Masks in action: characters and performances in Mexico

Coordinación: Sofía González Caccia

Design and Programming: Alberto Figueroa

CD

With an electronic book format, Masks in Action, suggests the study, from a stage arts perspective, of the origin and sense of masks, in particular dancing masks, those which, in difference to the merely decorative, represent characters that since the pre-Hispanic era to our times, form part of indigenous Mexican representations – of Moors and Christians, of Holy Week, of carnival, of sacred animals, of moralizing and sacrificial masks for moralizers agriculture, fishing or hunting – through which express the sense of life in these communities, which have lived and survived through the centuries in the towns where they were created and kept safe by its community. The mask-characters that are repeated more in celebrations and that generally give name to the performance, with variants in different communities in the country; the parts of the mask, the materials and techniques of their elaboration, the preparation of the mask-maker and the forms of transmission of that cultural heritage, are explained in the chapters that integrate within the study: “The Mexican Mask”, “The Mask of the God”, “Masks in Action”, “All the Faces” and “Preparation.” In a special archive, “Catalog of Characters”, displays an image gallery of mask-characters (Tejorones, Paixtles, Tastoanes, Chores, Parachicos, Tlacoloreros, Pascolas, Pilatos, Manueles, devils, Jews, tigers, old people…) as examples of performances that correspond to more than twenty entities in the Mexican Republic.