Make-up

Any substance, usually in liquid, cream or powder form, that is used to disguise, transform, age, or decorate an actor's face. It includes the white lead reportedly used by Thespis in the sixth century b.c.e., as well as the "pancake," "powder," and "grease-paint" of later periods. In theatre traditions that do not use masks, and where distances or artificial lighting can impair visibility, make-up is sometimes used for the practical purpose of helping the audience to see the actors' features.

Mansion

Used in the Medieval period in some types of religious plays to describe the various locations represented as part of the outdoor set (see passion play and miracle play). For a piece about the Passion of Christ, for example, structures would be built to depict such locales as Heaven, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Limbo, and Hell. Often elaborately decorated and equipped with sophisticated special-effects machines, such mansions were simultaneously visible throughout the play; the action advanced not through set changes but through the movement of actors from one mansion to the next.

Mask

Any removable and reusable material used to disguise, transform, obscure, or decorate all or part of an actor's face. Many Western theatre traditions use masks as a convention. Greek and Roman actors always wore full masks with large, gaping mouth-holes (except in mimes); Italian actors of the commedia dell'arte wore coloured leather half-masks that covered their eyes, nose and upper cheeks. With the return of non-realistic performance styles in the twentieth century, the use of masks has become widespread again.

Masques

Spectacular entertainments performed at royal courts as part of special celebrations such as weddings and feast-days, chiefly during the Renaissance. Consisting of music, dance, technical wizardry, and extravagantly opulent costumes, masques celebrated the virtues of the reigning monarch in terms, images, and allegories drawn from Classical mythology. Members of the royal family and their entourage took part by joining in the dancing or allowing themselves to be carried aloft on "clouds" animated by hidden machines. In England, Ben Jonson provided the poetry for famous masques created in collaboration with architect and scenographer Inigo Jones.

Melodrama

A type of storytelling that emerged in France and Germany in the wake of the French Revolution, and that is marked by many features of that event: a clear division of characters into the poor, weak, and good hero on one hand, often a child, woman, mute or slave; and a rich, powerful, and evil villain on the other, who schemes to exploit or harm the victim, but who is triumphantly overthrown at the last possible minute, usually in a sensational fire, fight, avalanche, or other violent cataclysm. Literally "music-drama," melodrama originally used background music throughout the action, much like film soundtracks do, to emphasize the characters' emotions, warn of approaching danger, and shape the spectator's emotional response (especially at the ends of acts and scenes, when actors assumed particularly pathetic or frightening postures and held them, frozen, in tableaux). Melodrama was the most popular narrative genre in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. It still retains its popularity today, but it has long since left the theatre, taking up residence in the Hollywood film.

Minstrel Show

A type of musical variety entertainment consisting of racist burlesques of African-American performance styles. Hugely popular in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century, minstrel shows were generally performed by white singers in "blackface" (black make-up with highlights applied to emphasize the lips and eyes), and were based on grotesquely exaggerated stereotypes. Minstrelsy developed elaborate conventions and achieved such wide mainstream acceptance that it attracted contributions from respectable composers, such as Stephen Foster. There were even some instances in which African-American performers themselves adopted blackface and caricature-based mannerisms in order to appeal to popular taste. Long after minstrelsy's racist foundations were themselves recognized and denounced, variations on the minstrel show continued to appear, for example on British television (the BBC's "Black and White Minstrel Show" ran from 1958 to 1978).

Miracle Play

A type of medieval religious drama based on material drawn from stories and legends about the lives, works, suffering, and martyrdom of Christian saints. Also called a saint's play.

Mise en Scène

French expression, literally meaning "the putting on stage," which has been adopted in other languages to describe the sum total of creative choices made in the staging of a play. Because these are nowadays usually made by a director, mise en scène can be used interchangeably with "direction," but the French term conveys a greater sense of the artistry involved, particularly with respect to the visual, stylistic, and conceptual aspects of a production that are not explicitly covered by the English term.

Modernism

A widespread movement in Western culture, datable perhaps to the Paris Exposition of 1889, which sought to sever all ties with the past and invent new modes of art, thought, and life that were consistent with (what was believed to be) an unprecedented new age of machines, speed, new possibility, and change. Like the unadorned steel of the Eiffel Tower, like the architectural adage that "form follows function," like Futurist symphonies written for typewriter and vacuum cleaner, modernism rejected all ornamental beauty, challenged all recognizable artistic conventions, and tried to reinvent painting, music, theatre, architecture, and other arts from scratch. Modernist sub-movements, such as Symbolism, Futurism, Constructivism, Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism, advanced their own styles; but they all shared a desire to use artistic materials—light, colour, sound, space, time, bodies—in boldly new ways. From the early 1970s, the austerity and radicalism of modernism was rejected by many artists in favour of postmodernism.

Monologue

Used to refer to text that is spoken by an actor on stage alone, or to the audience, but not to another character. Can also be used in the sense of "a long uninterrupted speech."

Morality Play

A type of religious drama that flourished in the Middle Ages, usually cast in the form of an allegory, and intended to teach a clear moral lesson to the audience. Everyman is one of the most famous of all morality plays.

Mumming

The practice of disguising oneself in costume and, with other mummers, going door to door to entertain one's neighbours, usually in connection with an ancient seasonal festival or holiday. Modern-day Halloween approximates the practices of the earliest known mummers, who seem to have been common in England in the Middle Ages.

Musical Theatre

Virtually all theatre, in all periods and places, features music. But the term "musical theatre" refers to a specific, often American genre of entertainment that dominated the commercial theatre districts of New York, London, and other cities through the twentieth century. Divided into songs, dances, and unsung spoken sections, and frequently featuring large dancing choruses, musicals can be hard to distinguish from some kinds of opera and operetta; but whereas the vocal parts of opera can usually be handled only by professional musicians, musical theatre scores are generally intended for actors (who happen to be able to sing). Very great musicals will tend to "cross over" and be taken into the repertoires of serious opera companies eventually.

Mystery Play

A type of religious drama popular in the Middle Ages, based on narrative material taken from the Old and New Testaments. In England, mystery plays, also called Bible-cycle plays, were performed by the members of trade and craft guilds in the streets of market towns, often on Corpus Christi day. See pageant-wagons, carros, and autos sacramentales.


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