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F1315 Mask and Masquerade in Venice and Beyond

Wallace Elizabeth

From the iconic characters of the Commedia dell'Arte to the enormously popular Lion King, the western European stage has enjoyed a long history of engagement with masks and masking. Venice has had a prominent place in this history, both as the home of the playwright Carlo Goldoni and as the center of a vital masquerade tradition that endures, of course, to this day. In this class we'll begin by exploring the roots of the Venetian tradition of masks. What is the history of human masking and how do anthropologists explain its function? What is Commedia dell' Arte and how does it use a tradition of masks to create the foundations of a western theatrical tradition? After this introduction, our first unit focuses on the life and work of Goldoni, and his predecessor, Molière. It includes visits to the Goldoni Museum (with its delightful puppet theater) and the Ca' Rezzonico, for its collection of paintings by Pietro Longhi depicting an eighteenth-century masques and entertainments. Our second unit expands to consider the wider use of the mask on the eighteen-century and nineteenth-century stage with a series of plays that either represent carnivale (Behn's The Rover) or that use masking as a metaphor for human identity (Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem). We pause briefly to consider an opera—Cosi Fan Tutti by Mozart—for the ways in which it too integrates the theme of masking into its action. In our third unit, we turn to a series of modern writers and theorists, including Alfred Jarry (Ubu Roi), Bertolt Brecht (The Good Woman of Setzuan), and Jean Genet (The Blacks) who rediscovered the art of the mask and who once again made it the center of a vital theatrical tradition. For this last unit, students will do research on contemporary theatrical practitioners who currently use masks in their art. Moving beyond western Europe and the USA, students will be encouraged to discover how the tradition of masks and masking endures across the globe today. This is a highly interactive class where students will be asked to work frequently in small groups and to make various kinds of presentations. Some of them may have a dramatic element (though this will remain optional.) The written assignments for this course include two short, four to five page papers and a final seven to ten page paper summarizing the work done for an in-class presentation on a modern example of the masking tradition. Further directions for this research assignment will be distributed in class. The research project will include a number of smaller assignments—including an annotated bibliography, the classroom presentation, and the final summary.