lighting methods of Noh theater, very strong and directed lighting from all directions. The photography students got the experience in setting up a model, and the ceramic students got the experience of being models.

The second extension was with our theater teacher. I invited the class to come in and make masks. The teacher then took a Noh/Kabuki play and had the students recreate it, using the masks and affecting the Noh/Kabuki cadence and movement. The photography teacher filmed the class production and we have it on dvd.