Maschere tra ritualità e teatro, archeologia e digitalizzazione. Indagini interdisciplinari

Were the famous miniature masks from Lipari (4th–3rd centuries BC) specifically intended as grave goods associated with funerary rituals, or did they also serve as tangible representations of theatrical practice? Through a systematic exploration of their theatrical functionality, the study has revealed their versatility: hitherto considered almost exclusively as models for comic characters, these refined works of art prove, when put to the test on stage, to be an unexpected resource for reconstructing the performative dimension of tragedy as well.\r\nThe result of the methodological convergence of the PRIN 2022 project, this volume adopts a transdisciplinary perspective to reconstruct the nature of the ancient theatrical phenomenon and its reception. Alongside the first comprehensive presentation of a corpus of Macedonian artefacts, an analysis of the acoustics of the Greek Theatre of Syracuse and a study of Italic and Sicilian figurative pottery (with a particular focus on the Felton Painter), the research achieves pioneering results in defining a protocol for the digitisation and prototyping of archaeological artefacts from Lipari.\r\nThe volume analytically documents the entire process of reconstructing the tragic and comic masks: from the exegesis of the text to the dramaturgy of the performance, from the 3D scans of the miniatures and the actors’ faces to the technical stages which, starting with digital printing, lead to the artisanal recreation of the artefact for the stage. This process guided the revival of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound and the experimentation with an original comedy, Casina, born from the contaminatio of Plautine models.\r\nFrom an examination of the frontal nature of the Dionysian prosopon to the direct testimonies of actors and master mask-makers, the work transcends a purely historiographical dimension: it integrates philology and advanced technologies to investigate the persistence of the mask, opening up new horizons of research into the phenomenology of these ancient artefacts.