Greek Mask

The origin of mantled theater dates back to Ancient Greece, between 550 BC and 220 BC. Initi altogethery screens were separate of an annual festival dedicated to honoring Dionysus, the Greek god of wine-coloured and fertility. The festival, named City Dionysia, was held in Athens and the approximately significant rituals involved clothed bring aboutances. Inspired by City Dionysia, the Greek acting fraternity shortly decided to incorporate the use of inters into theater. Thespis, a Greek actor and generator was the first recorded actor to wear a cover in a play.It is from him that we have derived the word, Thespian, a synonym for actor. Greek masks were make from light weight, organic materials such as stiffened linen, leather, wood or cork. The masks had overdod, ill-shapen facial features which allowed the reference to clearly see what character was cosmos portrayed, whether it was a male, a female, a priest or a peasant. The wideness of the mouths in like manner co iffed as megaphone to amplify the actors percentages in a massive theater. The costumes and props apply in Greek dramatic art differed according to the play and character being presented.A peasant would wear shoes with a thin sole and a simple toga while a wealthy merchant would wear magisterial platform shoes with colorful, embellished robe. If an actor had to play a female, then he would wear a mask with long hair and a knocker device called a prosterniad to give the illusion of breasts. Since Greek plays were single performed by a maximum of three men and a chorus of fifteen, they call for versatility to be able to switch seamlessly from act-to-act and character-to-character. Actors needed to be able perform in front of a large audience and have inviolable memorization skills, effective body positioning and spacial awareness.A loud, clear voice and singing capabilities was also important. The job of the chorus was to narrate and reflect on the action of the play as well as being extras if needed. deuce of the most influential types of plays invented by the Greeks were tragedies and comedies. Tragedies were serious plays based on mythology and most often threaded the downfall of a hero or heroine. tragical masks had mournful or pained expressions. The actors wore boots that elevated them above the actors to show office since the plays often involved depicting social hierarchy. Religious themes were more focussed in tragedies while omedies were lighter in message and involved jokes, parodies and slapstick humor. Comedic masks had hugely distorted smiling or leering faces to convey slipperiness and hilarity. Today the tragedy and comedy masks are renowned symbols of dramatic arts. Unfortunately, any(prenominal) physical evidence of a Greek mask has not survived and the lonesome(prenominal) source of evidence is from artworks and written accounts. There were several reasons why masks were collective in Greek drama. Masks allowed actors to easily play more than one character, peculiarly since Greek drama had actually few actors (no more than three men, excluding the chorus) in a play.The masks also allowed actors to portray animals and deities, and even female characters, since women were forbidden to act. Additionally, because the divergence between the pose and the audience of the theater was so vast, the exaggeration and ring amplification function of the masks allowed even the least-educated audience members to easily identify and observe the characters. The performance space itself was a large, open-air structure constructed on a specially chosen slope of a hill. The Greeks always performed in peak outdoor theaters to successfully project the voice of the actors to the immense number of spectators.Greek theatre is still considered to have one of the best stage acoustics, even compared to right aways theaters. Theaters, such as the Theatre of Dionysus, were built to entertain an audience of up to twenty thousand . They consisted of three principal elements the skene, the orchestra and the theatron. The skene was a large orthogonal building that served as an ancient equivalent of a backstage area. It was a place for the actors to change their costumes and masks and perform the killing scenes since it was considered to be inappropriate to depict a murder in front of an audience.The skene was also decorated to serve as a backdrop for the play, resulting in the English word scenery. Typically, thither were at least two doors to allow the actors to exit and enter the skene and onto the orchestra. The orchestra was a flat semi-circular area where the performance or religious rites tool place. This was the stage where the actors performed on and were on average 25 meters wide in diameter. nigh orchestras had an alter specially built for sacrifices dedicated to Dionysus. The theatron were the rows of tiered stones where the spectators sat.It was curved round the orchestra to allow the audience m embers to see and hear the play, even if they were at the very top. As Greek architecture continued to improve, the theaters became more elaborate and introduced the parodoi, paraskenion, proskenion, hyposkenion and the episkenion to the skene. Today, all that is left of the original skene of many Greek theaters is an arch surrounding the proskenion, which divine the proscenium arch. Although Greek theater is quite different to what we have through in drama, we can certainly relate the class period of Greek mask theater to what we have learned throughout our mask unit.Like the Greeks, we had to learn to exaggerate our movement (through body language, articulation, clocking and tension states) to ensure the audience soundless our storyline. We also incorporated the use of costumes and status like the Greeks to make our plays easier to understand. Because the mask concealed facial expressions, everything depended on the body yet we had to learn how to stay from talking with our ha nds. Very much like the Greek actors who new to the mask, suffered disorientation and restriction when masked, learning to perform fluidly with the mask was one of the biggest challenges we faced.We emphatically learned that mask work was not easy. It required skill, patience and practice to create a short play that would capture our audiences attention. In conclusion, Greek theater has certainly made a positive impact on modern theater and drama. It is to the Greeks that we owe not only the first great plays of tragedy and comedy, but paved the pathway of mask theater, its acceptance in performing arts and of dramatic construction and theory. convey to the Greeks, today we know mask work is a dramatic art form that has centuries of history and should be respected and preserved.