People have used masks for millenia. They are used in ritual, in society, and of course, in the theatre. The ancient greeks used the twinned masks of tragedy and comedy, the Noh style of Japanese theatre uses hundreds of stylized masks, and clowns have been painting masks on their faces for a long time (the "fool" can be traced back to ancient Egypt, and is the first card in the Tarot deck). And we wear masks in our daily lives. We wear the mask of the smiling acceder when the boss makes a foolish comment, the mask of patient tolerance when our teenaged citizenry dress in the latest outré fashions and piercings, the mask of invisibility while commuting on the bus, and the mask of blindness when passing the beggar in the street.

Masks give us the power to change who we are. Sometimes the masks are worn, sometimes painted on, and sometimes assumed invisibly. Doffing and donning them is often a thing of ritual. In Japan (where masks of civility are proudly worn all the time), ritual removal is found through alchohol—pent up feelings can be hurled at one's boss when the mask is shed, but the next morning apologies are offered and accepted, because both parties consent to the ritual mask of drunken expressiveness.

Masks are complicated. For six years, I was a member of Pittsburgh TheatreSports, an improvisational comedy troupe based on the teachings of Keith Johnstone. Most of the friends and colleagues who came to see me perform thought that I put on a (figurative) mask when I did all of the wacky things I did on stage. My mother knew the truth. When I got on stage, I took off my mask...

Masks give us anonymity. The Lone Ranger hid behind his mask (but I don't know if he ever removed it, so I am uncertain what he was hiding). In the middle ages and the renaissance, party-goers often wore masks to hide their identity (although often their anonymity was only guaranteed by convention—it is hard to be innocent of the fact that you are dancing with the king). In Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt recognizes fair young Romeo by his voice, yet Capulet insists that he be permitted to remain unmolested at the party. In part, this was because "to say truth, Verona brags of him; To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth", but also because as long as Romeo remains mask'd, Capulet could outwardly feign ignorance of the presence of the scion of his Montague foe. The mask works both ways...

Masks give us power. African tribes don masks in ritual and in dance; indigenous American tribes did the same, and "war paint" is another form of mask. Samurai warriors wore fierce masks into battle, and in football season this ritual is preserved in locker-rooms throughout the United States as erstwhile warriors smear lampblack under their eyes, ready their helmets, and put on their "game face". Wrestlers in the WWF (now the WWE, an incredible form of physical theatre) don the masks of their personas, and in Mexico (where the art form is even more ritualized than here), luchadores wear full head-covering masks. When a wrestler has been defeated, his mask is ritually cut off. Perhaps this has roots that lie much deeper in the human sacrifice Maya/Aztec/Teotihuacan society, but today the removal of the mask strips the player of the final vestiges of his power—and to regain it, he must earn it back from this humiliating defeat.

Masks can be used to instill fear. Certainly the sight of hooded Klansmen rightfully instills dread (given the history of hatred and lynchings that follows them), but masks can also cause fear of justice and of good. In contemporary graphic literature Batman wears a mask that the bad guys fear (and that selfsame mask gives him a measure of his power).

And of course, masks allow us to change character. Canio becomes Pagliaccio when he smears on the greasepaint and puts on the costume, and well he knows this: the Vesti la Giubba aria tells us how the show must go on, and how heartbroken Canio can become the smiling Pagliaggio. And this is to say nothing of the fact that in opera, the mask describes the front part of the singer's face (cheeks, nose, sinuses), and singers can use their mask to enhance their tone.

But as I said, masks are complicated. On stage, Richard Leech wears the mask of Canio, but in the rehearsals that I have been privileged to see, the mask comes on and off as the player analyses the character, as the character sings, as the Maestro speaks with the player... And of course, the character of Canio similarly dons the character of Pagliaccio. As an audience watching the opera, we get to see the same analysis and discussion that I have seen in rehearsals. In the opera's denouement, we see the masks shatter. Pagliaccio reveals the Canio beneath the greasepaint, Colombina dissolves into Nedda, and Silvio's adultery is bloodily unmasked. And although the tatters of the clown's paint remains, the power of the mask is gone—all that remains is a shattered, heartbroken man.

And when the curtain falls, we applaud the flesh-and-blood men and women who wore those many layers. But when the house lights come back up, we hastily reapply our own masks—nodding civilly at the person who kicked our chair, ignoring the beggar on the corner, girding ourselves for the next day...