 Hi everyone. Thanks for showing up today. My name is Ty Furman and I'm the Managing Director of the BU Arts Initiative. We are thrilled to be sponsoring this residency with Theodore Nogaku. Our other co-sponsors are the Center for Gender Sexualities Studies and the CIS Department of English and the Party School Center for the Study of Asia. So we're really happy to be to be co-sponsoring with them this residency. Today, we are also live streaming today's presentation with HowlRound. So shout-out to everybody on HowlRound. And we are going to get started and I'm happy to introduce David Crandall from Theodore Nogaku. Thank you, Ty. It's a great pleasure to be here and I appreciate the Boston Arts Initiative for inviting us and all the other sponsors who have made this possible. Theodore Nogaku is a group that is involved in making new plays in English that use the traditional Japanese no techniques. We will be performing on Wednesday and Thursday at the Tsai and today in this session, we'd just like to kind of give you an overview of what no is in his traditional form and then you can see what we do with it when you come to the performances on Wednesday or Thursday. So I would like to start by just telling you a little story. And if you would just close your eyes and let these images wash over you. It's just a five-minute little story that I'm going to read to you. Once upon a time a fisherman named Hakuryo was making his way down to the sea through the pine groves of Mio near Mount Fuji. It was a beautiful spring day. A soft breeze caressed the sparkling waters of Suruga Bay and the sun shone brightly on the delicate mist that veiled the distant mountain tops. Hakuryo felt wonderful. The long winter was over and his prospects for the spring fishing season were good. As he threaded his way through the pines to the beach he felt the sun on his face and shoulders and let the warmth seep slowly into his bones. But turning a bend in the path he suddenly stopped short in surprise. There in front of him draped on a pine branch was the most beautiful cloak he had ever seen. It was made of thousands of downy feathers that caught the light and dazzled his eyes with rainbow colors. Surely this was a treasure beyond imagining, more precious than any jewel. What craftsman could have possibly fashioned such a marvelous garment and why was it left so carelessly there on the beach? Hakuryo didn't stop to consider such questions. Taking the cloak from the tree, he turned away from the water and began climbing up again toward his fishing hut. He was jubilant. This, he thought, shall be an heirloom of my family to be treasured by my children and my children's children until the end of time. He had taken only a few steps when he heard a sweet voice calling to him from the edge of the sea. Turning, he saw a graceful young woman dressed in long flowing robes and crowned in living flowers that seemed to shine with an inner light. Fisherman, that cloak is mine. Why have you taken it? Though startled, Hakuryo managed a gruff reply, I found it there on a pine branch. It's mine now. But that cloak is the feathered robe of an angel. Surely you see that it's not meant for mortals. All the more reason to keep it, insisted Hakuryo. A cloak of heaven is an heirloom indeed. I must present it to the imperial court where it will be cherished as a national treasure. The girl paused, a look of sadness clouding her clear eyes. You do not understand. Without the cloak, I cannot return to my home in heaven. I entreat you, please return it to me. But Hakuryo had already turned his heart against the girl and gripped the cloak all the tighter in his arms. The angel was clearly in distress. She gazed at the clouds above, longing for her celestial home. But unless Hakuryo returned her cloak, she would be trapped in the mortal world where she would soon perish. Already the first signs of decay had appeared. The flowers in her crown were wilting and her shining robes began to look dingy and soiled. She envied the clouds their freedom as they floated upon the paths that were now closed to her. Never again would she hear the sweet song of the Kalevinka bird or gaze upon the crystal walls of the moon palace. Helpless with grief, she covered her eyes and cried in despair. Seeing her plight, Hakuryo was at last moved to pity. I will return your cloak. I cannot stand to see you like this. Oh, thank you. Thank you, please. Bring it to me at once. All in good times, smiled Hakuryo, but you must do something for me in return. I have heard that angels perform a marvelous dance. Dance it for me now and I will return the cloak. I'm so delighted to return to heaven that I will gladly dance for you. Perhaps by giving you this dance I can ease the sorrow of those who must live in this fleeting world. But I cannot dance without my cloak. Return it to me and I will dance. No. If I return the cloak, you will simply fly away. Unhappy man. Doubt is for mortals. In heaven there is no deception. Shamed by his dark suspicions, Hakuryo at last relented and gave the cloak back to the girl. As she put it on, the feathers fluttered softly in the breeze. Their colors welling up like flowers in spring rain. She began to dance. Here now, the wonders of the palace of the moon, she sang, Fashioned with jade axes, it shall endure forever. Each night in its crystal halls, thirty angels fulfill their sacred duties. Half are cloaked in shining white and half in deepest black. Their dance brings to full circle the phases of the moon. I too am of their number, an angel of heaven, a seed of the sacred laurel tree. I flower but briefly here in eastern lands to give the world a divine gift, the dance of Suruga. And so the angel danced for Hakuryo. Her beautiful flowered crown, glowed with the light of spring as her feathered sleaze rustled softly in the fragrant air. Left, right and left again her trailing skirts dazzled the eye in a brilliant shower of white blossoms. And as she danced, she began to rise, floating gracefully on the sea breeze, past the green pines of meal strand beyond the fields of Ukishima. And on up past the soaring peak of Mount Fuji, until she mingled with the mist and was gone. That's the story of the feathered mantle. It's called Hagoromo in Japanese. It's one of the favorite no plays in the repertory. Nobody knows who wrote it actually and it was a rather late play. It was written in the, I think it was the 16th century, the mid 1500s. So it's a relatively recent no play. And I draw your attention to a couple of things about this story. First of all, what happens in it? A fisherman almost keeps a robe away from an angel, but decides not to in the end. There's almost no plot. And yet this play lasts about an hour and a half. And it's not interested in the plot. What it's interested in is how the people in the story are feeling. And that is something that is characteristic of many no plays. Whenever you generalize about no, you're in dangerous territory because there are always exceptions to any generalization. And no has a wide variety of subjects and tones. You can have warriors who are caught in hell and it's a very intense sort of experience. You can have something very delicate like this story, which is almost nothing. And yet is one of the favorites because of the way that the angel is portrayed. How does that angel feel? She is not able to get home. And then she is able to get home. She's wearing a mask, by the way, because no is a masked drama. The mask is used with different angles on the face to show different emotions. And they really do kind of pop out depending on what the words are telling you to believe. So that's one thing that we should think about when we think about no. It's not really that interested in plot. It's not a cliffhanger kind of art form like a blockbuster movie. But it's interested in exploring the emotional states that people experience in different situations. Another thing that often when I tell this story, I get, and I certainly sympathize with it, is an idea that is sexist, that here we go again. A woman has to please a man by dancing for him to get something that is rightfully hers anyway. And many people have told me that they don't like the story because it seems to be degrading to women. I understand that point of view and I could agree with it except for one thing. There's one line in the play where she gets the robe back and she prays. She prays to Seishi, who is the bodhisattva of great strength. And there's a hint in there. The text doesn't actually say it, but there is a hint in there that she is a manifestation of that bodhisattva. And she has come down from the laurel tree in the moon and she is an aspect of the bodhisattva of great strength. Now you cannot tell me that she didn't have the power to take that robe back anytime she wanted to. And the reason she didn't? She wanted to teach compassion. And she took that risk, which was a real one. She could have died in order to teach that fisherman that he had to look at her point of view. And I think that this is a really important lesson for us these days. Sorry. So you have this story. How do you tell it? How would a no-play tell it? How would a no-author tell this story? You have elements that you can play with. You can play with how you use your voice. You can play with instruments. You've got music. You've got movement. And so we're going to talk about these various aspects today to give you an idea of what no is. And we're also going to talk about a sister art called kyogen, which is comedic. It uses much of the same techniques. And my colleagues who you haven't met yet are waiting anxiously backstage to share that aspect of the world of no as well. So let's start with the voices. Imagine this young slip of a girl coming down from heaven and asking the fisherman to give back the cloak. She's very delicate. She's ethereal. What do you think she sounds like? I want you to each imagine in your mind what her voice would be like. What would she sound like? And then I will demonstrate it. Ready? What she said there was, hey, that's my robe. Give it back. But you notice that I didn't try to sound like a woman. I used my own voice. No actors do that. Until World War II, all no actors and all no performers were men. There are women performers now. But it's still basically a male art and the plays were written with a male performer in mind. There's no attempt to imitate a woman. The man is masked, has a very beautiful, delicate young woman's mask. But you can see often a master performer who is probably not in the greatest. He's not thin. He's got these jowls hanging out. You can see behind the mask. There's no question that you're looking at a man who is imitating a woman. There's no attempt to pretend or to deceive. He is who he is and he is performing in his own voice. That's one very interesting aspect of know that I think is worth pointing out. Not only with the actors but also on stage. If you need a prop, they have people come, sit down on the stage and when the prop is needed they get up and they give the prop and then they take the prop away. There's no attempt to create illusion. The people are living, breathing people on stage who are sharing an experience with the people in the audience. And it amplifies a sense of stage presence. And that is what is one of the main things about know is the stillness of it, the concentration of it is designed so that the audience and the performers pause and say we are alive together now. And it's the only art form that I know of that is so intensely focused on that idea. So, what I just demonstrated for you was called Koutoba, which is speech. It's how people talk to each other and it's the dialogue sections of the play. But there are other parts of the play that are sung. They're chanted. And that is called Utai. And within Utai, there are two different categories. There's Yoha Ging, which is melodic, and there's Tsuyo Ging, which is dynamic. And I'd like to demonstrate a couple of those for you. The first one is melodic. Very simple. These are very simple melodies and you cannot really tell just from the melody what play it's from. It's not like opera where you can recognize an aria and say oh that's Tosca or something like that. This is a generic kind of melody that you'll find in all of the plays in the repertory. But you can tell what the intervals are. The pitches are clear. And I recognize and you have noticed that there's a lot of vibrato in the voice. Sorry. But if you take the vibrato out and you just listen to the pitch. That's a fifth. Fifths and fourths tend to dominate the melody. That's melodic singing. Then there's dynamic singing. Dynamic singing isn't so concerned with the intervals themselves or the pitches themselves. And I will demonstrate that. Now if you were to take the vibrato out of that you get kind of da da da da da da da da da da da da. It's not melodic. You don't really know what those pitches are. But it's very effective I think. For a westerner who comes into it from the outside and you listen to that. You say there's a tremendous amount of power in that dynamic singing. I should note though that it doesn't have to be loud. You can do it in a soft voice and still be dynamic. Dynamic. So the dynamism is not dependent on the volume. But you're very tight in your diaphragm. You're tight in your throat. It's almost like an image that I have sometimes is like a balloon that's full. And you let the air out a little bit at a time. It's that kind of pressure that's here. And then you just let it out a little bit at a time. So it's quite tight and it's quite different from operatic singing or western singing in general where they encourage you to open your mouth and be loose and open and throw the voice up behind your head. But it is quite effective and surprisingly loud. And I invite you now to tell me something physically about me that you notice when I'm singing. Anybody have anything? Yes. Probably I was. That was not conscious. But it's probably what I was doing. Yeah. Yeah I probably was. Yes. Yes. That's right. And what about my mouth? It's closed basically. I mean it's open enough to get the sound out but I'm not going. You know it's closed and that is because you use a mask. So you have to keep it keep yourself very still in order to keep that mask effective. It's held out from your face like this so any movement bobbles it and then that becomes very distracting. So I believe I've never read this or studied this or know this but I just know as a performer that the voice production must have developed in response to the use of the mask. That's what I believe. Okay so we have the voice. Now to add to that then let's talk about the instruments that you use and know. And I will introduce four of them. This is the first one. This is called a no con a no flute. It's made out of bamboo and you would think oh that's easy. Okay they just take a piece of bamboo that's round already. It's a tube already. They just hollow it out and use it as a flute. But like many things in Japanese culture it's never that easy. This flute has been cut lengthwise into eight sections. Each section has been turned inside out so it becomes scalloped. They plane down the scallops to make it round again and then they bind it. I know that you can't really see but the outer binding is actually cherry bark. That has been cut about as thin as a fishing line and tied very tightly. So this flute is tied together basically. And if you look at the end here you can still see in the hole of the flute that it's an octagon. It's not round. It's an octagon. Why do they do that? I surmise that they do that to make sure that it doesn't split. That it's already split and it's already reinforced so that it becomes durable and an heirloom that you can use for centuries. Another thing about this it's lacquered on the inside very beautifully with red. It has a counterweight on this end made out of lead that puts the center of balance right about where the blow hole is. It makes it easy to play. But the thing that makes it really unique is it has a sleeve inside here and it narrows the inside barrel. And they do that in order to change the sound. Are there any musicians in the audience? Anybody who plays the western flute or any other kind of flute? How about a guitar? What? No musicians? There's one. What happens when you touch the guitar string halfway? It goes up an octave, right? Flutes are the same way. If you over blow, if you blow it a little harder, the same fingering will produce an octave higher. But if you play this flute and you blow it over it doesn't go up an octave. It's out of tune. It's out of tune because of that sleeve that breaks up the harmonic series inside the flute. So I'm going to play it a little bit and you can get an idea of what it sounds like. It's kind of a nice tone to it, don't you think? It sounds a little dirty. I don't like to use that word but I can't think of another one. It sounds a little cloudy. It's not as pure and clean the tone as you would get from a pure flute. There are Japanese flutes that look just like this that don't have the sleeve on the inside. And when they're played they sound like a very simple bamboo flute, very clear. But they wanted something else. The no actors wanted something with a little bit more meat. And one of the reasons that they did that was because of the characters that this flute is used to bring out on stage and to accompany as they leave the stage. Many of the characters in the feathered mantle that I read to you, she's not human. Many of the characters in No are not human. They're often disguised as humans. But they are dead people. They're spirits. They can be devils. They can be gods. And when they come out it's assumed or thought that they're coming from the other world. They're coming from someplace that isn't the mortal world. And I think that this flute really does lend itself to giving that impression that it's otherworldly. It's a little bit eerie. And so this is a really beautiful instrument, I think. I'd like to introduce one of my dear colleagues. This is Jubalith Moore. And she is performing with us. In fact she's directing the new plays Adi Dates and Poppies that we will be premiering on Wednesday. She is holding a drum. It's called a shoulder drum. It's called a kotsuzumi. It is an hourglass drum with two heads. And a real drum. This is a synthetic drum. It's made out of plastic. A real drum is made out of horse hide. And it's very sensitive to the humidity of the air. And so when you play it, you're always trying to keep it wet. And if you look at the drummers as they're playing this drum, they will periodically breathe on it and put their spit on it. And they will take wet pieces of paper and stick the paper on it to keep it nice and wet. Because this drum has a very nice and round sound which she will now demonstrate. Thank you. You notice that she gets the different tones out of this drum. It's not tied very tightly. If you could just show her them the chords. The chords are quite loose. So that when she's playing, she's holding those chords and she can release them or pull them tight depending on what kind of tone she wants. So it's quite variable. That's a Kotsismi drum. Thank you. In contrast to that drum, there's this one. This one is also an hourglass drum. This one's made out of cow hide. And in contrast to that drum which really likes humidity, this one really likes it dry. And in fact, when you bring it out onto the stage, or rather before, when you tie the drum every time you perform and you take the heads off and you heat them with charcoal, for about a half an hour or 40 minutes to make them hot. They're roasted actually. And then when they're hot, you tie them onto the body as tightly as you can to get a really sharp sound. Now I didn't bring a heater. I didn't do that for this demonstration. But it still has a very different sound which I will soon demonstrate. This is an iron ring that holds the cow hide in place. It's very tight. It's very hard. It hurts to play this drum. And so people use protection on their hands and on their fingers so that they don't mess up their hands. Now I'm not going to bother to do that either. So I'm not going to play too much. But I just want you to hear what this drum sounds like. Now I suppose maybe you're more curious about what we're doing with our voices than you are with the actual sound of the drums. Drum patterns consist not only of the hit beats, but they also consist of those vocalizations. Those are called kake goe and they're drum calls that are used in no for two purposes. One of the purposes is to keep everybody together. We don't have a conductor. There's nobody to tell us when we're playing on stage how we set the tempo and how we stay together. You've got actors who are acting, three, maybe four people on stage who are dancing. You've got a chorus of eight people. You've got four or three instruments. I'll introduce the last instrument in a minute. We're all wailing away there on the stage. How do they stay together? Well one of the ways they do it is with those kake goe, with those drum calls. Yo! That's beat three. So you can do it fast. Yo! You can do it slow. Yo! But it's beat three and everybody knows it is beat three. So when he takes his time, this drum for example takes his time to do that. He is setting and resetting the tempo each time. And each person in the group, the chorus also has places where they can do that. The actors also have places where they can do that. The leadership of the way that the piece is performed bounces from performer to performer depending on where it is in the piece. So everybody gets a chance to lead. The flute does sometimes too. It's a very interesting way to put a musical composition together. Some people call it jazz, but it's not really jazz because what they do is set. They're not improvising. But within a certain parameter they can take their time. They can change the tempo. They can change the mood of it. They can listen and respond. So in that sense it is kind of like jazz. Okay. There's one more instrument. Matt, could you please? And this is Matt Dubrov. He's another colleague who will be performing. Could you just do a basic cycle? Thank you very much. The drums are organized as every aspect of know is in a kind of a Lego fashion. So we have named patterns. He performed, I guess, five patterns there. Each one is about eight beats long in this case. There are various lengths of patterns. But in this case, eight beats, he did about five of them. Each of those patterns is named. And so you say, play me in Uchikiri. Play me Akashira. Play me whatever. And he'll know what to do. All of the drums are like that. And so you learn by learning the pattern names and learning the patterns. The vocalizations are part of that pattern. So it's not just what you're beating on the drum, but also how it interacts with what you're saying. Okay. So those are the instruments. And at this point, I think it'd be nice if we demonstrated what it sounds like. Now that we've talked about the vocals and we've talked about the instruments to hear what they sound like together. My colleagues to come out again. Now we will demonstrate. I'm going to, we're going to be performing something from the feathered mantle where she is talking about the splendors of the spring day. Now I mentioned one reason for those drum calls. There's another reason for the drum calls and that is to give the emotional tone to the piece. And you can have the same pattern but do it in very different ways. For example, there's a pattern that's called the Mitsuji and it sounds like this. But you can say that, you can do that same pattern this way. It's the same pattern. But if you're talking about an angel coming down who's very sad because she doesn't have a robe, well you do it one way. If you're talking about a warrior who is in the throes of battle, then you do it in a very different way. And those drum calls are very effective in bringing out the emotional tone of the piece. Now I'd like to ask Jubalith to come out again and we'll talk about another element of no and that is the movement. No, oh there we are. There's a basic stance in no and Jubalith is excellent at demonstrating it. You put your knees a little bit bent. And you're holding your arms out with the elbows slightly bent also. And if you look at her from the side, she's tilted forward a little bit so that the center of gravity is forward over her toes. It looks like she's about ready to go forward. It gives a sense of kind of dynamism even when she's standing still. She's not resting even though she's not moving. Do you see that? That's the basic stance. Then when she moves her feet, if you look at her feet, can you lift up your hakama a little bit so they can see? She slides them across the floor and lifts her toes right at the end with a little elegant little flip. This is the basic movement that you use in no. It's called sutiyashi. And again, you think about why they would develop this kind of movement and it comes back to the same reason that they developed the way that you use your mouth and your voice. It's to keep the head still. Look at the top of her body. It looks like she's kind of rolling along on ball bearings. But it doesn't have to be slow and this is the thing that if we say, okay, let's do a warrior. Show the basic stance and show how he would walk. The feet are further apart and she can move quite quickly and have quite dynamic movement in her body by using her legs as a kind of shock absorber. She can keep the upper body still even though she's moving quite quickly. This takes an enormous amount of training and control. It's not an easy thing to do. Thank you. So you have your basic stance and you have your basic walk and then you have movements that are incorporated. Just like we were talking about the drum patterns, there are dance patterns. There are named patterns that you put together to create a dance. And some of those patterns are not intrinsically meaningful. They are abstract and you're just using them and they will appear in all the plays in the repertory. Without any particular meaning. And I'd like you to... Would you do a shikaki hiraki? This pattern you'll see time and time again in no dancing. It doesn't have a particular meaning but in many cases when you've got a text and you're talking about, for example, cherry trees that are growing on the hillside and you want to point to those and say I'm seeing those. This can be an effective way to do that. Or, and if you do that then you're pointing higher. Or you say oh the beautiful river down in the valley and you point lower and you can see it. And it creates an image in the viewer's mind. No does not depend on scenery. They do have props, but the stage is always the same. You've got a pine tree painted on some panels in the back and that's all. You don't create a scenery like you do in western theater. So it depends a great deal on the movement and on the words to paint these pictures in your mind while you're watching the play. So those are the abstract movements. Then there are movements that are not abstract. They're quite mimetic. And I'd like, if you could do a shiori for us. Anybody have any guess what this might be? Yes. That's right, she's crying. So whenever you see this pattern it means that that character is crying and that pattern will appear in any place that involved crying in most no plays are sad affairs. So there's a lot of crying involved. Can we try gasho? Any ideas about this? This is prayer. So you see that it's very stylized. I mean even when we call these mimetic you're not trying, just like what we were talking about how the man doesn't try to be a woman. You're not trying to actually pretend that you're praying or that you're crying. It is a symbol of tears. It is a symbol of prayer. And it's very stylized. And that's one of the basic tenets of no. Thank you. At this point then we've talked about how you're staying still. And now I'd like to share with you some of the masks that are involved so that you can see what you wear. This is our theater group. This mask is brand new. It hasn't been used yet. It will be used for the first time on this. This is an insertion that was killed in the Iraq war by a pilot and merchant pilot. And this story of Zadie Davidson popes that we'll be performing on Wednesday is about that pilot and how he was traumatized in the war. And this character haunts his dreams and comes back to talk to him, to the pilot who has killed him. I was telling you before about the differences that it can make depending on the angle of the mask. Watch the eyes. If you look at it carefully, you'll see that it's quite basic. Look at the eyes. One is higher than the other. When the ghost first comes out, it comes out with the right eye towards the audience. It comes out sideways like this. The low eye comes out. When he goes back, often he has achieved enlightenment. Often there has been some kind of resolution to his fate as a ghost. He goes out this way. The left eye is higher. He's looking up. So there's a symbolized transformation that the mask in the body is very subtle. Nobody really sees it, but it's there, and people who make masks are very much aware of that. That's the kind of level that no works on. Very detailed. With 500, 600 years of thought put into every detail of performance. And all the props will mask in particular the works of art on their own that are handed down generation to generation. This mask was made by the same mask maker. This one is now about 10 years old. It's called Crazy Jane. It's a mask that was made for a play that I wrote that was based on the poetry of William Butler Yates. She's an Ophelia character. Somebody who goes mad as a gloss of her lover associated with flowers. Thank you. Welcome. Can you hear me? It's better with the mic for the video. Okay, sorry. Thank you. But again, look at the eyes as she scans the audience. These are made generally, the masks are made generally of cypress wood, and they're painted. Watercolor paints. So you have to be very careful with how you use them. And it gets hot behind these masks. It's hard to see, as you might guess, when you've got these masks on. And when you get off, you're rather sweaty usually. So you have to be very careful when you take off the mask to pull it upward, not downward so that your sweat doesn't drip through the eye holes or anything like that. Why they use water-based paint in this day and age, I really don't know, but tradition is strong, and so they do that. This is a young warrior, 16 years old, and in fact the name of this mask is Jiroku, which means 16. You can see he's quite aristocratic. He was on the losing side because he was aristocratic. He wasn't a good warrior. This mask is used in traditional no-plays. There are a couple of plays that use it. One is Atsumori and another is Tsunemasa, Names of Warriors. This mask is another one made by the same mask maker. His name is Kitazawa Hideita, a masterful mask maker. This is the character out of a play called The Linden Tree, another play that I wrote. And it is made out of the Linden Wood just for the fun of it. This man, this old man decided that he had a special bond with the Linden Tree that would protect him when a plague came, protect him and his wife, so he convinced his wife to stay in their home. They didn't want to leave, and of course the wife died. And so he was left by himself wondering if he had made the right choice, for himself or her death. And upon his death, then he was transformed into the spirit of the Linden Tree. I have one more. This one is called Abeshimi. He's quite different from the other ones, isn't he? No has all kinds of characters, and this one can be a kind of demon. It can also be a kind of high-women, a brigand, somebody who robs people on the roadside. And of course he would require a very kind of energetic movement to animate this mask. Okay. So we've taken a look at the basics of the movement and the instruments and the masks. So now we would like to demonstrate one more short piece for you. We're taking it again from the feathered robe so we can stay in the same ballpark. And I would like to read to you what the text means. Jubileph will dance for us and Matt will play the taiko and I will sing. The graceful eastern dances countless in number. The graceful eastern dances countless in number. She dances for mortal kind. The moon palace made in shining in the midnight sky. Holy orb of light. Lambent with incarnate truth. Fulfilling all vows. Bestowing in full measure her bounty upon the land. The seven sacred treasures shining among myriad jewels fall like rain upon the land a divine gift of plenty. As wonders unfold time passes away fleeting as a feathered robe that in the sea wind furls and flutters furls and flutters above the pine strand of Mio through the clouds of Ukishima soaring past Ashitaka and Fuji's lofty peak growing faint her figure fades into the blue of heaven mingling amid the mists of spring she vanishes away. This part of our presentation now with a short video just two or three minutes. I just want to show you what no looks like when it's performed in full costume on a stage in Japan just so you have an idea and we'll show you again a clip from Hagoromo from the feathered robe. Hagoromo that's the basically what it is throughout the whole play. So if you like this stuff it's great if you don't you'll fall asleep and that's just the way it is but I think you saw some of the elements that we were talking about so that kind of concludes my part of the program in talking about no but now we're going to do something completely different and I think I hope that Jubalith and Matt are ready to take over. Thank you David. So now we are going to talk about something that hasn't yet very much of the same world. So Kyogen shares a history and as David called it a sister art to know they share the same history they share the same stage and they share a lot of the same stage craft. So a lot of what David shared with you regarding no also applies to Kyogen so a lot of the same vocal delivery the body the movement it's all very much of the same world. There's really only one other thing that I'd like to add to what David shared with you and that's the notion of something that's called the Michiyuki I should back up a little bit. There are some differences so for instance Kotoba the stylized speech that he introduced you to in the beginning is slightly different in Kyogen than it is in no. It's a little bit more sculptural and rounded and a little bit more connected to the reality of the language so for instance a line would be said Kono wa torii no mono kouzaru so that's slightly different than the line that he shared with you from the play. You can see it's actually connected to how it is actually said in the Japanese. It's not esoteric and it's not absurd though it can seem that way to the untrained ear. Another notion that I wanted to share with you is this this idea of a Michiyuki and this Michiyuki is like sometimes we just call it the slow way or a journey would be a way to translate it and Michiyukis exist both in no and in Kyogen but this idea that a step is worth a thousand miles perhaps so that oftentimes in no plays and in Kyogen plays you'll have a character and they will come out on to stage and they will announce who they are and where they're going what they're going to do and then they will just simply change direction and then they'll begin to journey and they'll take some pattern around the stage in Kyogen they tend to be a little bit more exaggerated or extended then the character will or the actor will arrive in the exact same place perhaps where they just left but the character is in a new place so the scene has changed and it has changed during their journey around the stage it could be a triangle, a circle it could be as simple as a step forward and a step back and what helps that scene change happen is your imagination what they're talking about what they see along the way and what they're expressing in Kyogen it's often times a wonderful opportunity for them to express what they truly feel about something and in no they'll go off and they usually are talking about what they're seeing on the way back and there's some place completely different and you've done all the work for them so that's a really wonderful incredibly contemporary theatrical notion this is what we're going to do but it's also very very old now I'm going to call out Matt and we're going to do a quick costume change I wanted to just share with you some of the costume elements we don't have a full costume for both of us so we're just going to share with you we're going to do a small piece for you from the Kyogen repertoire that's called Kakeyama Bushi Persimmon Mountain Priest so we're going to start you see the performer comes before you Nakid he is in his undergarments and I'm going to give him a windowpane kimono yeah you can tell the character by the pattern that's on their kimono so not only is the actual fabric important but also the shape that they will cut that they will create so this is a windowpane and so soon as this character would come on stage everyone's like oh he's like wearing a flannel shirt he's one of me, he's a worker and if he had maybe three bold stripes very simple bold stripes across and you might have seen that actually in the video he'd be somewhat of slightly higher standing so the master of the house would have a bold stripe now once he gets his ove on we're going to put on these are basically just a split-legged pant called Hakama and they're very similar to what I'm wearing here you can see there's not much difference whatsoever it's just the pattern that makes them special and unique if he were the master of the house in addition to those three stripes he would have what are called Nagabakama Nagab just meaning long so these are Hakama and they would be long Hakama and they'd be so long that the actor's foot would actually be inside the pant leg and the fabric would go out behind him and they're absolutely stunning they're completely impractical but they make the performer look like he's standing on the cloud he's raised above, he's closer to God and it also is an indication that he's not in fighting mode he is definitely in leisure mode so in the play that we're going to be performing Matt will be performing the role of a farmer and I'm going to be performing the role of a Yamabushi priest so there's a lot of attributes that I'm not going to be putting on for you today but I'll just talk about them a little bit the priest would have something that's called a Tokin a little hat that gets worn right here and it's quite comical but that is, if you see that you're like that's the priest, that's the mountain priest he's wearing something he always would carry beads and he would wear something called a Mizugoromo which I just roughly translate as a raincoat so rough actually and this is because he's always traveling and he's going up the mountains and his pants also are an indication of him going up the mountains so he would have Hakama like that but they'd actually be called Kukuri Bakama and they'd be gathered at the end so if you can imagine those pants and then you just put like a drawstring around the bottom and then you bring it up to your knee and then it goes down so there's all that same fabric is there but it's a very very full and it goes until the knee and he's one of the few characters in the repertoire that actually lifts his feet off of the floor so that sliding foot walk that you saw that we were doing in all the dances all the characters do that except for if you're a god, if you're the thunder god and you're used to walking in the clouds of heaven you would actually raise your feet and that's to give an indication that you're always climbing up the mountain I think we're good yes in addition to the window pain Kimono that Matt would be wearing he'd be wearing typically a shoulder coat which would give him a broad shoulder base it's kind of like a vest but it basically is to indicate that he is someone who works he's a laborer I think that's good and now I sleep in the middle of the grass and the trees behind the branches he is such a big man and he's trying to hide behind the tree I can still see him this Yamabushi is teasing him a bit from behind the tree like a human being I'm like a dog how can a dog climb? it'll look like a dog it will bark when it hears a noise bark like a dog a monkey he called me a monkey this place is close to the mountain so it's natural for a monkey to come here I don't look like a monkey it's a monkey it will scratch its body and squeal like a monkey let's hear you squeal a falcon now he's called me a falcon if it's a falcon surely it will flap its wings and cry like a falcon it takes off and flies away I'm sure it will take off and if he doesn't take off and fly away I'll get my gun and shoot it I'm sure it will take off and my persimmons is going to do the kind of Yamabushi who steals persimmons I'm not worried about him getting even with me what is he doing I'd better not get mixed up with this I'll just be on I'll just be on for today but if you have any questions do you like to direct to any of us we would welcome those until our time is up we can go do you have any questions yes actually in the Kyoto we don't utilize masks so often if you're playing a non-human character or the spirit of an animal or a a ugly woman you would wear a mask but for the most part the belief is that laughter is innately human and so that you need to see the human face and so in no there's often times performers who wear masks and they're on the same stage as performers who are not wearing a mask and so there's a sensibility of having a mask like face and in Kyogen we utilize that to some extent but we also give ourselves far more permission to be animated with our faces are there any other questions yes my extreme oh thank you it lasted a long time and society lost its oldest one in the country all the way to New York City but that was really good to have to be Jewish and it's interesting how the emotions the timing I'm frustrated but quick thinking different solutions to the problem and then the ending but I guess what I'm trying to say is that both of my grandparents on my mother's side were singers they were what? singers so my grandmother sang in Tai in the Bay Area she was the last person to sing in any groups she was from Palo Alto Buddhist Church but she traveled to San Jose in the second middle and all of that so that art form in North California left my family two years ago they sang formally in groups but nobody else knew that was for the women's art form my grandfather also sang and I'm not sure it kind of sounds similar but I can't identify what he was singing in the way we found out about his singing was in the bathtub he was singing in the bathtub when we were little like five or six years old he would sit with him in the bathroom and sing with him well thank you very much for sharing that yes how long does it take to train the actor? how long does it take to train a no actor? it is a lifelong process no I'm not kidding it is a lifelong process and I remember when I was first admitted into the theater to work as an apprentice my teacher who was about my age now he was in his sixties introduced me to his teacher and I had been used to going to my teacher and bowing and being very respectful to my teacher and as soon as he brought me to his teacher he went right down on his knees and he bowed and he said this is my student which made me his grand student and I thought well this is never going to end you never really reach mastery you only continue to grow and try yes so the question is comparing or relating the movement that we do and know with something that you might encounter with a geisha in the sphere of Japanese life is that a fair rendering of the question a geisha is trained in nihonbuyo which is a kind of Japanese traditional dance as well it has roots in kabuki the stance is slightly different but the principles are the same in that you have learned patterns I don't know that much about kabuki because they are in no just like the patterns in martial arts are named and you have those kata that you learn and then you put together in different combinations to create different dances a lot of the movement is I believe based or rooted in the clothing the real clothing that people wear with the kimonos which they don't really wear much anymore but the way that you hold your legs it doesn't encourage wide stance for example so I think that that goes back to the way that they live the way that they had their clothes when these art forms were first developed so there is a relationship but I wouldn't say that they are the same thing yes how do you introduce this to children how do I choose how do you introduce this art form to children to children well you know it is really quite interesting I have done programs with elementary school kids and they get it right away there is something kind of visceral about this art and I remember thinking they are never going to get this they are going to be bored to death and I explained some things and I had them do some things then I turned on and I couldn't get them to turn it off they said no we want to see more and they were looking and it wasn't just because they didn't want to go back to class I don't think although you never really can tell but there is something that really communicated to them do you want to add something to that you've taught a lot well I think this is a received tradition and so it is actually taught to children and it starts in mind or repetition repeating you start by developing the body then you start and then you move on at the same time you are developing the voice and so those actorly kind of questions that come into play so early on in the west are really put off so you don't sit down with a three year old and say no your intention in this scene is your objective right and these are your obstacles you don't have those conversations until maybe much later in life at the bar after the show and so it really is you grow into it you develop your body and voice and your instrument before you develop your actorly mind yes I have two questions one in the rigid hierarchy of Japanese society what was the performer standing and the other one was audience participating you know with the audience what reacted to the drama or there would be quiet well those two questions are actually linked in a way the first question is tell me the first question again the first question is the status of the status of performers changed in the 14th century they were beggars basically and did not really have any kind of status at all back then but they had an art form that got the attention of the shogun of Japan and they were given this particular troupe which was run by a man named Kang Hami was given the opportunity to perform for the shogun Yoshimitsu which would have been 1373 I think it was and he was very taken both with the performance of Kang Hami's son whose name was Zeyami and so he took them into his patronage he started to patronize especially Zeyami who was only about 10 or 11 years old at that time it was a very fortuitous sort of thing because he was Zeyami was a genius he was a genuine genius and was responsible for many of the plays that are in the current repertory he was also a great critic and he wrote treatises about how to perform no and through in those years with Kang Hami and Zeyami and going into the following generations no changed from being a very popular vaudeville kind of art that was performed outside by people who really didn't have social status into an aristocratic art that was aimed at the warrior class so their status changed tremendously at that time and when you ask about participation if you're talking about how the audience participates in the performance experience one way to answer that question is to say that in many cases because of this change that happened 600 years ago many of the audience members were actually practitioners they learned they would hire no actors to teach them how to perform and even today many of the people that are in the audience are amateur no performers themselves and so they're very attuned to what's going on on stage and often they go and see their own teachers perform or a favorite of somebody and they're often studying they're often watching in order to see how they can improve their own art so there's a tremendous connection there in general terms if you're talking about how the audience reacts when the play is over that really depends on the venue and the play it's usually quite subdued sometimes if people are particularly moved by a slow play there won't be any applause because nobody wants to destroy that atmosphere but you get a little smattering of applause when the main actor leaves and then when the secondary actor leaves you get another little smattering of applause so everybody gets a little bit of appreciation but it's not a standing ovation kind of thing yes the question is how popular is it now how often is it performed in Japan is it dying out that's a hard question to answer but if you think of the role of opera for example in American society there is a there is a coterie of people who are very devoted to it but it really doesn't touch many people's lives it's not a general entertainment it might be parallel to say that no is like that no is facing has been facing a crisis for some time now because it is difficult it uses classical language that people don't understand you can compare it with it's a little harder to understand than Shakespeare would be for us but it's kind of in that same ballpark if you didn't study it it would be hard to pick it up by listening and it takes an understanding of Japanese poetry and Chinese poetry going back centuries and millennia really so it takes a lot of study to appreciate even the finer points if you're going to be a fan and you want to study it on one point it's very visceral and it'll grab you right away but if you want to know what it's actually doing then it takes a lot of study and young people I'm at the age where I can talk about young people I'm very sorry to say but they're not so interested in putting in that time in an effort and so the audience is fewer people are studying and you don't tend just to go to watch and so they're losing their base they're losing their financial base at this point but they're still not subsidized they're still self-perpetuating and there have been there have been signs that no actors themselves recognize that they're kind of in a crisis and they're trying different things they're trying new things to attract a younger audience and we won't give up on them yet it has lasted for almost 700 years so we think probably it'll figure out a way to get through this one too yes are there current stories that are being written or no theater experience or Shakespeare these stories seem wrong for the child so it's very simple for all of them a story I'm just wondering if there's an evolution of the kinds of stories that have been told in no theater well that's a very good question an evolution in the kinds of stories being told in the traditional in the classical repertory there hasn't been new stuff but there is new stuff being made now most of it has not attached itself to the repertory it's usually a one-off thing where they perform it once but no actors are interested in finding new material and making new plays your comment about the evolution of stories and calling it childlike from a plot perspective it is quite simple usually usually although there are different kinds of plays and some are quite complex but they don't get into the plot lines like a western play does where you're talking about motive and you're talking about obstruction and that kind of thing that's not where their sophistication is and the plot plots are not sophisticated but the poetry and the use of the words and the way the words are connected to the music is extremely sophisticated and maybe in the future we might find that more plot-driven plays are written yes yes, well no developed in the same kind of time frame as Zen did, as the tea ceremony did it all kind of happened from that Ashikaga period in Japan and so there is a relationship and more specifically a lot of the plays are Buddhist in nature not always Zen well, I can't I haven't done that study so I can't say how many of the plays are involved with Zen but a Buddhist perspective on life is certainly woven into many of the plays so yes, there is a relationship there but it's also true I believe that the no playwrights were not that interested in being correct in their what would the word be no, it's I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the word but it's oh, there's no religious rules dogma, something like that they're not so interested in being correct in putting forth the precepts of a certain religion and they will take pieces from different sex and put them in because they sound good and they'll stick in a prayer here a prayer there but they're not necessarily reliable as religious sources yes I studied theater when I was in college and then I went to San Francisco and I had the opportunity to meet Yuriko Doi who founded Theater of Yugen and I worked on a project with her which actually was no play that had been written in English and composed by Richard Emert the artistic director of theater No Gaku so I began reading his works and became involved with that project in that company after that particular play which was called Drifting Fires Yuriko invited me to train with her and it was a sweet little moment of yes because I had found somebody that I thought was a teacher and then I was like and what are we studying it didn't matter what it was I was interested in spending time with this woman and learning from her and it just happened to be something that I think was a good fit for me personally I was in college as well and I did a study trip to Japan to look at Japanese theater in particular and I saw all the traditional forms that were around at that time and saw no and I got hooked and then after college I went back and I lived there and I started studying with Richard Emert again and then that's been going on for a while now I got interested in Japan I was a exchange student a rotary club exchange student to Japan in 1971 when I was 16 and got interested in Japanese culture at that time I spent a year in Kyoto and then I went back and finished a degree at the University of Michigan a double degree in music composition and Japanese literature and when I graduated there wasn't really anybody going to hire me so I got a grant to go and study in Tokyo fine arts in Tokyo and that's where I met my no teacher I had not intended on studying no really but it became so interesting to me that I put aside what I'd actually applied for for my grant and just kind of concentrated on that and spent the following 12 years with well in the end I was taking four lessons a week working very intensely with one particular school in Japan and then I married a no actor and it became my life pretty much that's I think we're out of time but thank you very much for coming just encourage you there are postcards out there please do come to the performances Wednesday and Thursday they are free though Thursday is filling up so please RSVP