Commedia Dell Costumes And Masks Essay

Costumes and masks are pivotal in commedia dell’arte. It allows the audience to become fully immersed into improvisation and embody the characters. The costuming symbolises the attempt to show how the character may have looked within the production. When it comes to commedia dell’arte, the clothing and masks the actors wear portray a factor of the production, in which allows the audience to become fully devoted into the production. The costumes and the masks work together in order to produce a fictional story that makes the audience become a part of the world of the production of a commedia dell’arte. The costumes and masks are seen as extensions of the character’s story and creates that escapism in which the audience looks for when going

When entering a production, the performance is meant to take an audience away from reality. With the use of costumes and masks, it brings escapism to the forefront. An aspect of an event(Carnival) called carnivalesque brings to its audience costumes that are not ordinary. The carnivalesque becomes “an elemental force, nurtured by 1000-year old tradition of folk humour” (Mcconachie, “Theatre Histories: An Introduction”, 104). The costumes of commedia dell’arte use carnivalesque to interpret the societal structure of the performance. The carnivalesque portrays high culture clothing as extravagant, and out of the ordinary, which was used as a tool to make the audience escape into a realm of fiction. With the costume of the Pantalone, his one piece is bright red and unlike the Harlequin’s costume, which has patterns, the brightness of the color depicts that carnival look. The expressions on the masks also resemble the possibility of escapism, with the long noses and different expressions. When looking at the costumes of commedia dell’arte, carnival celebration could be seen as a major influence of escapism. Natalie Schmitt, author of “The Style of Commedia Dell’Arte Acting: Observations Drawn from the Scenarios of Flaminio Scala.”, presents the idea of escapism through commedia dell’arte, stating