It's just a role. Is this a role? Just a role? One role?
Today discourse on questions of identity is very popular.
Identity or self-determination is not independent from roles - in fact, identity is formed and developed through roles. Most of us have diverse social roles (at work, in the family etc.) that are easy to see that they affect our identities.
But what about someone whose profession as a performer means not one but many roles?
I examined these questions through an extremely interesting person, Papito, a circus performer.
Papito invents and builds his characters himself - also he makes the masks and paints all the accessories needed to embody them. “What a privilege: he can really be whoever he wants to be” - we might think that. However, we may not think about how much self-discovery and self-knowledge it takes to be who we want to be.
The symbol mask can stand for covering something, but it can also stand for expressing and emphasizing something. It is also an extremely important and difficult decision to make - to decide what to be shown.
Papito also patterns the base of the masks from his own face. In this way, the figure he creates is closely and inseparably connected to him from the very first moment.
Is it possible at all to avoid blurring one’s identity with the character he plays once the relationship is so direct? Can or should identity and characters be separated? What is a piece of art, what is mere self-discovery? Maybe these two are the same?
