Here's a striking claim I found in an article about the use of masks in modern performances of ancient Greek drama ...Masks are almost ubiquitous in non-western cultures. The western and Islamic worlds are unusual in regarding the mask as a mode of concealment, not a mode of revelation and transformation. It seems to be a correlative of monotheistic religions that they want human nature to be single, not multiple.
David Wiles, "The Use of Masks in Modern Performance of Greek Drama,"
in Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium,
ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Amanda Wrigley (OUP 2004), 245-6
ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Amanda Wrigley (OUP 2004), 245-6
