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Tara Cariaso

Educator/Mask-Maker/Director

 

Tara is a Filipina-American, Baltimore-based educator of physical theatre, archetypes, somatic acting, mask performance, and is founder/designer for Waxing Moon Masks Education and Fabrication Company. Tara received her MFA from Dell’Arte Int'l School of Physical Theatre, and has been part time faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), CCBC, and Guest Artist at the Pig Iron school in Philadelphia. Her ongoing work with non-profit B4 Youth Theatre uses somatic practices and theatrical masks for social justice play-making in Liberia, West Africa. Tara is in collaboration with Faction of Fools (DC),imagining an anti-oppressive Commedia Dell'Arte framework, and her framework, “Embodying Archetypes,” imagines liberated character creation processes for a next generation of comic actors.

 

Three actors in brightly colored clothing and masks perform outside.
Commedia Gets a New Face
Essay

Commedia Gets a New Face

14 December 2023

Mask maker Tara Cariaso details her process for creating new masks for Commedia dell’arte, alongside a pedagogy that removes the harmful stereotypes originally embedded in the form and creates space for more actor agency.