Projection and Concealment: Goethe's Introduction of the Mask to the Weimar Stage

Abstract:Around 1800, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe conducted a series of theatrical experiments involving masks on the Weimar Stage. Such experiments were considered highly innovative at the time and were met with both praise and skepticism. This article examines the eighteenth-century European discourse on theatrical masks to contextualize the largely unprecedented nature of Goethe's use of masks. Thinkers ranging from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Jean-Baptiste Dubos to August Wilhelm Schlegel and Karl August Böttiger considered the unique advantages and disadvantages that masks contribute to staged performances. Each of these thinkers is forced to contend with the fact that masks necessarily conceal an actor's facial affective expressions, thereby appearing to deprive actors of a fundamental means of expressing their art. Such observations are situated in conjunction with Goethe's staging of masked performances at Weimar. Goethe's use of the mask is viewed as a means for him as a director to exert control over the bodies of actors to diminish their artistic agency. The theatrical mask is thus conceptualized as an extension of his Rules for Actors, a series of prescriptions for subjugating an actor's body to the aesthetic of the directorial vision.