# Theatre & Masks
In the COVID moment, masks have become a consistent safety protocol in everyday living. Although they keep us safe, masks also inhibit our ability to communicate verbally, and utilizing facial expressions to convey thoughts, feelings, and important information seem nearly impossible. Masks seem to hinder the natural modes of communication and storytelling that is essential not only for the theatre, but everyday acts of performance. However, masks in theatre is nothing out of the ordinary, and we may even learn a thing or two about how to adapt to modern mask-wearing by taking a look at the historical use of masks in performance.

## Ancient Greek Theatre

Actors have been wearing masks for a very long time — all the way back to 532 BC, in fact. These masks covered the actors entire face, and were incredibly imporant to the performance for a number of reasons. Firstly, in ancient Greece, plays were performed during the day, outdoors in huge ampitheaters. The bulk of the audience could not see the actors very well, so a mask projected a character to the furthest seats. These masks also consisted of exaggerated expressions that helped define the characters the actors were playing; they allowed actors to play more than one role (or gender), and forced the actors to project their voices far out so they could be heard from behind the mask.


Still, wearing masks presented actors with a number of challenges (as one can imagine) and actors had to learn to not only project to an open air audience using the emotional strength of their voice, but also to use their bodies to enhance the emotional thrust of their performance and show the breadth of emotion usually expressed in the face. Although the mask gave the actors clear characterizations, it was the voice and body that brought the characters to three-demensional life.

## Masks as a Performance Instrument

So what can we learn from the historical use of masks in order to strengthen our communication in the COVID-19 mask era?

For starters, we can start to think of our in-person activities as small acts of performance. Framing these engagements in such a way might allow us to think of conveying-information as telling a story, and consider what our audience/lister needs in order to understand the narrative.

If we accept our activities as small acts of performance, we can frame our masks not as hinderances, but rather performance instruments. What does this give us?

1.