The Mask as Practical Knowledge: Commedia dell’ Arte and the Construction of Theatrical Truth

초록

This thesis interrogates the assumption within modern performance discourse that technological mediation and naturalistic or realist acting practices represent an evolutionary advance over masked and physically coded performance traditions. Drawing on theatre historiography, acting theory, performance studies, and phenomenology, we argue that mask-based performance, particularly Commedia dell’ Arte, constitutes an alternative epistemology of acting that challenges dominant naturalistic paradigms. The privileging of mass media and psychological realism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is shown to be historically contingent rather than inevitable. While Stanislavskian affective memory emphasizes interior psychological authenticity, mask-based practices externalize meaning through corporeal form, typology, and improvisation. Through analysis of Commedia dell’ Arte masks, scenarios, and performance conventions, we demonstrate that masked performance offers a rigorous methodology that foregrounds relational, embodied, and communal dimensions of theatrical truth.

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