mask

theatre

Three photographs of the same noh mask of a woman show how her expression appears to change with a tilting of the performer's head. To demonstrate this effect, the mask was affixed to a wall with constant lighting and only the camera was moved.

A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment, and often employed for rituals and rites.

[]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask/#cite_note-18) Masks have been created with plastic surgery for mutilated soldiers.

It is conjectured that the first masks may have been used by primitive people to associate the wearer with some kind of unimpeachable authority, such as a deity, or to otherwise lend credence to the person's claim on a given social role.

For Lecoq, masks became an important training tool, the neutral mask being designed to facilitate a state of openness in the student-performers, moving gradually on to character and expressive masks, and finally to "the smallest mask in the world" the clown's red-nose.

In Ancient Rome, the word persona meant 'a mask'; it also referred to an individual who had full Roman citizenship. A citizen could demonstrate his or her lineage through imagines – death masks of ancestors. These were wax casts kept in a lararium (the family shrine). Rites of passage, such as initiation of young members of the family or funerals,

By the 18th century, it was already a tourist attraction, Goethe saying that he was ugly enough not to need a mask.

Burn mask, a piece of medical equipment that protects the burn tissue from contact with other surfaces, and minimises the risk of infection.