If you've ever napped through a noh performance, you're not alone. But this 600-year-old Japanese theatrical genre is being updated to make it more of a 21st-century entertainment than a Japanophile's endurance test.
"It's a bit like 'Star Wars,' " says Mansai Nomura, artistic director of the Setagaya Public Theatre, describing battle scenes in the theater's upcoming play "Shari." "Noh shouldn't be something to endure. It should be enjoyable, imaginary entertainment because the noh stories have such universal appeal."
Nomura and two collaborators, flutist Yukihiro Isso and drummer Hirotada Kamei, are staging "Shari" and a second play, "Toru," on June 20-22 as part of the theater's "Nohgaku Genzaikei (Noh Plays as Contemporary Theatre)" series. "Shari" is about good and evil, and the climax of the one-hour play is a battle dance, or maibataraki, between the guardian god of Buddhism, Idaten, and a demon named Sokushitsuki who has stolen one of Buddha's teeth. The poetic, 30-minute "Toru," in contrast, is based on real-life Heian Period nobleman Minamoto Toru, a man of refined taste who is said to have been the model for Hikaru Genji in the "Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari)" written by Murasaki Shikibu about 1,000 years ago. At the play's climax, Toru enacts an enchanting dance under a mystical moon.