GC1: Mask Historical Context Research

Mask Making (Historical Context and Time line)

Introduction

Masks were first used in theatre to enhance the actors expressions and acting, enlarging the facial features. Theatre masks were used in ancient Roman and Greek dramas to portray character. Theatre masks are used as a symbol of balance of emotions that theatre aims to strike.

ANCIENT GREECE    5^th century BC

The masks that were famously used in ancient Greece were employed to honour, worship and depict their mythical gods.  In ancient Greece the progress from ritual to ritual-drama was continued in highly formed theatrical representations. They were heavily made and of a size to enlarge the actors presence, the Greek mask seems to have been designed to throw the voice for example, they had built in microphone devices and by exaggeration of the features, to make clear at a distance the precise nature of the character. Greek actors were limited by convention to three speakers for each tragedy to impersonate a number of different characters during the play simply by changing masks and costume.

 

Middle Ages  12^th -16^th century

In plays dramatizing portions of the Old and New Testaments, grotesques of all sorts, such as devils, demons, dragons, and personifications of the seven deadly sins, were brought to stage life by the use of masks.

 

 

 

 

Renaissance   15^th  century

The 15th-century Renaissance in Italy witnessed the rise of a theatrical phenomenon that spread rapidly to France, to Germany, and to England, where it maintained its popularity into the 18th century. Comedies improvised from scenarios based upon the domestic dramas of the ancient Roman comic playwrights “Plautus” and Terence (186/185-159 BC) and upon situations drawn from anonymous ancient Roman mimes flourished under the title of Commedia dell' Arte. Adopting the Roman stock figures and situations to their own usage's, the players of the Commedia were usually masked. Excellent pictorial records of both commedia costumes and masks exist; some sketches show the characters of “Arlecchino” and “Colombina” wearing black masks covering merely the eyes, from which the later masquerade mask is certainly a development.

 

                                          

 

 

Modern Day (Entertainment, Performance, film and television

Masks have been used almost universally to represent characters in theatrical performances. Theatrical performances are a visual literature of a transient, momentary kind. It is most impressive because it can be seen as a reality; it expends itself by its very revelation. The mask participates as a more enduring element, since its form is physical.

Conclusion

Over the years masks were used for expression and characterisation in theatre. The kind of mask I want to do is a Renaissance age mask.