Masks have always been a passion for me. I remember making a cast of my face in year 11 and using that as a base for a paper mask. In modern times mask is still used, particularly in si-fi and fantasy. The actor playing a Klingon sits for hours while the makeup artist turns him into an alien. Or the clown in a circus spends time in front of a mirror with grease paint making his unique face to become the circus clown. Or the fringe thespian experiments with a mask to be something else for a while. Weather it be an alien or a clown or a contemporary mockery or a moral joke; the mask has its place in theatre, even to this day.
Ancient Greece is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It is from these times we get such great names as: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras. Greece as we know it did not exist then; there were the Hellens, who occupied what we now know as Greece, Turkey and the islands around that region of the Mediterranean. The Hellen’s had a number of city states, united by a common language and cultural ideals.
If there was one thing the Hellens liked it was theater, and they were willing to go to some lengths to make it happen. There theatres were sturdy stone structures and many still exist and are used to this day. Only a few of their scripts remain, that and pictures on the sides of jugs, urns and bowls tell us what their theater was like. For the Ancient Greeks theater wasn’t just an entertaining day out; theater was a spiritual rite. They liked to use masks; often made of clay, sturdy stuff, so we have some examples of their masks in museums today.
About a thousand years after Greek theater went out of fashion a new kind of mask theater came into vogue. Commedia Dell’Arte was a common, crass form of theater performed on the streets of renaissance Italy. It was entirely secular and lacked the poetry and piety of Greek theater. But like the Greeks they liked masks. We don’t have any scripts of these plays, because there weren’t any, the performances were largely improvised. But we do have vivid details of the costumes, masks, characters and plots. These were stock standard comedic characters put in situations that anyone could relate to and laugh at. The masks were made of leather or paper and glue, so they have not survived to this day. But illustrations and descriptions have survived and we can see these classic characters portrayed in modern comedies such as The Simpsons or Black Adder; some things don’t change.
Greek drama was presented by a very small troop of actors, usually as little as three and there were no woman in the troop. Any actor was going to play a number of roles and men had to play woman. Under these circumstances the mask helped the audience make sense of which character was speaking.
Commedia was very physical and visual; with little emphasis given to speech. The masks helped create this visual humour. This helped the troupes out of their home country of Italy to tour all over Europe. An uneducated Frenchman could appreciate the visual jokes, even if he couldn’t understand what was being said.
In both cases the mask does a lot of the work for the actor; the mask has a transforming effect. With it’s spiritual basis it seems likely to me that the ancient actor would have had a strong sense of channeling the spirit of the character he was portraying. The Commedia actor was probably more concerned with getting a laugh from a funny peace of costuming. But there would still be a sense of transformation; the actor is changed by the mask.
One of the most notable differences between the two mask traditions is the amount of the face covers by the mask. The spoken word was important to Greek drama, long soliloquies with poetic meter and style. Despite this the whole face was covered; the mouth was wide open to let the actors voice out, often the mouth formed a trumpet effect to amplify the actors voice.
Visual effect was important to Commedia Dell’Arte. Despite this only the top part of the face was covered, freeing the actor to express him self with his voice and mouth. Although it is often considered that letting the gaze of the mask do the work is the best way to perform Commedia. (Crawford 2003 pg 110)
Ancient Greek theater went on over a long period of time, Plato mentions the theatre in his writings in the fifth century BC. Augustine mentions the theatre a thousand years later. There were two main influences driving the Ancient Greek worldview: a pantheon of Gods such as: Zeus, Apollo and Athena and the philosophers with such schools as: The Skeptics, The Stoics and The Pythagoreans. The Greeks saw themselves as a civilised, God fairing people; the gods rewarded civilised behaviour and punished transgressions. Many of the Greek city states were democratic, but it wasn’t much like the democracy we have today where we elect representatives. All matters of law and politics were debated and voted on in court. Woman, slaves and foreigners didn’t get a vote and had few other rights. Those who got a vote only did so if they turned up to court to participate in the debate. This meant there was a compelling need for people who could argue a point; this was the role of the Sophists. The Sophists would argue a point for a fee, they didn’t believe there was any truth, only convincing arguments. Plato had a very high regard for truth and a very low regard for Sophists and the theatre. For Plato the theatre was a pointless waste of time and energy; not a source of true knowledge or morals at all.
About five hundred years after Plato the Christians come in on the scene and things began to change. Greek theater slowly went out of fashion as did Greek philosophy. The educated class became more concerned with the lives and thoughts of the saints and the mysteries of the Bible; this went on for close to a thousand years. Then in the fourteenth century a change started to come over the thinkers and artists of Europe; this was the renaissance and the rise of humanism:. Marco Polo comes back from China with the idea of printing. This is a huge boom for education and reading, now people can read their Bible; not just rely on what their priest tells them. Not just the Bible either, the Greek classics are revived, science is explaining things in a new way and emerging philosophies are changing the way people think. Christopher Columbus has discovered the Americas; making the fact that the world is round relevant and showing the world is much bigger than anyone ever thought. It is in the exciting time of new ideas that Commedia Dell’Arte makes a relatively short lived show. Commedia was popular from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventh century, the tail end of the renaissance. It was not to appease the gods or to instruct in the gospel it was just fun; art for art’s sake, because that is what humans like to do.
We have looked at two very different styles of theater that were popular over a thousand years apart with one common thread; they used masks to define the characters. It is pure conjecture; but I imagine Greek Satire and Commedia weren’t so different and we can see much of these absurd caricatures in much of our modern comedy. Today we might see masks used in experimental fringe theater or more commonly in sifi, fantasy and superhero movies. We certainly wouldn’t see mask used in a serious drama. Although I have seen hats used to a similar effect by a small theater troupe where the few actors had to take on many roles. Even the clown face (a kind of mask) has largely gone out of fashion. Yet the Greek mask and the Commedia mask might still have some place in the classroom. Wether it be in the school drama class or as a training aid for actors; the mask can inspire the student to take on a different character for a while.
Clown Artist Philosopher 