Kabuki Goes West

▪ 2006

by Shōzo Satō Traditional Japanese popular theatre—kabuki and nō—is making inroads in the West. In 2005 Kabuki Lady Macbeth, a version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, had its world premiere at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. In that same city three months earlier, audiences had marveled at a nō program from Japan's Nōgaku Kyokai, one of the first visits to the United States by this troupe, which includes artists designated as “intangible cultural assets” (an official state distinction for artists who have achieved the pinnacle of their field). Their program replicated the one that was given for Pres. Ulysses S. Grant during his visit to Japan in 1879. For the Chicago nō performances, the 900 available tickets were snapped up in less than two hours. The 60 performances of Kabuki Lady Macbeth were similarly well-received and well-attended.

      The history of kabuki parallels and is roughly contemporaneous with the development of such Western genres as Shakespearean drama, ballet, and opera. In all of these theatrical forms, the plot is already well known, but audiences attend new productions to savour the production values: acting, singing, orchestral playing, direction, set and costume design, and so forth. Tradition is especially strong in kabuki; actors are organized into “families” and often assume the name of a famous line of kabuki masters, adding a number after the name to indicate his generation. For example, in a recent celebration in the kabuki world, Nakamura Kankuro took on the title of his late father, becoming Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, a line that dates back to 1624. Thus, the nuances, characterizations, and skills of a production will vary depending upon which kabuki family is performing. Moreover, an actor known for portraying virile males might appear the following month as an old woman. A young kabuki actor may become very popular, but until he receives a historically important name, he cannot perform certain roles on the main stage.

      Ka-bu-ki translates as “song-dance-acting,” but originally it was called kabuku, meaning “extraordinary.” The genre began in 1603 as a sort of all-female street theatre, with a simply-clad priestess chanting a sutra, ringing a handbell, and dancing. In time, other priestesses joined in, and they performed on street corners and empty temporary nō stages. Early kabuki gained popular appeal, so much so that prostitutes began to imitate the performances for their own ends. This prompted the officials of the shogunate to prohibit females from performing in public, which in turn was the start of all-male kabuki troupes. Kabuki flourished and gained a reputation for harbouring antiestablishment influences, which troubled the authorities. Other official restrictions led to ingenuity and innovation on the part of the kabuki troupes. In the 17th century, for example, adult males customarily shaved the tops of their heads. In order to perform female roles, the actors needed wigs, and this led to the creation of one of the most advanced wig-making technologies in the world. When the government prohibited the use of wigs, however, onnagata (males portraying females) covered their foreheads with a rich purple cloth, although silk and gold brocades were reserved for the warrior classes and prohibited for actors. Other official prohibitions included steel swords (the spirit of the samurai; kabuki henceforth used bamboo) and suits of armour (kabuki uses papier maché). Onnagata perfected stylized femininity, another departure from realism. Over 400 years kabuki troupes developed some of the greatest theatrical innovations in the world, including the revolving stage, the elevator stage, and the hanamichi, a walkway through the audience for performers.

      Some influences of Japanese kabuki were felt in professional theatre in New York City beginning in the 1950s, but they were generally short-lived. In the 1970s a few American universities began teaching mostly academically oriented courses on Japanese theatre. The one significant exception was the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where what is now called “fusion kabuki” was developed.

      When the UIUC's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1969, I had the honour to be appointed artist in residence. We began staging kabuki plays each year, but our productions were based on translations of the kabuki classics and performed with traditional stage settings, costumes, and conventions. Certainly the American student actors lacked the inheritance and training of the generations of kabuki families, but they nonetheless began to attract attention and were invited to perform at institutions across the country during university vacations.

      Fusion kabuki melded plots of well-known Western dramas with kabuki conventions. When traditional kabuki plays were presented in English, the plot-oriented audience most often did not understand the theatrical conventions. What was needed was a kabuki play in which the audience would focus on the acting and staging rather than the story line. Over the years we have produced Kabuki Macbeth (1978), Kabuki Medea (1983), Kabuki Othello (1986), Kabuki Faust (1986), Achilles: A Kabuki Play, (1991), and, most recently, Kabuki Lady Macbeth. We have moved beyond student productions and even for a time enjoyed a professional theatre company, the Wisdom Bridge Theatre of Chicago. Fusion kabuki has been seen at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the Sherover Theatre in Jerusalem, the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar, Ger., in Cairo, and elsewhere.

      For Kabuki Lady Macbeth, based loosely upon Shakespeare's Macbeth and told from the lady's point of view, a script was written in contemporary poetic form. The play was performed by American actors using English dialogue. Eastern aesthetics and spiritual values were retained, and all the traditional kabuki staging conventions were followed, including makeup, costuming, stylized body language, and kabuki intonation of the dialogue. A music synthesizer accompanied the ki player (a percussionist garbed in black and seated at stage right), who punctuated action with the sharp sounds of wood striking a board on the floor. Actors began each rehearsal on their hands and knees purifying the work space by polishing the floor with a cloth. A system of warm-up stretching exercises helped clear their mind, and time was allotted for zazen (seated meditation) in order to get into character.

      Unquestionably, influences from kabuki now have permeated theatre in the West, not only with innovations in stage technology such as those mentioned earlier but also in such novelties as koken (onstage assistants to an actor) and hikinuki (a quick change of costume for an actor that reveals a change in character of the actor and his true state of mind). Of even greater significance, however, is the fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics that is taking place. American performers are going beyond mere imitation of a style of acting and developing an understanding of the basis for Japanese aesthetics. This was encouraged at UIUC by having all kabuki students take lessons in other Japanese art forms, such as chadō (the tea ceremony), ikebana (flower arrangement), sumi-e (black-ink painting), and Japanese classical dance. Among other things, students learned the eloquence of silence and the value of empty space. Through universalization of such aesthetic principles, we are gradually transcending our cultural differences.

Shōzo Satō is professor emeritus of the Art and Design Faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and visitng professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. In additon to his theatre work he is a master in the Japanese tea ceremony, ikebana, and classical dance and has published widely in these and other areas of Japanese culture.

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