Masks: Expanding Consciousness

I have felt drawn to masks ever since university, when my Commedia dell’arte instructor brought a box of leather half-masks to class. The students eagerly tried them on in front of full-length mirrors, adjusting our facial expressions and body postures as we attempted to bring the stock characters of Pantalone and Arlecchino to life. The characters we saw in the mirror seemed to possess powerful emotions and personalities that were unleashed by our movements.

Our experience with these masks can be compared to the way an Indonesian mask performer contemplates the mask even before he tries it on. Theatre scholar John Emigh watched the artist Kakul at work and described the technique in his book, Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre: