Skip to main content

 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 the annual Daimonji noh held on the day all five surrounding mountains of Kyoto are lit up by bonfires, carving into the norther demon-gate mountains the ancient  magical incantatory letters (despite the torrential rains, it happened again this year at full scale for the first time since 2019). Candlelit performances of noh take place regularly, especially in obon season of summer return of ancestral spirits. But the torchlit noh tradition and candlelit performances go back to the non-special, pre-gaslit performances in indoor theatres or outdoor shrines that existed for centuries. When done well, one can easily imagine the spirits appearing through the flickering flames, their illumination obscuring chorus and stage assistant beneath the eaves of the roofs, but shine on the lustrous masks in weird and wrenching ways.

In fact, summer bonfires and fireworks, candle-ceremonies at weddings and incense attest to some fascination of the Japanese towards fire, burning, and light. 

Regretfully, the show was a great disappointment. I will refrain from commenting on the performance itself--a last-minute purchase, I had a distant waki-za side view. But the 10 spaced cone-enclosed candles that should have created that mysterious dark beauty of Yugen were completely overwhelmed by the bright, blue-tinged stage lighting that was used to light up the otherwise dark wood stage. Unlike the strips of fluorescent lighting that were often found in noh theatres to provide a blanket brightness simulating daytime, the recently rebuilt Kongo and other new noh theatres have high-tech spotlights hidden surreptitiously behind roofbeams and pillars. I have seen performances at the Oe theatre where lighting in warmer colors or even between acts helps express the story subtly.  So why then would actors, so attuned to the delicate shades of mask-tilts and kimono ties, permit this blue-wash that bleached out the detail of costumes, flattened the masks, and showed everyone onstage in sharp focus? The candles were less than useless, further obscuring eyelines with their annoying flickering yet providing no illumination. 

Would the performance had matched the leaflet photograph! Another bucket-list of candlelit productions I would like to see/produce/direct in future, truly candelit noh Only.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An urgent appeal (駆け込み訴えKakekomi utae) by Dazai Osamu

-->   How close is too close? An urgent appeal ( 駆け込み訴え Kakekomi utae) by Dazai Osamu Adapted, acted and directed by Kodama Ta   chi 児玉泰地 (役者でない) No actors https://www.facebook.com/events/283142869026661/ On April 8 2019 at the small Cafe Figaro near the University of the Arts in northeast Kyoto, a former student of mine Kodama Taichi performed a new play from his one-person series, “No actors.” I had seen a video of his earlier, absurdist actor’s nightmare play and liked its physicality and precision. I looked forward to his live performance, one that had already toured four cities and is on its way to Tokyo in the Fall. I hastily read Dazai Osamu’s short story (helpfully online in translation) before the performance. With the one drink served as part of the reasonable 1500 yen admission price, I had a ginger ale. As the dozen or so spectators entered the chandeliered, mirrored café with beautiful porcelain cups and saucers lined up, I was surpris...

Intercultural musical experiments: inherent failures?

Why can’t Western instruments and noh work together? Why do Western-trained actors have trouble sharing the stage with Japanese noh-kyogen actors? And why oh why do producers seeking publicity, frisson, and doling civic funds equitably seek to marry the two in under-rehearsed, one-time experiments? Three reasons spring to mind: 1/ On a basic level of dramaturgy, the two are self-contained and other-rejecting. Noh’s frontal declamation style and stylized expression of emotion demands focus; Western “cheating” diagonals and detailed facial expression pulls focus from the stage picture to the individual portrait. Vocal energy and melodic chant, coiled taut and loosened strategically through MA pauses and accents in conjunction with drum/flute accompaniment are potently precise; Western vocal energy is emotionally, not musically based. It follows the flow of breath swept up in the surge of passion and concrete logic of debate. The trained actor’s voice itself is the instrument, needing no...

Hearing/healing voices: Shamiri Azade Voicelessness at Kyoto Experiment

KYOTO EXPERIMENT    ·  アーザーデ・シャーミーリー 『Voicelessness —声なき声』 A Daughter visits her Mother in hospital. Her Mother is in a coma, and cannot speak, but the Daughter explains that she has invented a device to hear the brainwaves of the unconscious and therefore proceeds to have a conversation with the Mother.     The Daughter wants to know why the Mother refused to continue to prosecute the death of her Father, the Daughter's Grandfather, fifty years ago. Yagil, a family friend and office manager had seemingly embezzled money, ruining the family business. Although the police  had investigated the Father's sudden collapse and fall, they found no evidence of foul play. The Mother insists that although she, her brother and sister, suspected Yagil, they had no proof.      The Daughter then reveals recovered conversations between the Mother and her Sister, and a video without sound of Yagil's visit to her house, argument with the brother over disc...