The Fairground Booth Dairy 3

Porcelain Dolls and Masks

Whilst working on two projects at once, there is one which I cannot talk about at the moment. However The Fairground Booth is always taking small steps forward. I have come to the stage where I am thinking about casting The Fairground Booth. Overall I have realised what kind of look I might want for the actors. Essentially I will begin the search for faces which have a natural soft porcelain skin - like porcelain dolls, human but pale and smooth so that perhaps no makeup or very little will be required. Riding on the metro yesterday through Moscow I began to seek out such  unusual faces and they are there to be found, so this is the direction I will take on on casting. One of the advantages of this apart form being on theme is that the "look" should cross between puppets and graphics and pictures and masks and actors so that the difference between all these components are blurred or at least ambiguous.

There are of course other grotesqueries in the characters of the play but that is a different casting decision.

I also plan to film some buildings on Ostozhensko Street not far from Christ the Saviour Cathedral. There are a group of art nouveau (or "Modern" as it is in Russian) apartments with fantastical swirling mask like designs and grotesque faces from that period.  I had intended to film some buildings of this style but these are better as the motifs are mask like and can be integrated into the film by dissolving to real masks. The word here is grotesque. Even though the lines and the  motifs are beautifully designed there is a strong hint of the grotesque as the swirling plaster and stone images return and delve into the mouth of the "mask" which is not in fact a mask but the suggestion of a mask which makes it all the more effective and illusive.

The porcelain is akin to the plaster of the decorative designs on the buildings linking the architecture to masks and in turn to a face.