Maskmaking and music unite

on Cat Mountain

by Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

BROOKLINE - In the Japanese folk tale Cat Mountain, the young servant girl Sho travels in search of her freedom, and her lost cat. She believes she might find both on a fabled and distant mountain, despite the warmings she receives from others that no one who ventures there has ever returned.

The intriguing drama will be staged this weekend by Behind the Mask Theatre at Brookline’s Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline Village, and, on May 17, at the Central Congregational Church in Jamaica Plain. More area dates are being planned. The presentation, which incorporates storytelling, masks, puppetry, dance and original music, will feature award-winning maskmakers Eric Bornstein and Deborah Coconis, who created masks for all the performers, musician Patricia Vleig, who composed the show's songs, and Koto player Ayakano Cathleen Read. Leda Elliott, who grew up studying dance at the Ballet Arts of Carnegie Hall in Tokyo, choreographed the production. Her past work has included the dance shows Butteryfly and Dreamcatcher and is also a martial arts teacher. The show also features performer Rachel Fouts, who holds a BFA in Dance and Theatre from Emerson College and has danced and performed with the Mandala Folk Dance Ensemble, at King Richard's Renaissance Faire, and at the New England Folk Festival. Mari Novotny-Jones and Andrea Taylor-Blenis, a Prometheus Dance member on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, are stage directors.

"Japanese theatre has a rich vocabulary of masks to succinctly convey character traits and emotional nuances to the audience,” said BTMT Founder/Artistic Director Bornstein. “Drawing from this vocabulary for an American audience is both a challenge and a pleasure. By combining the talents of people who know both the Japanese and American traditions, we bring this magical tale to life."

Bornstein, a Cambridge resident who grew up attending Peabody’s Temple Beth Shalom, ended up working at another Beth Shalom, volunteering artistic services for the Cambridge synagogue’s Executive Director Jim Brandt in the 1990s. Among his contributions were a commemorative tile display and a special events T-shirt design. During this decade, in what would seem to be an ideal fit, he also led several Purim-related mask and puppet-making workshops at the Newton JCC and Knesset Israel Hebrew School; he also led a mask-making workshop at Brandeis University. A double master of arts recipient with a summa cum laude MLA in Art History from Harvard University and an MFA in Studio Art from Clark University Laude, he also holds a certificate of completion for professional level study with master maskmaker Donato Sartori in Padova, Italy, and completed an apprenticeship with master maskmaker Agung Suardana in Bali. Bornstein plans to create Jewish-themed mask-theater pieces in the future.

“Behind The Mask Theatre is well-known for its skill in bringing the folklore of different cultures to the stage, for the stunning masks it creates for its productions, and for weaving together multiple art-forms into a single tapestry referred to as augmented storytelling,” said Core Member, Technical Consultant and Web Designer David Kessler. An Arlington resident and Newton native who attended Temple Reyim and Prozdor, he belonged to Hashachar Young Judaea during high school and went to Israel for a year, following graduation, on Young Judaea’s Year Course program, which aims to give Jewish youths an in-depth experience of Israeli life. After an initial month in Jerusalem, Kessler worked for a few months at kibbutz Palmach Tsuba in the Judaean hills, in the apple orchard and windshield factory. A month and a half on a Moroccan moshav, moshav Sde David in the Hevel Lachish area, was followed by another month and a half taking classes at the Jerusalem Institute, and a final three months at Sherut La'am in Tiberias teaching music and English, while living in an absorption centre with 200 hundred newly arrived Ethiopian Jews.

“The year was fantastic and taught me a lot about Jews, Judaism, history, the Middle East in general, and it also really woke me up to politics,” said Kessler, who has since visited Egypt twice, Jordan, and returned to Israel. As the program was ten months, with a little travel time at the end, it wasn't a vacation, he maintains. “We lived there for a year, often with minimal supervision. Because of this, we learned new lifestyles and ways of thinking - things not often learned as a tourist.” He went on to graduate from Boston University as a Philosophy major and Medieval Studies minor), and began working with BTMT.

For the past 12 years, BTMT has showcased at Boston’s First Night celebrations; last season's acclaimed production, Monkey King Tales, featured fantastic creatures. Cat Mountain, a show for audiences of all ages, is partially funded by the Cambridge Arts Council, a city agency, and by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

For more information about Behind The Mask Theatre, please visit:

http://behind-the-mask.tripod.com, email behindthemask@msn.com, or call 617-876-7412.