Masks have been used almost universally to represent characters in . Theatrical performances are a visual literat.... mask drama

Moreover, their use made it possible for the Greek actorswho were limited by convention to three speakers for each tragedyto impersonate a number of different characters during the play simply by changing masks and costumes. Details from frescoes, mosaics, vase paintings, and fragments of stone sculpture that have survived to the present day provide most of what is known of the appearance of these ancient theatrical masks. Masks used in connection with present-day carnivals and Mardi Gras and those of folk demons and characters still used by central European peasants, such as the Perchten masks of Alpine Austria, are most likely the inheritors of the tradition of medieval masks. Sometimes the masking was grotesque and fanciful, but generally a heavy leather mask, full or half face, disguised the commedia player. Excellent pictorial records of both commedia costumes and masks exist; some sketches show the characters of Arlecchino and Colombina wearing black masks covering mer! ely the eyes, from which the later masquerade mask is certainly a development. Except for vestiges of the commedia in the form of puppet and marionette shows, the drama of masks all but disappeared in Western theatre during the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th centuries. In modern revivals of ancient Greek plays, masks have occasionally been employed, and such highly symbolic plays as Die versunkene Glocke ( The Sunken Bell ; 1897) by the German Gerhart Hauptmann (18621946) and dramatizations of Alice in Wonderland have required masks for the performers of grotesque or animal figures. In 1926 theatregoers in the United States witnessed a memorable use of masks in The Great God Brown by the American dramatist (18881953), wherein actors wore masks of their own faces to indicate changes in the internal and external lives of their characters. The mask, however, unquestionably lost its importance as a theatrical convention in the 20th century, and its appearance in modern ! plays is unusual. In , sacred dramas are performed by masked l! ay actors. Masks, usually made of papier-m are employed in the religious or admonitory drama of China; but for the greater part the actors in popular or secular drama make up their faces with cosmetics and paint to resemble masks, as do the kabuki actors in Japan. The highly didactic sacred drama of China is performed with the actors wearing fanciful and grotesque masks. The use of theatrical masks in Java is exceptional, since masks, being forbidden under the prohibition of images, are practically unknown in the Islamic world. Masks also have exerted a decided influence on modern art movements, especially in the first decades of the 20th century, when painters in France and Germany found a source of inspiration in the tribal masks of Africa and western . mask drama