Re-viving the 1981 Noho Theatre Group play Act without words 1
May 6 2019 Kinokuniya
Southern Theatre 新作 Classics
Although I've been studying it for nearly four decades, the nuances of Tradition in Japanese performing arts continue to fascinate me.
In 1981, fresh to Japan and Kyoto, I happened to run into
traditional kyogen comedian Shigeyama Akira, and we decided to form the Noho
Theatre Group as a one-time only project. Since I didn’t know much Japanese nor
he much Japanese, we decided to perform Samuel Beckett’s short mime
masterpieces, Act without words 1 and 2
at the Studio Varie café-theatre near Kyoto University.
38 years later, we are reviving the first play, again with
Akira performing and myself directing, this time with his son Sennojo
(newly-renamed from Doji, whom I directed in his stage debut, age 4, as “Water”
in Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice) producing it on a program with four other “new
kyogen”, “Kyogen Punishment (Batsu)”. We have four rehearsals in
Kyoto and an hour in the theatre. It’s a complicated play, with all the
off-stage devices to bring on or off a Tree, Pitcher, and Rope of the original
are replaced by the Kurogo, surreptitiously performing all the actions onstage.
Maruishi Yasushi replaced Noho co-founder Laurence R. Kominz after 1982 and
valiantly performed the role for 34 years until hip problems forced him to pass
it on to Akira’s son. Sennojo will be performing in another play, so in Tokyo
Shigeru, Doji’s cousin,will perform the role, his first with Noho. Because of
this substitution, instead of the 30 minute “placement” rehearsals of the last
90 times we’ve done the production, we actually have four, full rehearsals with
the two performers, with Maruishi and I coaching (and Sennojo offering
encouragement).
It was clear that “Director” means different things when a
play is revived within such a traditional context. At the first rehearsal, at
the Shigeyama practice studio in Demachi, in north Kyoto, I sat in the
director’s cushion by the table, while the various properties were arranged by
the young people, while Akira and Maru looked at their scripts. Folded neatly
into a double-sided B5 size was their original scripts, used in the 1981
production! (I have no idea where mine went to. I just remember, or rely on the
video of the last production, 2015. Their playbooks, with names and date was
written on the cover, contain a palimpsest of careful memos in blue filled the
page: how long to count between beats, how many times to “reach for rope,”
where to fall, when to flutter his eyelids. Maru had a parallel series of memos
on HIS actions: when to carry on or remove a box and when to return to the
“waiting” position in order not to pull the spotlight from Akira. Where to hold
items, what order to place the Tree, Sign, Branch, and Little Branch specified
as “Tree” and “Branch” in Beckett’s text.
As a consequence of their careful work, Maru was able to
pass down the “kata” formal patterns to Doji, who now in a new name in turn
helped pass it on to Shigeru. Eventually Sennojo will be able to play Akira’s
part, perhaps, aided by the text long after Akira is too old to go through all
the actions with him, or me to direct him. Just as their other plays from their
repertoire, and well-repeated shinsaku
(new plays), Beckett’s mime—now performed over a 100 times in Japan and tours
abroad—has been “traditionalized,” codified to easily transmit.
Future performers, freed from the
constraints of inventing positions, gestures, and object placement on stage,
can concentrate on the nuances of breath, gesture, facial expression, and
pacing. Talented ones will then put their own stamp on the play. When Sennojo,
Akira’s father, played the part in 1985, he felt that the Man’s fingering his
collar before reaching for the rope to hang himself. He held the noose to frame
his head moment, to show broadly, “I am thinking of hanging myself.” I felt it
needlessly explanatory, but Akira has kept it in the role when he returned to
play it (after that single performance, Sennojo “gave it back” to Akira, saying
“it’s his.” At the American Repertory Theatre in New York in 1986, Sennojo
watched from the wings as Akira performed this for a week—every night! He, ever
curious genius that he was, was trying to discover that elusive magic “it.”)
I am
looking forward to the Tokyo performance, our first in about fifteen years (our
previous visits were to sites now vanished: both Jean Jean’s and the Aoyama
Theatre in the Round no longer exist!). Although when we toured we played
blackbox, outdoor, and proscenium theatres with the portable play, Akira hasn’t
performed the the mime off a noh stage for at least a decade. The frontal and
intimate nature of the 460-seat Kinokuniya Southern Theatre, the timing of the
new Kuroko, and his increasing frailty (still a strong 67 year old) will be fun
to watch. Especially changed are the ma,
pauses Beckett wrote and Akira uses to let the play breathe. The sense of
striving for survival, failing, and trying again maintains the Company motto.
But at least at this single play, we’ve succeeded perhaps in creating something
that will last. At this point I can only sit back and let it take on its own
life, again.
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