The symbolism of the mask in the theatrical art of the West and East

Tszin' Chenyuan Postgraduate Student, Department of Art History, St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Universitetskaya str., 7/9 chenyuan0328@126.com Other publications by this author

The very first masks were probably used for camouflage during hunting. Later, already in folklore culture, they began to serve for the reincarnation of people into divine entities, which was part of the rituals of worshipping the forces of nature. Thus, A.D. Avdeev believes that a mask is "a special image of a creature worn or worn for the purpose of transformation into this creature" ^{[1, p. 235]}. The mask usually follows the shape of a human face and has slits for eyes, mouth and nose. It is also considered a generalized external form that symbolizes the inner world of a person ^{[19, p. 199]}. This complex cultural phenomenon has long been associated with the theatrical world. In the theater of different countries, the mask creates a certain image and is an instrument of creativity, but at the same time reflects local traditions, beliefs, mythology, mentality ^{[3, p. 302]}. Thus, in the theatrical systems of the past, unique approaches to the use of masks were born in accordance with cultural concepts, many of which continue to exist today, enriching the performing arts. However, their correct perception and interpretation is a significant problem for modern playwrights, directors, actors and viewers.

The relevance of this work lies in the typology and classification of common and distinctive characteristics of similar, but at the same time unique artifacts of various theatrical cultures of the East and West on the example of the use of masks in productions in the past and present. Addressing this topic can help to establish cross-cultural ties, facilitate cross-cultural communication and reduce the degree of civilizational contradictions in a multipolar world. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the results of processing the original selection of case studies, scientific publications and literary sources. The purpose of the study is to search for features of perception and understanding of masks in various theatrical systems. To achieve this goal, the history of masks in different countries, their semantics are analyzed, in particular, the ancient Chinese thermal culture is compared, but also the ancient Greek theater, as well as the Italian Commedia dell'arte. The author's attention also includes the Russian theater of the Silver Age, which actively turned to the symbolism of the mask, and modern theories and productions of Western playwrights and directors, as well as their Chinese colleagues. Such a choice is due to the fact that it allows us to emphasize the differences in the interpretation of the role of the mask in theatrical action not only in historical development, but also in the conditions of various national theaters, at the level of the correlation of cultures of the East and West.

The mask plays a special role in Chinese culture. In China, it is understood as "a veil covering the entire face or part of it, and having holes for the eyes, usually used at balls, carnivals or similar celebrations, in performances, etc.". This term also means the makeup of the actor's face. Masks are still used in Chinese opera performances ^{[18, p. 556]}. In China, there are several legends about the origin of the mask. One of them says that once three celestials descended to earth to help people drive away evil spirits. When they ascended back to heaven, people were afraid that the demons might come again. They began to ask the celestials, but they asked Master Yang Wu to carve three of their statues. However, the carver, remembering only the heads of the deities, carved their faces. According to another legend, a hunter met a wild boar in the mountains, and he took him to a cave where a copper mask was lying. The hero put it on his head and discovered how easy it is to dance in it. According to another version, people found an iron mask in the hollow of a camphor tree that grew in front of the Xuanwu Temple. In her likeness, they began to carve other masks. Some believed that the mask sailed to the people from the mountains where the gods lived during the flood.

The mask in Chinese drama is firmly connected with the divine . It serves to enhance mystical sensations during performances of "no-si" ^{[12, p. 78]}. The drama "no-si", having arisen as part of a religious ritual, was later influenced by folk game types of performances, such as, for example, "flowery drums". During the reign of the Song dynasty, "no-si" began to turn into an opera and gained the significance of a separate type of musical drama theater. To date, "no-si" is widely known and often characterized as a "living fossil of Chinese drama" ^{[5, p. 35]}, since it is one of the oldest cultural forms in China. Now it is still under study. The researchers hope that the discovery of new archaeological and possibly literary monuments will give them more information about its origins, that is, rituals, including the use of masks.

In "no-si" masks play an essential role, as performers wear them during performances. The images created with the help of masks invariably impress the audience. This is important because their function is to have a positive impact on the public. So, in one of the earliest monuments of Chinese classical literature of the Zhou period, "Zhou Li" or "Zhou rituals", you can find the following words: "The spirit caster had legs like the paws of a bear, he had two pairs of golden eyes, his clothes were black and red, he held a shield high in his hands, he he led the officials and arranged them, and the rite of exorcism of evil spirits was performed" ^{[4, p. 121]}. Later, such a spirit caster himself turned into a deified image of an exorcist of demons and disasters. Thus, in "no-si" masks became, on the one hand, one of the main objects of props, and on the other – an important means by which the stage image of the hero was created ^{[15, p. 32]}.

The mask in the ancient drama "Kaishan", in addition to performing an aesthetic function and creating an image, also performs another important role, since with its help the performer can communicate with people, ghosts and gods. Wearing the mask of the deity "Kaishan", the actor temporarily, according to the magical laws of ritual action, becomes this deity and receives the same abilities as him. Thus, he can expel evil spirits ^{[16, p. 38]}. In the artistic solution of the mask of the hero of the deity Kaishan, one can see how a man and a wild beast literally merge together in it. Massive face shapes look intimidating. It should be noted that so much terrible appearance is not intended to frighten. They are needed to scare away evil forces. The Kaishan deity is mainly responsible for the brilliant, bright future of people and protects their safety. Of course, a person uninitiated in the subtleties of decoding such an artifact and the phenomenon associated with it will not be able to understand the essence of the action on stage. Moreover, the actor, wearing a mask, as if informs the audience that he is moving with them to another dimension, where gods and spirits live. During the presentation, he can communicate with the audience in a dialog form, even with humor and jokes. This character has qualities such as responsibility, perseverance and wit.

Masks in the Chinese theater consist of three parts: faces, helmets and ear wings. These masks are based on legends about ancient heroes and other mythological characters. From the point of view of the artistic image, masks allow you to stimulate the viewer's attention and reveal the image of the character. For example, some Chinese masks look repulsive: large black eyes rolling out; a bloody mouth and a rolled tongue protruding from it, resembling a sharp sword ^{[17, p. 74]}. But again, there is no negative connotation behind this for the viewers themselves. Initially, such masks were made of copper, but later wood became the main material ^{[20, p. 605]}. This made it possible to put into effect also the effect of color. So, the mask could be painted in red, which symbolized devotion and bravery; in blue – firmness and fortitude; in green – perseverance and chivalry; in yellow – quick temper and ambition; in gray – activity and courage at a venerable age, in purple – wisdom and fearlessness, directness and firm will; in purple – fortitude and ingenuity; in gold – connection with spirits and gods; in black – selfless character or severity. Thanks to the carving and attention to color, the mask was endowed with rich energy and effectively expressed joy, anger, sadness, grief or happiness ^{[14, p. 55]}. Specifically for the symbolic use of color, there is the following requirement: "use the tone of a certain color to symbolize the personal characteristics of the characters, for example, red symbolizes integrity, black symbolizes honesty, courage, white symbolizes resourcefulness, cunning, etc." ^{[13, p. 236]}.

A very special way was the development of the European theater, the origins of which are connected with the culture of Ancient Greece. And the mask was actively used in ancient Greek tragedy. The theatrical art of Ancient Greece significantly expanded the functionality of masks. They allowed one actor to perform several roles, and men could play female roles. Masks represented and symbolized the emotional component. In comedy, for example, a grotesque mask of an old man with exaggeratedly raised corners of the mouth was used, and in tragedy – serious masks with lowered corners of the eyes and lips. The multifunctional use of the mask, traditional for the theater of classical Greece, is being carried out at the present time. For example, at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, special trainings and performances are held in the style of postmodernism, but using ancient Greek dramatic masks. In the Western tradition, masks are modernized as necessary, for example, the use of metal materials in masks symbolizes the cold relationship between the characters and serious tragic experiences. In the last scene of one of the performances, the actor wore a mask with a festering face to enhance the emotional coloring and enhance the tragedy of the final scene ^{[14, p. 55]}.

The Italian "comedy of masks", unlike the ancient Greek theater, fixes masks not for the emotional component of the characters, but for individual characters. They are the basis of the performance, determine the nature of the role and the way it is performed: a thin and shrewd old man with a beard, a fat doctor with a red nose and a high forehead, a servant with cheerful and intelligent little eyes, an officer in military uniform, etc. The mask, as a rule, was made of cardboard or film. It is noteworthy that the mask could well be replaced by a face sprinkled with flour or a glued nose, glasses. For example, the satirical character Tartaglia – a judge and notary – wore huge glasses and stutters in such a way that it generates a variety of puns. The Doctor's red nose testified to his addiction to alcohol. Such details performed a "mask function". The mask also had a second, semantic plan: it denoted a certain social type endowed with once and for all established psychological traits. These features were shown to the viewer in close-up and ridiculed each time in a new way, since improvisation was another mandatory feature of the Italian comedy of masks, which, while amusing people, also performed an educational function. It was because of the charm of the comedy of masks that the founder and director of the Milan Maly Theater, Giorgio Streller, in 1903 picked up a mask that had been discarded more than 200 years ago and gave it a new meaning. He contrasted the mask, which symbolized a certain social type and temperament, with a living human face, by "coordinating the dialogue and actions of the character, giving him expressive power with joyful and agile movements" ^{[6, p. 75]}, and thus enhanced the comedy of the spectacle.

In Russian drama, the concept of the mask also plays a significant role. In the play "Balaganchik" by A. Blok, staged by V. E. Meyerhold in 1906 at the studio theater on Povarskaya Street, the mask is played as a symbolization of the heroes' attitude to the world ^{[2, p. 73]}. The main characters of the play are the permanent characters of the traditional comedy of masks Pierrot, Columbine and Harlequin. Columbine is a controversial character. In this beautiful girl, others see death, since she is "with a scythe", she has "emptiness in her eyes, her features are pale as marble." At the same time, the dreamy and enthusiastic Pierrot notices in her an exceptionally inaccessible lover, and the self–confident Harlequin - the coveted prey. When Harlequin takes Columbine away, Pierrot sadly calls Columbine a "cardboard bride" in his monologue. The presence of masks denotes unreality, the illusion of what is happening: both vague expectations, and the sublime image of the "cardboard bride", and the paper window through which the Harlequin jumps, and his blood, which in fact turned out to be cranberry juice. Meyerhold's mask became not only an artistic device, but also the basis of his theatrical system, in which it was intended to destroy the living connection between the characters. Masked heroes are not able to enter into a dialogue, they are characterized by monological thinking, loneliness. Masks are needed to hide the true face of the character from other people. It is no coincidence that one of the best tragic performances of Meyerhold is the production of Lermontov's "Masquerade". In addition, masks allowed the author to divide the characters into separate categories, as he did in the production of V. Mayakovsky's play "Mystery Buff": pure, unclean, devils, saints ^{[2, p. 79]}. Each character in this performance had its own social mask, symbolizing a certain class stereotype. Meyerhold believed that the mask has no limitations in its use and called it a symbol of the Conventional Theater closest to him. Thus, the mask became the most important element of the "new" stage language in the Meyerhold Theater.

Another example of theatrical experiments of the Silver Age in Russia is the work of L.A. Andreev "Black Masks", in which the question of the boundary between the mask and the human face is raised ^{[2, p. 80]}. The mask becomes a metaphor for the inner struggle taking place in the human soul. At the festive masquerade of Duke Lorenzo, black masks appear and among them is his double, who enters into a duel with him. Dressing the characters in masks does not give an answer to who exactly won this duel. Thus, the author manages to present to the viewer the complexity of the human soul, which is impossible to know.

In modern drama, the American playwright Eugene O'Neill, having got rid of the superficial meaning of the mask as a stage prop, expanded the possibilities of masks to create new ideas, reveal the symbolic meaning of the play ^{[9, p. 118]}. This expansion of the symbolic meaning of masks includes two aspects: the use of masks to denote the psychology and temperament of people and the expression of contradictions between different personalities of the characters. The playwright believes that the psychological level and characters of people are multi-layered, and they have different faces, and masks symbolize the second faces of people, and these faces can symbolize the social or external violence of the environment. Such an image contradicts the inner and meaningful character of the character, contradicts and will conflict with him. Therefore, O'Neill uses the symbolism of the mask to reveal the contradictions of human character. On stage, the actors talk directly to the mask, compete for the mask that triggers the action, and participates in the construction of the main plot element of the drama.

O'Neill's mask becomes a living object with which the character's true self is compared, creating a confrontation between the mask and a living person. For example, in "The Great God Brown", after the hero wore the mask of Pan as a child, he was attracted to the public worship of a free and rebellious deity, and he became an artist inclined to resist society. Nevertheless, in the process of growing up, he slowly, in the depths of his soul, began to turn to faith. Faith led him to the fact that the hero wanted to live a quiet life, but a rebellious image was already fixed in society and the character simply could not get rid of this social mask. Brown also tried by all means to appropriate the mask of Mephistopheles, and in order to get a new "role", he went to self-destruction. The image of the characters is embodied in a mask: one wants to get it, the other wants to tear it off, but nothing comes out for both ^{[10, p. 185]}. This approach has brought a completely new theme to dramaturgy – an intuitive expression of the duality or versatility of the mental state of the hero, whose internal contradictions and actions control the development of the plot.

The second aspect of the expansion of the symbolic meaning of the mask is used by O'Neill when reflecting the problem of people's indifference to each other caused by the material nature of the mask, created to affirm outdated stereotypes in the public consciousness and cover up falsity in relationships ^{[8, p. 78]}. The playwright uses the symbolism of the mask to express the idea that all people are inanimate objects, no different from bricks and stones in the city, a kind of wall–like matter. He represents the indifference of generalized images in masks to express the loneliness of the characters and increase the fear of real life. At the rehearsal of the play "King Jones", O'Neill asked all the actors, except the presenters, to wear masks to reflect the harsh environmental pressure and emphasize the "ghostly" nature of the main character. And in the play "The Hairy Monkey", O'Neill asked everyone who had not worn masks before to put them on so as not to let the main character find the truth. The use of this attribute helped to reveal the director's concept. The social emptiness and indifference behind the mask have a direct visual impact on the viewer as well ^{[11, p. 165]}.

Director Luindzhi Pirandello believed that the significance of masks is immeasurable, and they acquired a "grotesquely paradoxical style" in his work. This is the so-called "naked mask": in a mask, a person can express his true self, and a human face, on the contrary, is a mask put on by a person and hiding his identity. Thus, the original idea of the mask is not to cover up, but, on the contrary, to expose, to reveal an essential secret, which is a kind of self-deception that has a protective effect on the surface. Putting on a mask, a person gains a sense of security, so it is in the mask that he gets the opportunity to express his hidden emotions. The mask symbolizes the most original nakedness of thoughts and feelings and reveals the passion of people. It is the paradoxical contrast of a deceptive face and a truthful mask that carries a revelation more ruthless than any accusatory text or an acute dramatic situation ^{[11, p. 160]}. The two-layer symbolism of masks is that a person feels lonely when they encounter other people's masks. Wearing a mask, they confess and are deceived that they can be understood, so they feel especially lonely. Pirandello's masterpiece "Henry IV" uses a similar concept. The young man played the role of the king at the carnival procession. Because of the treachery of his rival, he went mad and called himself Henry IV. Twelve years later, he suddenly woke up and found that times were changing and he had nowhere to go, so he could only put on the mask of Henry IV again and continue to live as a madman. In this play, the mask of the king acts as a symbol of the hero's escape from reality ^{[7, p. 225]}.

To date, Western directors have been exploring and using the symbolism of masks in a diverse and subtle way. So, O'Neill believes the following: "All playwrights will eventually discover that using masks is the freest way to solve the problems they face. That is, the playwright will understand how he can use the clearest and most economical dramatic means for his psychological research and reveal the deep contradictions hidden in the hearts of people" ^{[10, p. 299]}. The famous director Harold Prinsson used a mask for an outrageous effect at the rehearsal of the musical "The Phantom of the Opera". He gave the white mask a cruel, cold and lonely image, as if what was hidden under the mask was not an outrage, but a deep self-pity associated with an inferiority complex and fanatical love. The mask in his hands symbolizes a kind of protection against loneliness, fear of the outside world, misunderstanding and resentment.

In the modern culture of the East, the situation is different. Traditional masks, the essence of which is extremely complex, still play an important role here. Masked actors are certain types of characters in which the inner component is expressed not in the mask itself, but in the tilt of the head, looking up, etc. The combination of masks, movements, costumes and piercing, rhythmic music and sacred meanings of the ritual has become the essence of Chinese dramatic art ^{[7, p. 283]}. For example, in "The Legend of Prince Lanling" by Hu Xuehua, the prince put on a mask and could not take it off. The director uses imaginative techniques in using a mask to achieve a strong visual impact on the audience. The wooden mask symbolizes that there are two different personalities in the main character – sublimely modest and arrogant, low, and there is an unequal dialogue between them, strong resistance and irreconcilable confrontation. From a mysterious sacrificial instrument in an ancient ritual to spiritual torture in a modern drama, the mask, which has passed a long and difficult historical path, enlivened by creative director's thought, retains the mystery of antiquity, the charm of the classics and at the same time has a fresh topical meaning.

In conclusion, we note that in different theatrical systems, the mask has a unique symbolism and methods of application. Thus, it reveals a complex and contradictory human nature, reveals the uncertainty and fear of people before reality, embodies and expresses emotions, provides the rhythm and acuteness of the development of the drama, deepens the meaning of the events taking place. At the same time, directors belonging to different cultures use a mask in theatrical performance in accordance with national traditions. It is in accordance with them that her role in the theatrical action is built, the design, the relationship with the actor and the audience's interpretation of her meanings. If for a Chinese or Japanese there is a symbol behind the mask that carries information about the character, then in Western culture, by virtue of philosophical reflection, the mask sets boundaries, in the cancers of which the character is revealed, and also turns into an independent symbol and aesthetic object. The mask in the modern theater is both the destruction of the living connection between the characters, and a metaphor for the inner struggle in the soul of the hero, and the expression of contradictions between people, and a symbol of true feelings. A detailed study of common points in decoding the symbolic meaning of masks is a promising task for further research.