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Ch 10
Asian and African Theatre
Iris Hsin-chun Tuan
UCLA Ph.D.
Associate Professor
NCTU
Theatre in Japan
At about the time religious cycles were
flourishing in Europe, a very different kind
of theatrical experience was being offered
halfway round the world in Japan.
 There, Noh theatre was perfected and
codified so thoroughly that it is still
performed today much as it was five
hundred years ago.

Theatre in Japan
To understand Noh theatre we need to
look at the political and cultural context
out of which it developed.
 During the sixth century A.D. the
Buddhist religion arrived in Japan from
India and China.
 In the seventeenth century an emperor
gained power over Japan and took
ownership of all land.

Theatre in Japan
In 1192 emperor ceded his secular
authority to a shogun (military dictator),
although he retained his status as a neargod in the religious realm.
 The shogunate became hereditary,
although new families won possession of
the title from time to time.

shogunate
Theatre in Japan
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Japan was ruled in this manner until 1867, when American
intervention led to the downfall of the shogunate and the
return of power to the emperor.

Under shogunate Japan had strict social hierarchy:
Samurai
Merchants
Artists and craftsmen
Farmers and peasants
Theatre in Japan
In 1338 the Ashikaga family
gained control of the
shogunate and retained it for
the next two hundred fifty
years.
 One of its goals was to
eliminate foreign cultural
influences and develop native
art forms.

Noh Theatre
The most significant developments in Noh
theatre began around 1375. At that time it
was taken under the patronage of shogun.
 The major influence on Noh’s view of the
world was Zen Buddhism, which reaches
that ultimate peace comes through union
with all being, the individual desire must
be overcome, and that nothing in earthly
life is permanent.

Noh Theatre
Noh Theatre
Noh dramas are classified
into five types, according to
the principal character: god
plays, warrior plays, women
plays, madness plays, and
demon plays.
 Each Noh script is short and
doesn’t emphasize
storytelling.

Noh Theatre
The performers can be divided into three
groups: actors, chorus, and musicians.
 The actors are trained from childhood
and expect to devote twenty or more
years to perfecting their craft.

Noh Theatre

The chorus is composed of from six to
ten members. They sit at one side of the
stage throughout and sing or recite many
of the shite’s (main character and his or
her followers) lines or narrate events.
Noh Theatre
Each play requires two or
three drummers and one
flute player. No other
instruments are ever used.
 The shite and his
companion wear masks of
painted wood, many of
them passed down for
generations.
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Noh Theatre
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The Noh stage, standardized for almost four
hundred years, is raised about three feet.
The stage is divided into three areas, although
none is separated architecturally except for the
pillars.
The largest area, the main stage, is enclosed by
the four pillars and is about eighteen feet
square.
Back of the upstage pillars is the rear stage
(atoza), where the musicians and attendants sit.
To stage left of the main stage is the waki-za,
where the chorus kneels on the floor in two
rows.
Noh Theatre

There are two entrances to the stage. The
principal one, the bridge, is a railed
gangway about six feet wide and forty feet
long leading from the mirror room, where
the actors prepare for their entrances.
Noh Theatre
The audience views the performance from
two sides: in front of the main stage and
facing the stage from alongside the bridge.
The theatres used today hold three
hundred to five hundred people.
 Every element of performance is strictly
controlled by conventions that have been
established for centuries. Rather than
encouraging innovation, Noh seeks to
perfect and preserve an art form.

The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)

The Shrine in the Fields is usually attributed
to Zeami. It belongs to the third category
(woman play) and is based on episodes
from one of the most famous of Japanese
novels, The Tale of Genji.
The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)
Each Noh play is set in a specific season
of the year, named early in the drama, and
the mood and imagery of the entire play
must be in keeping with that season.
 In The Shrine in the Fields the time is late
autumn, the seventh day of the ninth
month, the day in which Lord Genji
visited Lady Rokujo at Nonomiya.

The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)
As is typical in Noh drama, the
introductory scene compresses time and
place: An itinerant priest ( the waki or
secondary character) travels – almost
instantaneously –
 from the capital to Nonomiya, where his
curiosity is aroused by the seemingly
perfect preservation of the shrine
although it has long been abandoned.

The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)
When the ghost of Miyasudokoro (the
shite) appears in the guise of a village girl,
 he questions her about the shrine and
herself, and gradually it becomes apparent
that there is something mysterious about
both her and the place.
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The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)
As in all Noh plays, the climactic moment is
expressed in dance.
 In Noh, a number of devices distance the
spectator from the play.
 For The Shrine in the Fields the basic
appearance of the stage is altered only by
the addition of a stylized gate and
brushwood fence, and the only property of
any significance is the sprig of sakaki that
Miyasudokoro places at the shrine gate.

The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya)
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The Shrine in the Fields does not seek to
tell a story or to develop character so
much as to capture a mood, to distill a
powerful emotion, and to express an
attitude about the physical world and
human existence.
Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Japan developed two other traditional
theatre forms: doll theatre and Kabuki.
 The doll theatre, in which large puppets
represent the characters, came to
prominence in the seventeenth century.

Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Three handlers, who are visible to the
audience operate each puppet. One
handler manipulates the head and right
arm, a second the left arm, and a third the
feet.
 A narrator is accompanied by a samisen
( a three-stringed instrument with a skincovered base that can be both struck and
plucked) and other instruments of lesser
importance.

Other Japanese Theatre Forms
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The major writer of plays for doll theatre
was Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724),
Japan’s greatest playwright.
Other Japanese Theatre Forms
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He wrote many kinds of
plays but is best known for
his five-act history plays and
his three-act plays on
contemporary life.
He was admired above all
for his plays about the
double suicides of lovers, his
sensitive characterizations,
and beautiful language.
a moment from the Kabuki
version of the story
Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Kabuki, long the most popular
of the traditional forms, also
first appeared in the
seventeenth century.
 More open to change than the
other forms, it has borrowed
many of its plays and
conventions from Noh and
Bunraku but has adapted them
to its own needs.

Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Unlike Noh, Kabuki uses
a great deal of scenery,
although the settings are
not meant to be fully
illusionistic.
 White floor mats are
used to represent snow,
blue mats to indicate
water, and gray mats the
ground.
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Other Japanese Theatre Forms
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Most Kabuki plays are divided
into several acts made up of
loosely connected episodes
that emphasize highly
emotional incidents.
The climactic moment in
many scenes is reached in a
highly stylized pose (the mie)
struck and held by the
principal character.
Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Song and narration are important to
Kabuki.
 The orchestra often includes flutes,
drums, bells, gongs, cymbals, and strings,
although the most essential instrument is
the samisen.
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Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Kabuki acting is a combination of stylized
speaking and dancing.
 Kabuki actors do not wear masks, but
some roles use boldly patterned makeup to
exaggerate the musculature of face or body.
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Other Japanese Theatre Forms
Although Kabuki is highly
conventionalized, it includes many
elements that resemble, though in
exaggerated form,
 Western usages, perhaps most notably in
scenery and lighting, melodramatic stories,
and emotional acting.
 Of all Japanese forms, Noh remains the
least understood in the West.

Kabuki Theatre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67bgSFJiKc
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoK3P
a9BK-U
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Theatre in Africa
Europeans and Americans remained
largely ignorant of African performance
traditions until the end of the nineteenth
century.
 Nevertheless, African performance
activities had through the centuries been
numerous –
 religious rituals, festivals, ceremonies,
storytelling, and various kinds of
celebrations – and had been woven into
daily life.
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Theatre in Africa
The combination of the colonialist
heritage and indigenous forms created a
wide spectrum of performance in Africa.
 There are more than eight hundred local
languages in use, and many local traditions
do not necessarily travel well from one
part of Africa to another.
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Theatre in Africa
During the late nineteenth century,
European countries divided up most of
Africa among themselves and thereafter
sought to impose their languages and
ideas of theatre,
 including proscenium-arch structures, on
the territories they controlled.
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Theatre in Africa
In indigenous performance, words are
often the least important element.
 Other “languages”, especially drumming
and dance, often communicate more to
African audiences than words do.
 Direct audience participation is expected.
 Dancing and music are important in most
performances.

Theatre in Africa
It would be impossible to treat theatrical
performance in every country on the
African continent, since there are close to
fifty separate states.
 Whereas Arab languages and customs
dominate the states in North Africa, those
south of the Sahara desert are highly
diverse.

Theatre in Africa
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Most countries have been unable to rid
themselves of their colonial past and,
consequently, their theatrical customs
include both European and African
conventions.
Performance in Nigeria
Nigeria includes more than two hundred
fifty different ethnic groups, of which the
most populous are the Hausa,Yoruba, Ibo,
and Fulani.
 One of the major Yoruba festivals was the
egungen, in which sacrifices were offered
and petitions for blessing and prosperity
were addressed to the dead.

Performance in Nigeria
The most popular contemporary theatrical
form in Nigeria is Yoruba opera (now usually
called Yoruba Travelling Theatre).
 It was developed primarily by Hubert
Ogunde, who in 1946 established a
professional company with which he toured
thereafter.
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Hubert Ogunde
Performance in Nigeria
English-language plays also became
popular from around 1900,
 and drama was intoduced into schools
founded by the English colonial
government or by religious organizations
that were seeking to convert Nigerians to
Christianity.
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Performance in Nigeria
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But the dominant playwright
has been Wole Soyinka
(1934-), especially since 1986,
when he won the Noble
Prize for Literature, the first
African to be so honored.
That has not kept him from
being punished by a
government that has
imprisoned him and
threatened him with death
for his opposition to certain
government policies.
The Strong Breed
The staging conventions used in The
Strong Breed are much the same as those
found in European and American theatres.
 The difference from European and
American drama lies primarily in the
subject matter and its treatment, which
strongly reflects the egungen traditions,
but placed in a modern context.

The Strong Breed
In The Strong Breed, the dramatic action
focuses on a ritual that can be traced all the
way back to the Greeks –
 the selection and expulsion of a scapegoat
who will take all the problems of the village
on himself and carry them away.

The Strong Breed
It is never made clear why Summa, who
seems to be in love with Eman, does not tell
him of the difference in customs here,
 not even when a girl dragging an effigy
appears and lures him into the bush, where
he can be captured and prepared for the
ritual.

The Strong Breed
In the action that follows, through a series
of flashbacks,
 we learn that Eman is a descendant of a
long line of carriers and that he has left his
own village because he has been devastated
when his wife died in childbirth.
 As in Greek tragedy, Eman finds that he
cannot escape his destiny – to be a carrier.
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The Strong Breed
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The Strong Breed develops a number of
themes common in Soyinka’s plays:
the conflict between the traditional and the
modern;
the ongoing need to save society from its
tendency to follow custom and mistaken beliefs
unquestioningly;
the special individual, who through dedication
and vision awakens the people and leads them
toward better ways, even though he may
become a victim of the society he seeks to
benefit.
The Strong Breed
Soyinka may also be
suggesting that one cannot
escape tradition and
therefore must come to
grip with it.
 Soyinka’s plays form a
bridge between traditional
and contemporary
performance.
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Theatre Elsewhere in Africa
Other African countries with extensively
developed performance traditions include
Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal,
and Ivory Coast.
 But the county whose theatre is vest
known in Europe and America is South
Africa, probably because so many of its
inhabitants are descendants of white
Europeans.

Theatre Elsewhere in Africa
South Africa also attracted much attention
and controversy over apartheid,
 under which the black and white populations
were kept apart from each other as much as
possible and under which blacks were
denied most of the rights granted to whites.
 These conditions continued from the 1950s
until about 1990, when the restrictions were
removed.

Theatre Elsewhere in Africa
The best-known South African playwright is
Athol Fugard, whose plays have been
produced throughout the world and have
been especially popular in the US.
 His Master Harold and the Boys (1982) is
grounded in apartheid.
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Master Harold and the Boys
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr73Z03KHM
Theatre Elsewhere in Africa
A number of black playwrights have gained
international recognition, among them
Mbogeni Negema and Percy Mtwa.
 Their play Woza Albert enacts what might
happen if Jesus were to come back to South
Africa.

Theatre Elsewhere in Africa
It is clear that African theatre is handicapped
by colonialist heritage.
 Rather than comparing it to European and
American practices,
 it would be best to admire its broad range
of theatrical activities,
 most of which, considering the enormous
number of ethnic and linguistic divisions
within Africa, are appropriately directed to
limited and local audiences.
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Epilogue
The theatre is always in flux. It seems likely
that the versions with which we are now
familiar will change as conditions alter.
 Changes are not always welcome, but they
are necessary, because theatre can remain
vital only by reflecting the dynamics of the
culture within which it exists.
