Noisemakers 2000: Mask off!

>> Anana Rydvald is one of Mask On!'s beautiful monsters

by AMY BARRATT

A June evening in 1999. Cafe Campus. A rowdy crowd has gathered to experience that one-stop preview of the Fringe festival known as the Fringe-for-all.

In the middle of this smoky, beery evening, a tall, lanky figure walks onstage wearing a grotesque hare-lipped mask. When she speaks it's in a booming, percussive Russian accent, and when she really wants your attention she points a long bony finger at you, tracing circles with it in the air. Somehow the tiny motion of that finger seemed to convey a whole character, and I knew I must see more of this show, Mask On!

The character was a bitter, self-absorbed street performer. The actor behind the mask was Anana Rydvald. Mask On! was four interwoven monologues performed by Rydvald, Holly O'Brien, Kori Gulotta and Amy Sobol, each of whom played an equally exaggerated character.

The collective has since added one more member, Kathy Daehler, and produced a second show, Tripping Through Oz, about a group of misfits staging The Wizard of Oz in a church basement.

"We're five women, and we're holding there," Rydvald says. "It was a conscious desire to have all women, because it's a little more difficult for women to get work, and also to support women being funny. When we're together, we make each other feel funny." And that's especially important in a comedy scene that is dominated by men and a male sensibility. That doesn't mean they won't work with men--as they did in Tripping Through Oz--just that they consider themselves "female-oriented."

Mask On! (the company) has big plans for the year 2000. There will be a brand new show in April, and both earlier shows will be revived in the new year. Mask On! (the show) gets a remount at infinitheatre Jan. 27 to Feb. 6, and Tripping Through Oz will play next summer's Fringe.

Go see them. For the hilariously perceptive and outrageous characterizations. And for the shiver that runs up your spine when those attractive young faces emerge from behind the monstrous masks. l

more artsweek...