Kyoto performance reviews

Dangers of repeat informants: recycling what we know about noh (This is the beginning of a publication perhaps; I welcome feedback).  I have been ruminating on the dangers of going to the well too often when it comes to Japanese theatre research on noh performance in particular. Those "tried and true" actors who are able/willing to be interviewed, teach, and tour overseas for conferences or workshops are few and far between. Significantly, just three of them--Kongo school Udaka Michishige, Kita school Takabayashi Kouji, and Kita school Matsui Akira have been responsible for many of the articles, and dissertations, interviews, and international collaborations for over four decades. Why are these three Kansai-based performers (2 outside where iemoto and most performances take place, Tokyo), 2 first-generation actors who are relative outsiders to the main line of tradition, taken as "the gospel" of noh performance practice over multiple generations of scholars? Their p...

 Candlelit Noh: Why the Blue?  Aug 16th Daimonji Noh Utoh Utoh is one of my favorite noh plays. An unusually vivid depiction by a Bird-Hunter Ghost of his double torment: inability to return or communicate with his wife and son, attacked merciless in the everlasting hell-fires of sinners. I had produced a version for Matsui Akira's Women in Circle one-man show that he toured to Europe and the U.S., using slides of Shiko Munakata's woodblock prints with translation of "Blood-birds", an early Wetherby work. Matui danced the climactic kuse powerfully, the iron claws of the giant Auk (seabird) and bloody, fatal tears of the mother shown with vigor and pathos. A laquered black sedge hat and pole his only properties, a feather-skirt and light white vest his ghostly garments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH8lm40bilw&t=56s (with Richard Emmert's chorus on tour in UK) So, I was eager to see how the head of the Kongo school would perform the piece by candlelight in ...

Fear of flailing?: Returning to regular blogposting August 2022 Much to my surprise, I see that I have been on hiatus for over two years. Rather than wait for a beloved sensei or mentor to pass away, I thought I would return to my initial impetus for starting this blog. I go to a lot of performances: concerts, dance, theatre, and especially kyogen. Before Covid, this would include occasional buffet feasts in San Francisco London, Bali, and New York. Since Covid this has mainly been online, and limited to Kyoto. I doubt if there is anyone else in the world with the same tastes as I: noh as a matinee, E9 little theatre experiment in the evening, research showing the next day. But although I take notes, keep programs, and file it away in my memory, I rarely commit to writing down critiques, much less posting it on a public blog. Why? I reflect here on my background in theatre reviewing, consider its technique and utility, then once again plunge back into the critical appraisals that may, ...

July 9th 2022    Cutting Edge 狂言: God & Demon Shigeyama kyogen youth fooling around with new kyogen and sketch comedy (performances ongoing in August ) https://kyotokyogen.com/schedule/0820cek/ Kyogen programs are usually one-time only events. Three or four plays are put together according to seasonal appropriateness and variety, as well as technical ability to change costumes and casting balance. While single kyogen are the requisite filler between the somber noh, all-kyogen programs have been an increasing part of the post-War theatrical scene. Annual family shows spotlight brothers or fathers and sons, or celebrate receiving an award or honoring an ancestor’s death anniversary. These well-publicized programs often feature rare, large-cast plays, and newly created plays that  stretch the abilities of the extended family members. Held on noh stages but also civic and prefectural halls, their leaflet designs have recently features colorful montages of photos of previo...

A tribute to Michishige Udaka 1948-2020 https://www.kyoto-np.co.jp/articles/-/203401 Udaka Michishige was T.T.T.’s first teacher. Rebecca Teele (Ogamo) was his long-term disciple, and received her professional license and name from him just before we met, in 1981. Another disciple, John McAteer, who passed away last week, was my first noh teacher: a chorus member of his shimai dance Shojo . Rebecca was eager to share her skills in mask-making and knowledge of noh with other foreigners; I was similarly interested in setting up a program for myself and others to study noh and kyogen intensively in the summer. After discussions with teachers about the time, proper length, and content, we formed T.T.T. (Traditional theatre training) in 1984. Surprisingly, receiving a Japan Foundation award, we began the program with 16 pioneer students.             Michishigesensei was that rare creature: a superb performer who was also a sensi...

Kiwoong Sung’s Three Sisters’ Foreign Service Kyoto Art Center Feb 22 2020 https://www.kac.or.jp/events/27677/ Adapations of Shakespeare to other periods abound. By re-setting the Venice of Italian renaissance of The Merchant of Venice to a cosmopolitan 18 th c century social whirl, one can select from wonderful options for costumes and sets, but also can maintain the enduring themes of animosity between Christians and Jews, oppression of women, and evils of scrupulous capitalism. At other times, plays in contemporary clothing or language reinvigorate a classic by jarring juxtapositions of antique customs and ethics with the passions and resonant issues of the day—the Mikado set at a seaside spa in 19 th century Britain; Ivo van Hove’s Network , a “mad as hell” cry for help in the present chaotic, media, messianic moment.             At other times, such transplantations can create comic or hideous monsters, obscuring...

--> Not I transl. and dir. by Kimura Yusuke at the Theatre Lumen, Kyoto May 30 2019 http://yusuke-kimura.net/ Samuel Beckett’s Not I is a surreal horror of a one-woman show. A Woman’s mouth only is seen, high above the stage, absurdly higher than if she were standing, framed in spotlight. As the light fades in, the sounds of her gasping, whispering, urgent voice is heard before the lights fade up on the mouth, lips painted brightly, teeth, tongue; even her throat is visible in a kind of red-grey chiaroscuro. She is speaking to herself, a stung creature, like the ox-sister Io in Euripides’ Prometheus . Words spill from her unwanted, a verbal diarrhea, before she thinks them, allowing us to see her forming the words and reacting to them in real time, reversing normal order. Each impulse, each fragment, amended or doubled-back upon, rejected or extended—returns her to a continuous loop, recurring inside her brain but vocalized for us. A silent, lonely woman su...