Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2006 - 41

Over 200 people participated in this comprehensive, action-packed conference that embraced both the sacred and
the profane worlds of the mask. Conference coordinators Ron
Naversen, Hilary Chandler, and Segun Ojewuyi created the the
perfect environment in which, for four days, mischievous
clowns, aspiring angels, ancestral and matriarchal spirits, demons, and tragic heroes all lived under the proscenium arch
of Southern Illinois University Carbondale's McLeod Theatre,

Larry Hunt performing in This World, the Next and Then the Peach Orchard.

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in the galleries of the University Museum, and in the halls of
the Carbondale Convention Center. They spilled onto the city's
streets for the Saturday mask celebration festival.
The coordinators seemed undaunted by the intricate upfront planning, quests for funding, large crowd turn-out, and
execution of twenty-two scholarly presentations as well as the
logistical challenges of publicizing the event and mounting six
fully produced masked performances. They coordinated (or
co-hosted) a mask cabaret at a local nightclub, twenty-one
mask-making or masked performance workshops, eleven
mask poster exhibits, a mask bazaar, and vendor exhibits involving the artistry of over thirty-four mask makers from
around the world. Conference patrons representing
Carbondale's elite as well as Carbondale Cultural Center and
businesses hosted a spectacular masquerade ball culminating
at the Dunn Richmond Center complete with music by the New
Arts Jazz Quartet (with renditions by Lori Merrill-Fink and the
Marjorie Lawrence Opera Theatre), food, wine, and elaborately-dressed masked conference participants frolicking past
midnight.
The University Museum's director, Dona Bachman, declared that she found the perfect person, Michael Hernandez,
to curate the extensive mask exhibit in celebration of the conference. "He has the anthropological interest necessary for
mounting such a detailed historical examination of masks,"
she explained. "Michael Hernandez and Ron Naversen coordinated the immense amount of masks loaned from a range of
mask collections worldwide. With an exhibit featuring nearly
300 masks, loans from the collections were critical.
Hernandez worked well with students and recruited many to
assist with the research, painting, construction, and the creation of an educational area for young people."
Hernandez agreed to serve as the guest curator for the
exhibit entitled Behind the Masks: Art, Culture, and History
although initially he did not realize the complex scope of the
topic. "As the project started, my exhibit team found an overabundance of popular culture information and a large number
of potential topics," he said. "I realized that the project
needed an academic focus. As an anthropologist, my first instinct was to approach the project from a purely cultural aspect, exploring in-depth the cultural history of communities
around the world. Like any good researchers, my team and I
began scanning the library and on-line electronic journals for
basic information. As the collection of resources grew, it
quickly became apparent that little academic information
from any field of study has been published about masks since
the mid-1980s. However, what information we did find came
from a vast range of disciplines, such as anthropology, art, history, theatre, communication, and performance studies; each
with its own focus and agenda. Because of the disjointed information and lack of any large-scale studies on this topic, I decided to take a multidisciplinary view of the exhibit, which
allowed me to create an exhibit that addressed the cultural,
artistic, and historical components of masks and mask making

TECHNOLOGY
SPRING

2006
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2006
