How can a contemporary long poem by a Western writer be transformed into a drama for one of theater's oldest forms, Japanese noh?
That was the challenge that Heidi Specht, the artistic director of Panagea Arts, a multicultural theater company in Vancouver, presented to Tokyo-based composer Richard Emmert last year. Specht proposed that Emmert collaborate with Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt on an English-language noh play about the Japanese-Canadian fishing community of Steveston, the subject of Marlatt's acclaimed 1974 poem-series of the same name.
"Other writers have sent me noh plays which have some connection to Japan -- I think they feel that if it is a noh play, it has to have a Japan connection," said Emmert. "Personally, I don't feel that at all." What impressed him about "Steveston" was Marlatt's powerful evocation of place.