UNCOVERING CREATIVITY: MASK WORKSHOP AN EXERCISE IN LETTING GO

Lee Soroko's age 26 qualifies him as a member of the MTV Generation, but he thinks the music video channel and Nintendo undermine creativity.

"We live in a society in which creativity is being eroded away by blanket information," he says.

"People have trouble making creative decisions."

For the past two weeks, Soroko has been leading a theater workshop aimed at short-circuiting the expectation of five-minute stories and pat answers.

"People want answers, they want quick fixes," says Soroko, a University of Texas graduate who is associated with the Actors' Theatre of Louisville.

The workshop employs masks in an attempt to help the participants reveal themselves in new ways. Soroko made the masks, basing them on the faces of real people, only distorted.

He describes the experience of donning a mask as "almost transcendental...Your frame of reference is instantly different."

Soroko calls masks "permission-givers."

Everyone who has dressed up on Halloween knows they feel different being behind a mask. Romeo and Juliet had the nerve to meet while wearing masks, Soroko points out.

The workshop participants have spent the weeks trying to give a characterization to their mask by creating movement with their bodies.

"The mask allows them to reveal other layers of themselves," Soroko says.

At the end of each exercise they write in their journals, an effort to help them build on their characters.

When Soroko said they were about to board a train and instructed them only to "dress appropriately," some rebelled. They wanted to decide which costumes to choose based on where the train is going.

"Some are able to buy in and some are not," he observed.

But external answers only cloud the internal selves Soroko hopes each is encountering. "All those answers have to come from you," he said.

He encourages the mask-wearers to seek out their edges.

"The longer you're willing to put yourself out there and take a risk, the closer to artistry you come," he said.

One of the braver male participants boarded the train in a woman's swimming suit and skirt.

Soroko admits none of this is easy. "The number one fear in America is public speaking," he said, "but people think acting is the easiest job in the world."

The loony-goony-moony-looking creatures who have been milling about the Franklin School gym include four adults, two children, one near-teen and one 'tweener 20-year-old Jenny Adams of Cape Girardeau.

Anesthesiologist Larry Mayer, 53, his wife Graciela and their children Melody, 11, and Erik, 9, are taking the workshop. None of the members of the Cape Girardeau family is involved in theater, and they didn't come to become Oliviers.

"I thought it would be kind of strange, like having a new personality," Erik said.

Graciela, 45, describes her mask as "a very free spirit. It really becomes something different when I wear it."

Also playing with personae were 12-year-old Charles McGinty of Cape Girardeau, and Laura Brothers, 41, and 59-year-old Jen Sievers, both of Jackson. Brothers is an administrator with the Southeast Missouri Council on the Arts.

"It's been a struggle," Brothers said of the attempt to understand her mask. "I started out with my negative vibes, and I'm not at all sure they're gone."

Some were experiencing the freedom Soroko says the masks can help achieve.

"You can do whatever you want," said Melody Mayer. "And not get into trouble because it's not really you," McGinty added.

In one of the exercises, Soroko directed them to walk as if they are being drawn by one part of their body or another.

"It's so weird to think about how you walk," said Adams, who does have a theater background. "...Apparently there's a reason why we walk the way we do."

Soroko, whose visit here was paid for by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Association of Local Arts Agencies, extends his critique of creativity to the current state of the theater.

"Theater is trying to be things it cannot be," Soroko said, citing "Les Miserables" and "Phantom of the Opera" as attempts albeit highly popular ones to give the audience MTV-style spectacle in place of the real thing.

"MTV made society want small, digestible bits of stories with a soundtrack and location," Soroko says. "In live drama, you'll never have that."

"...What theater is is life in the immediate. There is an element of danger, of risk and life."

There are lessons in such a workshop for everyone, Soroko said. "As human beings we tend to be afraid of saying the wrong thing or making fools of ourselves."

The mask gives permission to act differently, unafraid.

"Everything is OK," Soroko said.