Mask Making

Comedy tragedy theatre masks, like the concepts of comedy and tragedy in theatre were born in ancient Greece.

Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ the Greeks were immersed in a culture that held the theatre as, not only a form of entertainment, but as an integral part of their religious framework.

Whenever a theatre festival came to a Greek town there was always a great number of ceremonies that were always present. In the evenings there would be a group of men who would wander the streets, along with a musician.

This group would be called a "comus" and their fun songs a "comoedia". It doesn't take much to see where our word "comedy" derived.

Conversely, the sad songs of satyrs were called "tragoedia" from where of course we get the word tragedy.

This week Room 23 have been mask making! We started by modeling our mask out of clay. We  needed to focus on exaggerating the facial features to show the emotions we wanted to portray.

After we molded the mask from clay we papier mache over it to create the mask. We needed to ensure there were several layers to make the mask thick and strong.

Once the paper was dried we were ready to paint!