FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS OF FACE PAINTING IN KINOIS POPULAR THEATRE

Inscribed in the systems of social communications, theatre remains in its practice that space which best imitates the animated forms of life, and transcends them by satisfying aesthetic aspirations. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, better in Kinshasa, this art, alongside dance and music, has become the spectacular and impressive form on which current Chinese culture is based because its so-called popular genre has left the theatres for television. By playing life, or rather, according to Jean-Louis Barrault, "a game that reproduces life", some of the actors grimace to blend in and be permanently inhabited by an exaggeratedly made up character playing various roles. Our concern, beyond all this reality, is to grasp the role that the use of such a grimace permanently fills and the impact that this tool has on the actor to want to embody permanently the same character with the same make-up. This work comes to take up a challenge, that of finding, through spirit and culture, answers likely to draw attention to the wonders of the transmission and/or communication capacity of the Kinois jester.