Mask and performance in Greek tragedy : from ancient festival to modern experimentation
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Mask and performance in Greek tragedy : from ancient festival to modern experimentation
Cambridge University Press, 2011
- : pbk
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Originally published: 2007
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Why did Greek actors in the age of Sophocles always wear masks? In this book, first published in 2007, David Wiles provided the first book-length study of this question. He surveys the evidence of vases and other monuments, arguing that they portray masks as part of a process of transformation, and that masks were never seen in the fifth century as autonomous objects. Wiles goes on to examine experiments with the mask in twentieth-century theatre, tracing a tension between the use of masks for possession and for alienation, and he identifies a preference among modern classical scholars for alienation. Wiles declines to distinguish the political aims of Greek tragedy from its religious aims, and concludes that an understanding of the mask allows us to see how Greek acting was simultaneously text-centred and body-centred. This book challenges orthodox views about how theatre relates to ritual, and provides insight into the creative work of the actor.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The evidence of vases
- 3. The sculptural art of the Greek mask-maker
- 4. Mask and modernism
- 5. Physical theatre and mask in the twentieth century
- 6. Mask and text: the case of Hall's Oresteia
- 7. The mask as musical instrument
- 8. Masks and polytheism
- 9. The mask of Dionysos
- 10. Sacred viewing: 'theorizing' the ancient mask
- 11. Mask and self
- Epilogue: to the performer.
by "Nielsen BookData"