List: Theatre in Japan

by likeorhate

•  Kabuki

  Kabuki is the highly stylized classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing (歌), dance (舞), and skill (伎). Kabuki is therefore sometimes translated as "the art of singing and dancing. " These are, however, ateji characters which do not reflect actual etymology.

  

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•  Sanyutei Encho

  

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•  Butoh

  Butoh (Butō) is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally "performed" in white-body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. But there is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all.

  

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•  Noh

  Noh (Nō), or Nogaku is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays. A Noh performance often lasts all day and consists of five Noh plays interspersed with shorter, humorous kyōgen pieces.

  

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•  Rakugo

  Rakugo (落語 literally "fallen words") is a Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone storyteller (rakugoka, 落語家) sits on the stage, called the Kōza (高座). Using only a paper fan (扇子, "sensu") and a small cloth (手拭, "tenugui") as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story.

  

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•  Takarazuka Revue

  The Takarazuka Revue (宝塚歌劇団 Takarazuka Kagekidan) is a Japanese all-female musical theater troupe based in the city of Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales. The name of the troupe comes from the Hankyu Takarazuka Line in suburban Osaka: The company is a division of Hankyu Railway Co. , and actresses are employees of the company.

  

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•  Bunraku

  Bunraku, also known as Ningyō jōruri (人形浄瑠璃), is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, founded in Osaka in 1684. Three kinds of performers take part in a bunraku performance: Ningyōtsukai or Ningyōzukai - Puppeteers Tayū - the chanters Shamisen players Occasionally other instruments such as taiko drums will be used. The most accurate term for the traditional puppet theater in Japan is ningyō jōruri.

  

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•  Shinjū

  Shinjū (心中, the characters for "mind" and "centre") means "double suicide" in Japanese, as in Shinjū ten no Amijima (Double Suicide at Amijima), written by the seventeenth-century tragedist Chikamatsu Monzaemon for the puppet theatre. In common parlance Shinju is used to refer to any group suicide of persons bound by love, typically lovers, parents and children, and even whole families.

  

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•  Kyōgen

  Kyōgen (狂言, literally "mad words" or "wild speech") is a form of traditional Japanese theater. It developed alongside noh, was performed along with noh as an intermission of sorts between noh acts, and retains close links to noh in the modern day; therefore, it is sometimes designated noh-kyōgen. However, its content is not at all similar to the formal, symbolic, and solemn noh theater; kyōgen is a comical form, and its primary goal is to make its audience laugh.

  

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•  Sarugaku

  Sarugaku(猿楽), literally "monkey music," was a form of theatre popular in Japan during the 11th to 14th centuries. It originated from "sangaku," a form of entertainment reminiscent of the modern-day circus, consisting mostly of acrobatics, juggling, and pantomime, sometimes combined with drum dancing. It came from China to Japan in the 8th century and there mingled with indigenous traditions, particularly the harvest celebrations of dengaku.

  

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•  Dengaku

  Dengaku (田楽）were rustic Japanese celebrations that can be classified into two types: dengaku that developed as a musical accompaniment to rice planting observances and the dengaku dances that developed in conjunction with sangaku. The dengaku celebrated for rice planting was performed by villagers either at the new year or during the planting season in early summer.

  

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•  Shirabyōshi

  Shirabyōshi were female dancers, prominent in the Japanese Imperial Court, who performed traditional Japanese dances (the dances themselves also called shirabyōshi) dressed as men. The profession of shirabyōshi developed in the 12th century. They would perform for nobles and high-ranking samurai, and at celebrations. They are sometimes referred to as courtesans in the West, but that term refers to a high-class prostitute, so this is rather incorrect. By nature they were performers.

  

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•  Theatre of Japan

  Traditional Japanese theatre includes kabuki, noh and bunraku.

  

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•  Tokyo Sunshine Boys

  The Tokyo Sunshine Boys is a Japanese theatrical troupe that was active from 1983 until about 1994. Since it disbanded almost all of its members have continued acting on theatre and in film.

  

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•  Tadashi Suzuki

  Tadashi Suzuki is a theatrical director, writer and philosopher working out of Toga, Toyama, Japan. Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), Chairman of the Japan Performing Arts Foundation (JPAF), Artistic Director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC), the co-founder of the SITI Company in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the creator of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training.

  

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•  Ōkura school

  The Ōkura school is, along with the Izumi school and Sagi schools, one of a school of kyogen. Kyogen of Ōkura school uses an older form of Japanese language than does Izumi. Their kyogen preserves the sarugaku tradition.

  

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•  Kōdan

  Kōdan (講談, formerly known as kōshaku), is a style of traditional oral Japanese storytelling. The form evolved out of lectures on historical or literary topics given to high-ranking nobles of the Heian period, changing over the centuries to be adopted by the general samurai class and eventually by commoners, and eventually, by the end of the Edo period, declining in favor of new types of entertainment and storytelling such as naniwa-bushi.

  

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•  GooSayTen

  GooSayTen is a Japanese Butoh Dance Group. Based in Sapporo, Japan, it began its activities in 1996, and has performed both in and outside Japan in roughly 20 cities across U.S.A. , Canada, Germany, Poland, Spain, etc. Most of their performance are done by the duo Itto Morita and Mika Takeuchi. Itto started Butoh dance in 1988 after participating in a Butoh workshop held by Semimaru, a Sankaijuku member.

  

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•  Jo-ha-kyū

  Jo-ha-kyū (序破急) is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. This concept is applied to elements of the Japanese tea ceremony, to kendō and other martial arts, to the traditional theatre, and to the traditional collaborative linked verse forms renga and renku (haikai no renga).

  

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•  Takeshi Kawamura

  Takeshi Kawamura is a Japanese playwright and director. He gained recognition in the 1980s for his popular-culture-influenced, violent, highly physical plays. Building upon this early work with later projects of social criticism and postmodern theatrical experimentation, Kawamura secured his position as an internationally-recognized theatre artist.

  

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•  Shozo Sato

  Shozo Sato, an internationally renowned Japanese master of Zen arts and visionary theatre director, most known for adapting western classic to Japanese Kabuki theatre. He has received the Order of the Sacred Treasure Medal with the Rosette from the Emperor of Japan. 　 Shozo Sato is professor emeritus of the Art and Design Faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, His last academic production was Othello's Passion (2006) at Illinois State University.

  

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•  Minami-za

  Minami-za is the primary kabuki theatre in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded in 1610 as Shijō Minami-za. The current building with 1,086 seats was built in 1929.

  

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•  Grand Kabuki

  Grand Kabuki is a theatre troupe originating in Japan. Using a stylized mixture of dance and music, mime and vocal performance, Grand Kabuki is a form of moralizing entertainment in Japan since the mid-17th century. Kabuki was considered the theatre of the common people. Grand Kabuki made its United States debut at Manhattan's City Center in 1960. This troupe is one of Japan's oldest and greatest theater troupes.

  

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•  Taishū engeki

  Taishū engeki (大衆演劇, lit. "theatre of/for the masses") is a genre of popular theatre in Japan, frequently described as "light theatre", and compared to forms such as musical theatre and the revue. Though different interpretations and definitions abound, the chief distinguishing feature of taishū engeki is the notion that it is intended as entertainment for regular people.

  

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•  Tenjō Sajiki

  Tenjo Sajiki, also Tenjou Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe led by Shuji Terayama and active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese underground scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre.

  

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