Mann Alfonso and Terryl Daluz in "MASKS"

In MASKS, we take the audience on a fictional 30-year journey through the lives of two characters as they struggle with their manhood, while battling with their past to shed their masks.  The play was inspired by the real experiences of young people that I, along with my writing partner Mann Alfonso, witnessed while working in the group home system as residential counselors.  We’re honored to say that these experiences helped us write and perform an award-winning play.

Mann and I have a couple of things in common.  We’re both from the Northeast, we each have backgrounds in theater and we both moved to LA to pursue our dream as actors.  In LA, we met while working at a group home. The love of theater was the foundation of our partnership, which has blossomed into true friendship.  The universe has a way of working things out –  everything has come full circle.

Terryl Dalus

My love of performing started back in high school, performing at talent shows and other high school productions.  But it wasn’t until I walked into the renowned Negro Ensemble Company that I really fell in love with the stage.  I can remember walking through those doors, being mesmerized by the pictures on the walls of all the famous actors who had performed there.  This place has produced some of the greatest thespians of our time — Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson, Lou Gossett, Jr., Phylicia Rashad, and the list goes on.  The one picture that really struck me was a picture of my favorite actor Denzel Washington as Private First Class Melvin Peterson in the production of A Soldier’s Play, which received the 1982 Obie Award for Distinguished Ensemble Performance.

At the time I was fresh out of high school, with no real theater credits. But I knew that I wanted to be a part of N.E.C.  I walked into the office without an appointment, and I asked the young lady at the desk, “Can I audition to be a part of the N.E.C.?”  She gave me a “Really, kid?” look and stated that they weren’t auditioning right now — but when they did, I would need an appointment.   I didn’t let this stop me.  I volunteered to sweep the stage, be a gofer, do anything.  The young woman hesitated for a moment, looked me in my eyes, saw the determination and said, “You know what, I have something for you to do.”  She happened to be the stage manager and she offered me an internship as a stage hand.  I was ecstatic!  I met the cast, the crew, the director, and after some time, they gave me a shot at understudying.  Then, the day came for me to hit the stage with the N.E.C. I have been hooked ever since.

Fast forward. Some years later I moved to LA to chase my dream of being a working actor and writer.  I took a job working the graveyard shift as a residential counselor for a group home facility.  I’d worked in this field back east, and I needed a job to pay the bills.  Working graveyard also gave me the opportunity to write while working and to audition during the day.

Mann Alfonso

A couple of months passed, and after trying to get auditions and acting work, I realized that I had to create my own work.  I decided to write a one-man play about the very thing that I knew a lot about — the people I worked with in the system.  I had just started writing when I saw a documentary on kids growing up in the system at a staff in-service meeting.  The stories were heavy and draining.  If it weren’t for a staff member named Mann Alfonso and his humor throughout the meeting, everyone would have left depressed, in need of some Prozac.  A light bulb went off in my head. I needed a comedy aspect to balance such a heavy subject matter, and Mann was the perfect person to bring on to the project.

I approached Mann, and he accepted the offer full-heartedly.  Together, we embarked on this life-changing writing experience.  We came up with the concept of telling the stories of these two characters who grew up in the system and became friends. Both of them hide their pain behind  “masks.”   We shared our experiences of the young people we’d worked with.  We worked together during the day to develop the characters and flesh out the structure and then wrote the play during our graveyard shift.  The experience was cathartic.  We were writing about things that had just happened while working our shift.  In many ways the play wrote itself.

After two months of writing, we showcased our work.  Some said, “There is no way you could write a play and put it up in two months time.”  They even doubted the fact that we could direct ourselves.  Well, we did.  We produced and directed it on a very, very, tight residential counselor budget.  We  purchased our wardrobe, props, built our set, designed the lighting and the sound, found a crew, found a theater, rehearsed the play, loaded in and performed to a packed house at Secret Rose Theatre in NoHo in the fall of 2007.  The audience consisted of group home residents and staff, friends, avid theatergoers and the NAACP Theatre Award nominating committee.   The constant laughter by the audience and the talking to the characters on stage by the group home kids validated that our work was authentic.

At a star-studded event at the Kodak Theatre in June of 2008, we won an NAACP Theatre Award for Best Playwright – Local, for MASKS.  It has been performed at theaters throughout LA, for group homes and at the NYC International Fringe Festival, the largest theater festival in North America, in the summer of 2010.

We’d like to invite anyone who is willing to jump aboard, and take this emotional roller coaster ride into the world of MASKS.

MASKS, presented by Masks Productions in association with J.E.T. Productions-West. Opens Jan. 20. Plays Fri. 8 pm, Sat. 7 pm, Sun. 3 pm; Fri. Jan 27 at 8 pm, Sat. Jan 28, 7 pm; Tues. Feb.7 and 21 at 7:30 pm. Starting in March, shows continue the last Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm.  Tickets: $20; Seniors/Students: $15. J.E.T. Studios, 5216 Lankershim Blvd., NoHo. masksplay.eventbrite.com. 818-358-3453.

***All MASKS production photo by Dheeaba Donghrer

Terryl Daluz is an LA-based writer and actor who has appeared in numerous theater productions, films and television.  Terryl and his writing partner Mann Alfonso came together to start their own production company, Masks Production.  Their short film The Fighter and the Clown was an official selection of the Hollywood Film Festival in 2010.   In 2012, Masks Productions continues to development new material that will inspire, entertain and inform others.