Master mask maker Eric Bornstein turns fantasies into reality as he puts his magic touch on the works he produces in his studio.

By Dian Zhang

Magic takes place in Eric Bornstein’s studio. There are white unicorns, wild tigers and Asian dragons. Bornstein doesn’t need to wave his wand to create this magic; he just needs some paper, glue, paint…and imagination.

Bornstein is a professional mask maker, and he is also the founder of Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre in Davis Square, which is among the largest and best-known mask studios in New England. He has worked with masks for 33 years. In his 60-square-meter studio converted from a garage, masks crowd everywhere possible: on the walls, the tables, the shelves and even the bathroom door, leaving only a cramped aisle for one person to creep through.

He provides various masks for rent and sale to clients such as theaters, museums, parties and individuals. His customer requests range from simple Halloween masks to quirky company mascots.

“People come to me to express another side of themselves,” Bornstein said. “This journey of masks is about unlocking our true selves and integrating them into our societal roles.”

The most recent project Bornstein is working on is a Guy Fawkes mask from the movie V for Vendetta for a client in Michigan who is a big fan of this movie and has already owned a wig and costume of the character. He found Bornstein online and requested a mask identical to the one in the movie. A lot of independent customers like him come to Bornstein constantly, expecting him to make what they have in their mind come alive. Therefore, Bornstein usually has multiple tasks to handle in a certain period.

Typically, there are two formats of masks: face masks or large helmet masks. The Guy Fawkes mask is a face mask, with a strap on the back. A three-dimensional mask is like a helmet. A rat mask that Bornstein made last December, for example, is a much larger helmet mask. It is hard as sculpture to the touch, yet is very light, even lighter than a New Yorker magazine. There are also adjustable headgears inside so that people of different sizes can wear it comfortably even in the most demanding performances.

“The secret is paper,” Bornstein said, winking. “The masks are all made of paper.”

To make a solid paper mask, the first step is to create a sculpture with clay on a mannequin’s head, followed by the application of a negative mold in rubber. Then Bornstein splits the mold to separate the front and rear of the sculpture. The reason for a rubber mold is that the softness and smoothness of rubber captures many details and sculptural forms while also peeling off easily in the de-molding process. The rubber mold is supported by a stiff plastic mother mold, which stays on during the paper-casting process and is removed for de-molding the mask shell. Bornstein fills the rubber mold with several layers of paper pulp, stiff paper, fabric and thin paper that are bound with glue. After the paper laminates, he removes the mask shell from the mold to make a face mask, or he joins together the front and rear sides to form a complete helmet mask.

Bornstein has a rich educational background in mask making from home and abroad. He traveled to Bali in 1986 and studied mask making with master carver Agung Suardana. After establishing his mask studio in 1990, he went to Italy in the same year to learn mask making with Donato Sartori. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Harvard University Extension School in 2000.

He said, though, that he rarely uses the techniques he learned from school in his current mask making. Instead, he practices and researches ways to make a mask better, such as making screens to his masks.

All mask wearers need to see, so mask makers have to make space for a screen. Mask makers put the screened openings somewhere else on the mask, so that the performers see clearly what is going on at the stage and auditorium.

“It’s very important for performers to see on the stage,” he said. “Otherwise, they might hurt each other or themselves, maybe even fall from the stage. They are all young promising performers, and I want them to bring out the magic of the masks without missteps.”

Varaform, a state-of-the-art thermo-plastic mesh, is one material that Bornstein uses to build a strong, lightweight and see-through portal for some of the masks. It’s not hard to add a varaform, but the question is where. The rat mask, for example, has its screen built under its mouth on the neck. Bornstein cut a space off and fills it with gray-painted varaform to make it look solid from a distance.

After that, Bornstein has to paint, drill and do lots of other things to decorate the mask, making it look more life-like. He has a lot of painting tricks to achieve different effects on the masks.

“I don’t want the masks to look dead,” Bornstein said, quickly moving his brush. “That’s why I have to polish them until they bring out the magic of the arts at their best. ”

As he speaks, he looks up from his thin-framed glasses occasionally but keeps his piercing eyes mainly on the work. His thick mustache and beard framing his face flickers as his lips moves, offering a contrast to his thinning brown and gray hair. As a member of the “endangered species” of mask artists, he often dedicates 12 to 16 hours a day to his work.

“Mask making is a process that people explore to adopt many true faces that exist with them,” Bornstein said, correcting a dent on the nose of the Guy Fawkes mask. “And my job is to make this come true and perfect for them.”

Besides mask making, Bornstein also teaches mask classes in his studio and some private schools. He offers classes such as History of Masks, Quick Mask Making, Mask Drawing, Halloween Mask Making and Purim Mask Making. He is usually amazed by how creative his students as young as fourth grade can be, and he firmly believes mask making is one of the best tools to help people develop their imagination.

“I feel so wonderful to be a mask maker,” Bornstein said, shaking his head to the rhythm of the Tibetan music played by his computer. “I’ve heard so many stories in so many countries through the masks.” He takes one CD from his shelf, where he stores piles of CDs in various types from various countries, ranging from Indian religious music to Greek folk music.

“I wish I could make a trip to all these countries,” he says, smiling with his eyes closed, “to learn the arts of the masks there.”

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Masks have taken on many meanings 

By Dian Zhang

Masks played a role in primitive human society as a ritual symbol. According to John W. Nunley in his book Masks: Faces of Culture, the oldest mask was made of stone, dating back to 7000 B.C. Scholars such as Jamie Ellin Forbes, Julie Hilton Danan, Lisa Bradley and Eric Chazot believe that masks were usually associated with the unconquerable authority or impeachable worship by people in primitive ages throughout the world. From 6000 B.C., for example, the god Shiva’s image was depicted as wearing a horned mask in the cult of Shaivism, one of the largest four sects of the Hindu religion in India. To show respect to Dionysus, the god of wine, merry making, theatre and ecstasy in their culture, Greek people had to wear a mask when cavorting in the ritual. In North America, the Yupik people of South and West Alaska and Far East Russia used masks that were carried by several people or hung from the ceiling.

The peak of masks in rituals was the Carnival of Venice, dating back to 1162 A.D., in memory of the victory of a battle against Patriarch of Aquileia, according to Thomas F. Madden in his article A History of Venice. The event, during which people danced, celebrated, gathered and wore masks, became an annual festival and a symbol of the Renaissance. According to Liz Horodowich in her article Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic, Venetians were allowed to wear masks for around six months a year by the 18th century.

In Johannes Wiele’s article License to Mask: The Venetian Bauta Mask as a Historical Anonymization Device, she mentioned that Venetian people were inspired to make various kinds of masks. For instance, there were Bauta masks, covering the entire face; Columbina, covering half of the face; The Plague Doctor, a bizarre one with round eyeholes and a hollow beak; and Moreta, a black velvet mask with round eyeholes only covering the core of one’s face. This mask carnival was outlawed in 1797 under the rule of Austria, but was brought back in 1979 and has been one of the world’s most popular mask carnivals so far.

Masks have always been an important form in the arts, especially in theatre and drama arts. Before Medieval ages, the Greeks had been famous for formally applying masks into theatres from rituals. According to David Wiles’ book The Masks of Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, performers were wearing big masks at outdoor stages. In this case, a big sized mask made crowds of audiences able to see the character clearly from a far distance. At the same time, it enabled a few actors to play a lot of roles by simply changing the masks.

The 15th Century Renaissance in Italy witnessed the flourish of masks in theatre arts. According to Pierre Louis Duchartre’s book The Italian Comedy: The Improvisation, Scenarios, Lives, Attributes, Portraits, and Masks of the Illustrious Characters of the Commedia Dell’arte, Commedia dell’arte originated in Italy. The two-mask theatre form, which involved a lot of dancing and singing, were somewhat like the 15th-century version of Indian Bollywood comedies. The dramas were largely based on stories by ancient Roman comic playwrights Plautus and Terence, which were devoid of any serious political, social or intellectual content so they could be played on any occasions.

A lot of European countries, such as France, Germany and England, were following this trend to bring masks into theatre plays from the 18th to 20th Century. In England, the story Alice in Wonderland was converted into drama that required a lot of masked characters to show the magic animal roles such as rats, rabbits and cats. Masks became a powerful tool to show impersonated animals.

Mask usage in theatres flourished not only in Europe but also to other parts of the world such as America and Asia. In 1926, the story The Great God Brown by American playwright Eugene O’Neill was brought on the theatre stage, telling a story of two brothers exchanging identities. According to Paul S. Wingert in his article Mask, masks at that time were an irreplaceable tool in the play in which most characters wore masks of themselves to emphasize changes of their identity and inner mind. According to Jeffrey Scott in his article A Dialogue Between Sichuan and Beijing Opera, masks were widely used in Sichuan Opera in West China, in the mid 18th century. In its best-known face-changing section, masks painted previously on pieces of cloth and silk were changed by the performer from one face to another almost instantaneously within a movement of the head, or a wave of the hand. Masks, in one word, offered chances to build a wide arrange of characters in theatre arts.

Masks are not only important in theaters, but they have also been used as a tool in psychological therapy since the 1960s. In drama therapy, masks have served as a secure comfort to help people express themselves and find another side of their inner self and is usually used with children or adults with mental trauma who have problem of expressing their true ideas.

In mask-assisted drama therapy, patients will be asked to choose a mask to wear from a pool of various characters and take part in role-play games in a scene designed by the therapist. Sue Jennings describes in her book Drama Therapy with Families, Groups and Individuals: Waiting in the Wings about how performance with masks is used in her therapy. In her treatment of patients with eating disorder, for example, she asks patients to play roles according to the tale The Laidly Worm and let them create their own ending of the story. The Laidly Worm, according to Jennings, is a story paralleling lots of personal stories of eating disordered people she treated.

In mask-assisted therapy, the patients are put in a distance from their own identity, which allows them to express their true ideas under the disguise of the identity of a mask. They have no concerns of being exposed to others, because they can attribute what they said to the masks. Therefore it is easier for the therapist to approach the patients and give help them making mental progress.