A dark figure stirs in the mist. He calls you toward the shadows. A doorway opens to his underground kingdom. The kingdom of the Opera Ghost. The Angel of Music. The Phantom of the Opera. The shadows pull away from his face, but it is not his face that greets you. It is his mask. Shining in the darkness, reflecting the light he brings. You stare into the mask and…
Stop.
What mask do you see?
For many of us, the image created by Andrew Lloyd Webber and originated by Michael Crawford is burned into our minds. The blindingly white half-mask of the Phantom.
In Gaston Leroux’s original book, there are very few details given about the mask, but from those details, a different image emerges.
“…and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face.”
GASTON LEROUX, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1910)
“…the man in the black cloak and the black mask.”
The gleaming white mask becomes black. The crescent shape becomes whole.
Each adaptation crafts a different mask for the Phantom. Some of the most accurate depictions are found in the most inaccurate adaptations.
The 1983 TV movie version starring Jane Seymour probably has one of the most accurate mask designs. A black mask that covers his whole face, but the story follows the lead set by Claude Rains and deforms the Phantom by throwing acid in his face.
For Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, I needed to make a decision on how to depict the mask. While many of my decisions in crafting the story come from either the book or the 1925 film, I know I need to veer away from them, just like all of the other adaptations.
The 1925 mask is an engineering masterpiece. Somehow, Lon Chaney is able to emote through the rigid, molded mask, showing both excitement and depression with the slightest tilt. It is a feat I can’t even conceive of attempting to reproduce.
A black mask, like in the book, would make a lot more sense than a shining white one. The mask is meant to hide the Phantom, not make him glow in the dark. But in terms of theatricality, a white surface gives our lighting designer a lot more to play with than black. The mood of each scene can be reflected in the mask. So, despite the source material, I decide that the mask should be white.
This decision finds roots back in the play’s college dorm room origins. My idea for the story takes a lot of inspiration from this illustration by Romil Ilagan which started out as a piece of fan art, but was eventually sold to Llumina Press for their hardcover edition of Susan Kay’s 1990 novel, Phantom. It’s an image I found online and held onto in my mind for years to come.
The picture is haunting and elegant, but making it a reality turns out to be harder than I thought. I scour the internet trying to find a mask like the one in the picture, but run into dead ends at every turn. The closest I can find are Venetian Bauta masks. I even buy one to try it out, but when we put it on Scott Baisden, it ends up looking silly. I contact a custom mask maker to see if they would make one for me, but they never answer my emails.
While I continue searching for the Phantom’s mask, Scott gets to work on the mask of the Red Death. This is something he offers to do from the beginning, wanting to create the mask out of an actual skull molding. Using papier-mâché, he creates the grinning skeleton for the Masquerade scene. It is bloody, chilling, and quite effective.
I bring the problem to Ashley F Viersen, my costume designer (who also happens to be the actor playing Carlotta), and she immediately knows how to make it happen.
She finds a standard white domino mask and is able to adhere a cloth fabric to it. This way, the mask is pliable while retaining a shape. And the thin fabric prevents the mask from muffling Scott’s voice. And proof positive of my color choice, Charles Fortenbacher has a lot of fun playing with its reflective surface.
The relatively small amount of contact it makes on Scott’s face also keeps it from messing up his make-up. His make-up eventually gets messed up by the sweat and heat of his performance, but that only heightens his character’s disintegration. It also makes it easy to peel off at the end. The congenital skin disease that we base his make-up design on literally worsens when exposed to the light. So, it makes sense that when the Phantom’s love for Christine draws him from the shadows, his deformity worsens.
The only thing we were unable to figure out was the hat. Due to our continuing relationship with Grand Valley State University, we were able to dive into their costume storage, but could not find a single wide-brimmed fedora. And similar to the Venetian Bauta mask, every other hat we tried ended up not looking right.
In the end though, I think we were successful in giving the Phantom the mask he deserved. A shining shape in the darkness, full of color, full of shadows. And for the next theater company that produces my play, I hope I have given them just enough details to help them to reshape the Phantom’s mask.
“Mist rises onto the stage, revealing the PHANTOM. He is cloaked in black and wearing a mask that covers his entire face.”
From the Next Stage Press publication
- Original production stills by Chris Kotcher.