(EN) What can the mask contribute to mutual understanding, particularly in an intercultural and European context?
- MASCARADE
- 24 janv.
- 6 min de lecture
Excerpt from our research and a European Focus Group; presentation of a research by Giulia Filacanapa and Guy Freixe.
« Is Dionysus, the patron of masks, not a breaker of boundaries — the one who creates passages and transgresses prohibitions? Theatre is there to open our hearts; the mask allows us to reach the other, that stranger both distant and deeply close to us. » Guy Freixe
In France, Mascarade led us to cross paths with the inspiring researcher Giulia Filacanapa, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Italian Studies and a member of the Scènes du Monde research unit at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis. Together with Guy Freixe and the Association des Créateurs de masques, she co-directs a research project entitled “Functions and Uses of the Stage Mask in the Performing Arts in the 21st Century”, which is particularly relevant to the Mascarade project.
Their research adopts an aesthetic, historiographical and anthropological perspective to examine the challenges and implications of contemporary uses of the mask on stage, as well as in non-theatrical contexts. Several elements are therefore especially relevant to our exploration of the role of the mask in mutual and intercultural understanding.
Wearing a mask and inhabiting another body, between concealment and revelation.
First, there is something in the material creation of the mask, in the very act of making it:
« Hands in the clay mark a time of research and pure creation: finding the line that will shape the character and bring the imagination to life. »
This is a first shift: moving from one’s own form to the shaping of another face opens a space for invention and projection, where each person can bring into play their own story, references and emotions. Learning through making creates an opportunity to explore and to experience one’s identity in an intense, embodied way. When the actor or participant puts on a mask, a passage often occurs, where something is born: the performer must relearn how to walk, breathe, speak, and allow another presence to emerge.
The mask then becomes both a refuge and a revealer. It allows one to hide while at the same time reflecting another, unexpected image, opening up new qualities of performance, other imaginaries, and other ways of inhabiting the body.
Through the mask, multiple levels of identity become accessible — unexplored layers, bodies and gestures one did not know one possessed.
This stratified exploration of the self takes on particular resonance in a European or intercultural context, where a diversity of histories, cultures and ways of being in the world coexist.
The mask invites a physical reconfiguration that alters perception, both for the person wearing it and for the audience, thus shifting the usual boundaries of identity and presence. As Giulia Filacanapa writes: “The person who wears a mask on stage wears a face that is not their own. This often produces an unexpected effect, both on the performer and on the audience, by disrupting their habitual — often unconscious — points of reference. The actor is forced to find a new way of being in their body and of speaking; and the spectator’s brain spontaneously works to reconstruct the perception of a whole person from the combination of the human body and the mask, in order to make sense of the figure standing before them.”
She adds, in an interview: “When an audience watches a masked performance, it is a projection into an extraordinary world… an opening of the imagination. The mask allows for total transformation, for becoming unrecognisable — older, younger, another gender. The actor’s body can even move beyond the human and embody mythical figures, gods, monsters, animals, trees. The audience knows there is a human being behind the mask, yet believes in the character.”
The mask thus acts as a revealer: by concealing the face, it amplifies expression — everything that remains visible beyond the mask — destabilises familiar codes, and enables the embodiment of otherness. It produces a perceptual shift. As Giulia notes, it is a tool of transformation, capable of navigating between tradition and invention, the intimate and the strange. The mask fosters the plasticity of both body and imagination, engaging the individual in a relationship with play, childhood and freedom.
This is also what many European practitioners working with masks emphasise: beyond all else, the mask is a tool for playing. One can simply ... have fun with it!
Non theatrical dimensions
« The mask can be a vehicle for otherness, or a vector through which to speak about oneself. »
Giulia Filacanapa’s research broadens the scope of the mask far beyond the stage. In non-theatrical practices, the mask becomes a social, political and even therapeutic tool. She explains that the mask allows participants to experiment with new ways of being and to engage in processes of self-narration through symbolic play.
“I have seen very shy children open up completely on stage, scattered individuals manage to refocus their energy, and people overcome their blockages. […] If you speak with many actors, the mask is not always something they enjoy — because it forces the actor into anonymity. This is precisely why it is so interesting in social contexts, in contexts where one needs to rethink oneself, where one can hide oneself, and where the mask can be used to create other narratives. […] The mask can, in some way, be a vehicle for otherness, or a vector through which to speak about oneself.”
The process of mask-making also involves a particular experience of intimacy. It requires cooperation with another person, sometimes stepping outside one’s comfort zone, and developing a certain level of trust in one’s partners — as we ourselves experienced during the laboratory in Lithuania, for instance when allowing someone to apply plaster directly onto one’s face.
Finally, to conclude with Giulia's words:
« The stage mask acts as a revealer of the social and human transformations of our time, questioning new epistemological categories related to gender, interculturalism, aesthetic hybridity and the transmission of knowledge. It offers a way out of identity confinements and thus enables a rethinking of otherness. In contemporary theatre, the mask renews its uses as a tool for social transformation, playing with transgression and subversion, re-examining identities (of gender and culture), and even challenging the laws of the Anthropocene by restoring an animal dimension to the human. This freedom offered by the mask makes it possible today to break down genres, to bring practices that are closed in on themselves into contact with one another, to create dialogue between theatrical forms, cultures and disciplines, and to explore the fertile tensions between inherited traditions and the invention of new forms.
The mask is intrinsically a tool of transformation, capable of expressing the strange, the fantastic, the dreamlike and the intimate, and thus allowing us to play with plural identities.
In non-theatrical contexts, the mask is conceived and approached not only in its aesthetic dimension, but above all in its social and political — and even therapeutic — dimension. Its use offers greater freedom to participants in these para-theatrical workshops, a freedom that stems from the very fact of being masked. This allows individuals to freely experiment with new ways of being, while protecting their autonomy from social pressures and intrusions. In this perspective, the mask goes beyond its usual function as a tool for developing bodily, relational and creative skills, and contributes to processes of self-reconstruction through a distanced, playful engagement with traumatic scenes — thereby, in a sense, reclaiming its ancestral value as a psychopomp object. »
These perspectives position the mask not only as a theatrical device, but also as a socially engaged practice. It contributes to a deeper understanding of interculturality and public presence in contemporary societies. In an intercultural or European context, this is all the more meaningful as it enables communication beyond linguistic barriers. Here, the language is plastic creation and the body.
This article is an excerpt from the research we published in France as part of Mascarade project: “Participatory creation: a sensitive space for the transformation of narratives and mutual understanding. Between realities, intentions and tensions. Research across Seine-Saint-Denis and Europe”, December 2025. Available in French on ALTER EGO (X)'s website, soon translated into English.
This research was co-funded by the Délégation à la Biennale interculturelle et au campus francophone of the Conseil départemental de la Seine-Saint-Denis, through the Agir In Seine-Saint-Denis programme.
Resources :
Masks: From the Workshop to the Stage, an exhibition organised by the Association des Créateurs de Masques and curated by Giulia Filacanapa, presented at MSH Paris Nord, visited in June 2025
Interview with Giulia Filacanapa, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Italian Studies, member of the Scènes du Monde research unit at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis, conducted in September 2025
European focus group moderated by Sutta Scupa, November 2025.
Guy Freixe, Daring to Wear Masks from Other Traditions, Skén&graphie, June 2021.
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