Analysis:

Mask: Origin, Development and Change

Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy: "In its oldest form, Greek tragedy only takes Dionysus's suffering as the theme. For a long time, the only protagonist on the stage was Dionysus ... Before euripides, Dionysus was always the protagonist of the tragedy. On the contrary, all the famous figures on the Greek stage, Prometheus, Oedipus and so on, are just masks of the original protagonist Dionysus. " As we know, the ancient Greek drama originated from the ancient Greeks offering sacrifices to Dionysus in the Spring and Autumn Period, so Dionysus is also called the God of Drama. The mask is regarded as the existence of body double, the body of Dionysus Dionysus, or we can call it the absence of Dionysus.

According to Horace's record in The Art of Poetry, the mask was created by Aeschylus. Mask, its Latin etymology is persona, not the mask we are familiar with. Some scholars, after studying the Christian manuscripts of East Anglia in England from the end of15th century to the beginning of16th century, think that the introduction of a "almost blank word without any heavy historical responsibility" from * * language to express masks as a drama term in English is the impetus of the overall wave of humanism. Just like its origin, the mask was originally associated with divinity. With the gradual indifference of human divine consciousness, the mask gradually faded its sacred veil. During the Renaissance, its era as a symbol of the god of drama ceremony finally ended.

Mask is an ancient dramatic expression technique, which first appeared in Greek tragedies in the 5th century BC. There are usually only six or seven characters in ancient Greek drama. These roles are played by three actors in turn, and the female role is played by the male actor, wearing a mask without falsetto. There was always chorus in ancient Greek drama performances, and actors generally did not wear masks. At that time, masks were only used as props. With the help of masks, an actor can take turns to play several different roles, which can solve the problem of insufficient actors. Secondly, the use of masks is also to overcome the limitations of theater conditions, so that the audience can clearly identify the image of actors in an open-air theater that can accommodate more than 10,000 people, similar to the facial makeup in China traditional operas. In chapter 15 of Aristotle's Poetics, it is written as follows: "To define character ... the first and most important point is that' character' must be kind ... every class has kind people: in fact, there are kind women or kind slaves in the world, although women undoubtedly belong to the lower class, and slaves as a class are worthless." Here, we therefore, in the sixth century BC, when the celebrations in ancient Greece became so-called dramas, women disappeared from such activities. "Women" began to be staged by men, but real women were forbidden to go on stage. Because it is often necessary to express the struggle between the sexes in drama, actors have to play the role of women. Masks have become a medium for men to shape women's images here.

The ancient Roman drama is in the same strain as the ancient Greek drama in the origin of drama, and even its theater is modeled after the ancient Greek theater. When classical drama gradually declined, Atla comedies and parodies continued to be popular. The farce of Atlas was originally a play by the Oscar people in Oena, and was introduced to ancient Rome around 300 BC. Masked performances are also used in the performances, mostly focusing on ancient Italian rural life. In Atra's comedies, the actors play four main types of characters through masks: "Malcus"-a stupid clown, "Bu"-a greedy rapper, "Pappus"-a stingy and lewd old man, "Dosenus"-an ignorant and treacherous hunchback. Mask has become the label of typed characters in Atra comedy, and people can easily identify the personality characteristics of characters from the mask. The emergence of parody may be related to the Greeks who colonized southern Italy. Its theme is similar to Atra's comedy, but it does not wear a mask and allows women to participate in the performance. By the time of Roman Empire, parody had surpassed Atla's comedy, but with the decline of social fashion, the ideological level of parody also declined, losing the original edge of satirical comments. With the change of classical drama and the gradual separation of music, dance and performance, the dance drama with mythical theme has gained advantages and gradually replaced the traditional tragic performance. Pantomimus (meaning "complete imitation") is a ballet performed by actors, who can change their costumes and masks and play different roles. It absorbs and inherits some styles of drama and introduces the plot in the form of chorus. Compared with its bright costumes and luxurious scenes, masks do not play a very prominent role here, just to show the identity and status of the characters.

The drama of ancient Greece not only influenced the drama of ancient Rome, but also profoundly influenced the drama concept of later generations, especially in Elizabethan England. Because people re-evaluated Aristotle's Poetics at that time, people realized that they should imitate the classical writing style, and they seemed to find a better way to show women's images on the stage than ancient Greece: abandoning the masks in the ancient Greek tradition and using boys with good faces to play women. According to historical data, we know that the earliest British drama advocates allowed women to take part in drama, but when drama became a full-time job, women were expelled from the stage again. It's just that this expulsion is more thorough and ruthless than that of ancient Greece. It doesn't even need a mask as a substitute for depicting women's faces, or even as a symbol of women's images. In fact, during the Renaissance, people gradually put "man" in an important position because of advocating more humanistic thoughts. Just like Raphael's Madonna of the Sistine Chapel, the play also considers the existence of "humanity" rather than "divinity". Under such circumstances, the mask of body double, once regarded as a god, gradually declined and no longer became a totem and taboo in the eyes of westerners. The insurmountable distance between man and god was leveled, and the actors influenced by humanism began to appear on the stage in their own form. As a sacred symbol of drama ceremony, masks are generally removed in Europe, but there are still traces of masks on the faces of clowns who paint powder. By the18th century, the masks in European drama had actually disappeared.

The era of masks as gods has disappeared in the quicksand of time, but the era of masks has not ended. At the beginning of the 20th century, Gordon Clay, a British modern drama reformer, predicted: "Masks will return to the theater." Because in his view, drama should be "beyond reality", but the face of people (actors) is "the most realistic thing", which will prevent drama from "beyond reality". He believes that "it is necessary to explore the heritage of the East hundreds of years ago" and thus "create a worldwide mask"-"a visible way to express ideas". This idea coincides with Eugene O 'Neill's. O 'Neill also believes that masks are not suitable for "those dramas conceived in a purely realistic way", but should be used in "new modern dramas". However, he did not look for the "Oriental Heritage" mechanically, but made a brand-new use of this long-standing ancient prop in western drama. O 'Neill has a unique and stubborn view of people. He believes that everyone's personality has many levels and levels. Therefore, he has been committed to showing different levels of personality in his plays, which not only shows what people do when they interact with others in society, but also shows people's potential inner world that is not easy to expose. In the Memo on Masks, he explained to us the feasibility of showing the characters' hearts through masks. He mentioned that the main value of using masks in modern drama belongs to the category of psychology, because the task faced by modern playwrights is: "How can psychological exploration reveal to us the deep contradictions hidden in people's hearts with the clearest and most economical dramatic means?" Using masks is the "freest way" to solve this problem, and he regards masks as "symbols of people's inner world". He called this kind of drama that uses masks to express the inner world of human beings "drama of the mind". This drama is most obvious in his great god Brown. The three main characters in the play all use masks. When they put on masks, they take a false and indifferent attitude towards everything outside. Only by taking off their masks can they show their true selves. Drama critic Joseph Wright commented on "The Great God Brown". Shipley said, "This is an amazing new drama depicting the naked soul behind the mask", and O 'Neill confirmed Gordon Clay's prediction with his own drama creation. O 'Neill is a great playwright. His exploration of masks did not stop there. He also has a very bold idea that masks can also be used to express people who have no personality and independent will. He tried to show this in Laughter of Lazarus, Hairy Ape and Kyle Million. Especially in the play Lazarus Laughs, he always wears forty-nine masks. Except Lazarus, all the other characters wear masks. O 'Neill used this to show the role of the masses and successfully set off a superman image like Lazarus with these inhuman rabble. In O 'Neill's works, the mask glows with unprecedented brilliance in the history of drama.

Another master in the history of modern drama also studied masks deeply. This is Brecht. His aesthetic monograph "Dramatic Gadgets" is an important document to explain "narrative drama", and he also has his own unique views on the use of masks. Different from O 'Neill, his mask application theory and practice are more from "Oriental Heritage". From 65438 to 0935, Brecht watched Mei Lanfang's opera performance in Moscow, from which he saw the performance skills that the new drama "trying to awaken consciousness, not charm" could learn from. He began to consciously apply the artistic means such as "facial makeup", "gestures" and "stage installation" in Peking Opera to his own drama experiments, and at the same time combined with his own understanding of drama, he created "narrative drama". He used masks in the famous fable The Good Man in Sichuan published by 1940. In the play, he made up three immortals who came down to earth to look for good people. As a result, he found a poor bottom Shen Dai, and they gave her a silver dollar to open a shop. Shen Dai's kindness soon led to operational difficulties. Later, she was inspired by others to put on a mask and disguised as a "cousin" Sui Dalai to exploit workers and distribute money to the poor. Finally, the truth came out: the evil Sui Da and Shen Dai turned out to be the same person. Brecht portrayed the dual humanity with a mask here. Because Brecht advocates that the drama should be replaced by the audience's calm thinking, and the unreality and unreality of the mask itself can easily make the audience have the "defamiliarization" effect he wants to achieve, we can often see the mask in Brecht's plays.

After Brecht, Heiner Miller is recognized as the most important dramatist in Germany by European and American drama circles. His ingenious conception in the use of drama is also amazing. He likes to closely relate the actions on the stage with the historical events at that time, thus creating a thought-provoking drama. In his masterpiece Hamlet Machine, Ophelia dressed as a prostitute asked Hamlet, "Do you want to eat my heart?" At that time, Hamlet said, "I want to be a woman." So Ophelia helped Hamlet dress up as a prostitute. Then the scene changed to Budapest, Hungary, and Hamlet returned to modern times. So Hamlet took off his costume and mask and let the actor who played Hamlet perform himself. He said to the audience, "I am not Hamlet. I will never play a role again. I have nothing more to say. My brain has been exhausted by their blood. My play will never be staged again. Behind me, the scenery is being set up. It was built by people who have no interest in my play, for those who have nothing to do with it. I'm not interested myself. I won't play again. " Miller revealed the living dilemma of modern people with such strong dramatic actions that the actors took off their masks and caused the audience to think about their living conditions. He combined Shakespeare's classical tragedies with real events with skillful dramatic skills, which produced a very shocking artistic appeal. Masks become a ladder from actors to people themselves, and people become themselves through the stripping of masks.

In modern drama, masks are endowed with more and more meanings. In the stage play The Legend of the Prince of Lanling directed by Hu Xuehua, the mask has become a life body that dominates people's souls and has its own will. The most obvious performance is a huge mask with a height of two people talking face to face with the warrior Lan Ling, who is speaking in demonized language. The confrontation between the strong will of the mask and the humble existence of the warrior Lan Ling has produced a strong artistic effect. His approach and thinking are very similar to that of the famous American female directors Julie Tymore. In the opera "King Oedipus" (oratorio) rehearsed for Saito Memorial Art Festival in Japan, Julie Tymore put a mask on the actors' heads like a crown, making them look eight feet high and their faces clearly visible. Julie Timore turned the singer into a bigger image than a real person, and the boldness of her role matched the musical atmosphere. She also asked each protagonist to raise his extra-large hand and do some ideographic actions. Timor asked two actors to play the role of Oedipus. The singer sang and the Japanese dancer played the role of silence. The two Oedipus merged at the time of * * * *, and the dancer pricked his eyes on the singer's mask, and then turned around to show the scene of the red cloth moving over his eyes. But Julie Timore went further than Hu Xuehua. In her musical Joan Darian, Timore gave the hunter a pair of giant arms with guns. She showed us the tenacity and fearfulness of the hunter through such a mask. In her interpretation, the mask is no longer such a simple form of face, but ever-changing. Compared with Hu Xuehua, she is more concerned with the film and television effects of masks on the stage of drama. She likes to show such an effect through the cooperation of puppets, masks and actors. The most obvious is her masterpiece The Lion King. In this drama with a full-length film version, she made a running antelope with puppets, the lion king with masks and the superb performances of the actors, presenting a stage version of the lion king with unique film and television effects.

The mask, from Dionysus's Eucharist body double, gradually stepped down from the altar, became a symbol of funny clowns because of humanistic ideals, and was gradually forgotten. With the efforts of playwrights such as O 'Neill, it returned to the stage of drama and played a great role in modern drama ... As predicted by Gordon Clay, the ancient prop of mask is moving towards its new century on the stage of modern drama.

[Notes]

(1) Sun Bai's The Resurrection of the Clown-Reevaluation of Western Drama Culture, p. 124.

② The play won the Best Performance Award and the Best Actor Award at the American Drama Festival in 1993, and Hu Xuehua won the Kennedy Honorary Award in 1993.

[Bibliography]

1, Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (translated by Zhou)

2. Horace's poetic art.

3. Aristotle's poetics

4. Liao Kedun's History of Western European Drama

5. Brecht on drama

6. Sun Bai's "The Resurrection of Clowns-Re-evaluation of Western Drama Culture"

7. Feminism and Drama, translated by Sue Irene Keyes, Wu

8. Gordon Clay's mask notes.

9. Eugene O 'Neill's Memo on Masks

10, Wang Yiqun on O 'Neill's creation

1 1, Liao Kedun's Essays on Eugene O 'Neill's Drama Research.

12, Virginia Freud's Eugene O 'Neill's Plays: A New Evaluation.

13, Huang Shixian, Hu Xuehua's Screen Mask Man —— Interview with the director of The Warrior Lan Ling.

14, Julie Timor by Irene Blumenthal (translated by Shu Chang)

15, Cao Lusheng's foreign postmodern drama

The Origin and Development of Masks

Masks are often encountered in our lives. It is not surprising that we walked into shopping malls and handicraft shops everywhere. But few people really know the origin of the mask.

What is a mask? Why are there masks? What does the mask stand for?

Mask is recognized by many countries and nations in the world, and it is the place where ancestors' souls and souls live. After the death of a god or ancestor, the soul can live with a mask. So there is a mask.

The appearance of masks actually has a history of 7-8 thousand years. Even earlier, the specific time of appearance, the academic community has not yet got the exact statement.

The mask has a deep religious color, and a complete history of human social development can be basically seen from the cultural relics unearthed in Sanxingdui.

Among the masks unearthed in Sanxingdui, there are three most representative ones: animal masks, vertical masks and human masks. These three masks appear in the same sacrificial pit, which is the most perfect explanation for the development of human society.

The origin of animal masks, in ancient times, human survival was mainly based on the natural environment. When people didn't know how to farm, their food mainly came from hunting, because animals gave people rich things, so at that time, people had a natural worship of animals. People are eager to beg God to give them more food through various religious activities, so there is the formation of animal masks. Animal masks actually represent the gods of nature.

With the progress of human society, people began to know how to transform their living environment through their own labor, and people learned advanced technology and agricultural farming. So people's worship of natural gods gradually began to change to the worship of human gods. Then, a human mask appeared.

The process that can best explain this change is the appearance of vertical eye patch, which represents the meaning of eye protrusion. In ancient times, there was a saying that people are clairvoyant and follow the wind. Among them, the general eyes are clairvoyant, so there are vertical eyes because people need to see farther and are more suitable for observing things around them. Today, we can also find an explanation. In the depths of the ocean, the eyes of many marine creatures are protruding, which is specially evolved to meet the needs of the living environment.

The development of facial mask has gone through a long historical process, and has produced the corresponding derivative-Facebook.

With the development of history, Facebook gradually began to refine and form a series. Some represent emotions, some represent a totem, and some represent an idea ... We can see Facebook in many places, such as totems in some African countries, plays in China, and temples we often visit. It can be seen.

Take temples for example, we are often confused by many statues with different expressions. In fact, different statues represent a religious significance. But generally speaking, there are two categories, one is angry and the other is good.

From the perspective of religious sects, like human society, it is divided into many levels and has many protectors. There are many divisions of labor for protectors alone, such as protectors within the Nine Realms, protectors outside the Nine Realms, protectors of goodness and protectors of anger. The ugly faces we usually see are actually angry face protectors, whose main job is to resist hostile sects. Therefore, they always look ferocious. This kind of protector usually holds some kind of weapon or multiplier in his hand and steps on some creatures. In fact, the creatures under his feet actually represent the forces of hostile sects.

The main job of protecting the good side is to spread the thoughts of one's own Sect, so it is natural to target the believers of the good side.

The above introduction is for readers' reference, but the content is detailed and verified.

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