In its most basic meaning, the topic of this paper, neutral mask, is a means of discovering a body state that can prepare an actor for a play before beginning to create the character and the role. 

As a start point for the actor, the neutral mask precedes the character and role building. In this context, it is an inter-space in which the actor is no longer in the actor’s ordinary body and does not yet establish otherness. Why is the actor invited into a neutral degree before vitalizing the other? What are the possibilities for the actor, of which the term “neutral” might indicate? 

Throughout the article, the possibilities that the term “neutral” and the above-mentioned inter-space can imply and the meanings they may give birth to in theatricality will be discussed in two distinct yet interrelated directions. First, the neutral state of the body of the actor will be examined as a quiet, relaxed and tensionless body study, in the sense of a state of openness and vigilance. In this regard, the relation among the presence of a tensionless body and the actor’s listening to the surroundings and others will be discussed; and it will be noted that the tensionless body, as the actor’s presence as a state of body, and as one of the main aims of neutral mask studies, never refers to a loose, non-energetic body. Neutral mask, by eliminating the face, helps the actor search for possibilities of expression and play in the actor’s body. While the existence of a mask covering the face may first suggest a feeling of being concealed, it actually broadly reveals the body capabilities of the actor. That is, by distancing the actor from the ordinary and settled gestures, verbal expressions, and movement and acting habits, the mask provides a possibility for the actor to explore different bodily opportunities.

Within the acting studies, the mask gives the actor a body form and a possibility of play. Since the mask is unexpressed, it demands a body that is unexpressed from the actor. In this regard, it is a means to create a neutral state of body in which no expression and no character extension is yet formed. In fact, it was the collaborative work of Jacques Copeau and Albert Marque, that first designed the neutral mask, based on the concept of masks that have no expression used by the aristocracy during the 18th century. While this characteristic of no-expression of the neutral mask will establish the second direction of the article, the term “neutral” will also be read with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s active mimesis and passive mimesis as a state of inexpressive, neutrality where no character is yet formed, in order to discuss what the actor’s quest for a ground without any identity or belonging corresponds to. According to Lacoue-Labarthe, the paradox is that the more the actor is nothing, the more the actor is able to be everything. With the neutral mask practices, the actor searches for a state of body in which no expression, adjective and characteristic that might refer to oneself or another is carried, toward being able to take the form of everything. The more the body of the actor is eluded from its belongings, the closer the actor is to taking the form of otherness, to playfulness, to the gift of mimesis as the creative and productive or formative force. This follows Dionysos, the source of Western theater, which has no pre-established form. Theatrical mimesis, for Lacoue-Labarthe, is the ‘‘the presentation of something other, which was not yet there, given or present.”

The last part of the article explores how this very neutral ground where differentiation and transformation is possible, reserves a substantial capacity for the comedy, will be also explored. In this regard, the possible relation between neutral and comedy will be based on considering the comedy potential that the act of taking theatrical form or disguise holds.