Eric Bornstein of Behind The Mask Studio &Theatre is an award-winning artist who specializes in custom made masks, corporate event planning, arts education, and mask theater programming. Eric has studied mask making with masters Agung Suardana in Bali, and Donato Sartori in Italy. He received his MLA in Fine Arts (Art History) along with the Thomas Small prize from Harvard University. Eric was awarded a Fulbright award to revive and reinvigorate the art of giant puppet effigies in Jamaica 2017. He won the 2016 IRNE award for Best Puppetry Design for Company One's Shockheaded Peter, and was part of the Liars & Believers team that won the Excellence in Production Design award at the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2012 for his masks in Le Cabaret Grimm.

Past clients include: Boston and Ft. Wayne Ballets’ Nutcrackers, Sugarloaf Ballet’s Beauty and the Beast, Boston Lyric Opera's Madama Butterfly, Peabody Museum at Harvard, Gamm Theatre's Morality Play, corporate video game promotions for Bethesda Softworks video games: Dishonored (Versailles, France), Skyrim/Elder Scrolls at The Boston Park Plaza Castle, Wolfenstein, and The Evil Within, Underground Railway Theater’s Life of Galileo, and First Night Boston. Eric was also featured on the PBS hit show, Pinkalicious and Peteriffic.

He currently teaches classes in making and performing masks, and offers performances and residencies to schools throughout the state through Young Audiences of Massachusetts. Over the last 30 years Eric’s masked characters have been the subject of numerous media features. Local and national media have described Eric as “Boston’s preeminent mask maker”…”a man of many talents” and his masks as “phantasmagoric,” “magnificent,” “Stunning, finely crafted…first-rate,” “eerie/enchanting,” "masterful," "outstanding," and “gorgeous.”

For more information please visit www.behindthemask.org or https://www.facebook.com/behindthemask1