Welcome to Theater.Academy’s “Introducing Japanese Theater,” a comprehensive, yet delightfully accessible digital anthology introducing three of Japan’s distinctive, highly influential, and continuously developing theatrical traditions. In separate segments, a team of renowned American experts, who have spent much of their careers exploring and explaining the history and aesthetics of these traditions, brings to vivid life the plays, performers, and practices of Noh and Kabuki, two of the main traditional genres, as well as of the modern theatre, which took root at the turn of the twentieth century. (Bunraku, Kyōgen, and recent modern work will be added in 2022).
Using a cornucopia of HD videos, the anthology features well-informed lectures— and, for Noh, Japanese experts, including female practitioners in what is still largely a male-based art form, give workshops, practice demonstrations and interviews. There are even segments offering a workshop in classical Japanese theatre dance–Nihon buyō–and an interview with a Japanese expatriate stage director who uses traditional Japanese methods in her productions. All these exclusive materials provide an unparalleled overview of the wonders of premodern and modern Japanese theatre, with helpful summaries, glossaries, and bibliographies. Users will discover the riches of Japanese dramatic literature, from the classical to the avant-garde; experience the scenically austere yet stunningly gorgeous costumes and masks of the ritualistically haunting Noh, developed for elite samurai audiences; become immersed in Kabuki, a populist form intended for mass audiences, with productions ranging from the super-spectacular to the grittily realistic; and discover the several varieties of Western-influenced modern theatre, which began with internationally famous non-Japanese plays, like Ibsen’s and Shakespeare’s, and is now an often envelope-pushing expression of advanced theatrical writing and production.
Theater.Academy is proud to be able to provide such an unparalleled guide to the treasures of Noh, Kabuki, and the modern Japanese theatre.
