Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, is portrayed with a sorrowful expression, holding a tragic mask and a club or sword. Mask performance: In ancient Greek theater, masks were essential to the ...

In the age of botox, one might argue that the equivalent of Greek masks are actors' faces frozen in expressions of neutrality rather than extreme comedy or tragedy.

A Greek tragedy purges the plague The ancient Greeks believed that watching theatre could heal society. During the pandemic, it’s the audience, not the actors, who are wearing masks ...

Lucky then we have Greek tragedy, the mask we can still put on to face the identity crisis existing within our own culture. Greek tragedy, like all things Greek, has been migrating around the ...

In tragedy, for instance, a relatively bland mask can make it easier to associate oneself with the performance. In comedy, though, the effect is more immediately alienating, more confrontationally ...

What we now think of as Greek tragedy is a relatively small corpus from the fifth century B.C., fewer than three dozen plays from the hundreds that were produced over the course of that century.