Minotaur, Big Brum Theatre

A Dark Myth. A Sculptor's Vision. A Mask Built in Five Days.

Commission: Big Brum Theatre in Education | The Minotaur | Theatrical Mask — Sculpted, Moulded, Cast

The Brief

Big Brum Theatre in Education is one of the UK's most respected Theatre in Education companies — a Birmingham-based organisation with a forty-year history of making work that takes young audiences seriously, that engages with difficult ideas without flinching, and that trusts children to inhabit complex emotional territory.

Chris Cooper's production of the Minotaur was a dark reworking of the original Greek mythology — not the pantomime monster of popular imagination, but the tragic, ambiguous creature of the original myth: half human, half beast, imprisoned for what he is rather than what he has done. A character of genuine pathos, and genuine terror.

The production's creative reference point was the work of sculptor Beth Carter — whose bronze figures of hybrid human-animal creatures carry a rich patina of oxidising iron ore, a surface quality of age and weight and sorrow. That surface was the brief: replicate it, in a mask, on a face, in five days.

The Craft

The mask was built through the full sculptural fabrication process — sculpted in clay, cast in plaster, reproduced in the final material — a process that normally takes significantly longer than five days and was compressed here through experience, efficiency and a clear understanding of exactly what the brief required.

The central challenge was the surface finish. Beth Carter's sculptural work derives its power from the texture and colour of oxidising metal — a surface that suggests age, weight and transformation, that reads simultaneously as organic and industrial, as living and ancient. Replicating that quality in a theatrical mask required careful material selection and finishing work: the final metallic finish disguises an incredibly lightweight and comfortable mask — one that an actor can apply independently, wear throughout a performance without discomfort, and trust to read correctly under stage lighting at every distance from the front row to the back of the house.

The result is a mask that does what the best theatrical masks always do — it does not cover the actor's face, it transforms it. The Minotaur is not wearing a mask. He is wearing his face.

The Specifications

Sculpted in clay. Cast in plaster. Reproduced in final material. Metallic finish replicating the aesthetic of oxidising iron ore. Lightweight and comfortable for independent actor application. Built for repeated theatrical performance.

Build time: Five days.

A Note on Theatre in Education

Big Brum is one of a number of theatre companies Creature Encounters has worked with whose practice places particular demands on the characters and masks we build — demands that go beyond the technical and into the ethical. Theatre in Education work that engages with difficult mythology, with grief, with violence, with the complexity of being human, requires characters that carry genuine weight. A mask that reads as costume breaks the work. A mask that reads as face serves it.

We understand that distinction. We build for it. And we are proud to have contributed to work as serious and as important as Big Brum's.

Thinking About Something Similar?

If you are a theatre company, director or designer looking for a mask or prosthetic character for a production — whether a single piece built to a specific artistic reference, or a suite of characters for a larger work — we would love to talk.

We work across the full spectrum of theatrical mask fabrication, from simple, fast-turnaround pieces built to a tight production schedule to complex, multi-layer prosthetic builds designed to last a long run. Every mask starts with the same question: what does this character need the audience to feel?

To arrange an informal, no-obligation Discovery Call with Jamie and Michael, please use the Enquire button below.

Creature Encounters are designers, makers and performers of extraordinary puppet experiences, based in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. We have delivered bespoke masks, puppets and animatronic characters for theatre companies, visitor attractions, live events and broadcast across the UK and internationally, for clients including Big Brum Theatre in Education, Away Resorts, Mark Thompson Productions, Atomic London / Greater Anglia Trains, Vectis Ventures / Robin Hill Country Park, Vectis Ventures / Blackgang Chine, Animal Madness Ltd, Lakeside Arts Nottingham, and the Remal International Festival in Kuwait.