Professor Richard Emmert
A) PUBLIC LECTURE ON NOH THEATRE 能剧公开演讲
A lecture introducing some basic concepts of Noh Theatre, accompany by screening of video documentation of actual Noh performance.
此演讲将介绍能剧的一些基本概念，并以能剧演出的录影作为辅助。
Date + Time: 27th January 2010 (Wednesday) 11:00am to 1:00pm
Venue: The Studio, PJ Live Arts (Jaya One, Petaling Jaya)
Free Admission
B) NOH THEATRE DEMONSTRATION 能剧示范演出
A Noh Theatre demonstration by Professor Richard Emmert following by a brief introduction of Noh Theatre. Richard Emmert
教授将作一能剧的示范演出，并为观众简单地介绍日本能剧。
Date + Time: 28th January 2010 (Thursday) 11:00am to 1:00pm
Venue: The Studio, PJ Live Arts (Jaya One, Petaling Jaya)
Free Admission
Website: www.pentasproject.com | http://pentasproject.blogspot.com | http://www.jfkl.org.my
Contact: pentasproject@gmail.com / 012-607.1318 / 012-266.1579
C) NOH THEATRE WORKSHOP 日本能剧工作坊
The Noh workshop will be an introduction to the performance techniques of Japanese classical Noh theatre with special emphasis on movement and music. Two dances from Noh theatre will be taught as well as the singing to accompany these dances. Furthermore, the musical instruments and the masks used in Noh will also be demonstrated and discussed. Finally, several videos of Noh performance will also be shown and discussed to give context to the workshops.
日本能剧工作坊将带领参与者认识日本传统能剧的表演方法与技巧，并以动作和音乐为主要导向。参与者将能学习到能剧其中两支舞蹈和伴随这两支舞蹈的歌曲。除此以外，能剧所使用的乐器和面具也将在此工作坊进行获得讨论与示范。参与者也将能看到日本能剧的演出片段。
Date + Time:
27th January 2010 (wed) 7:30pm ~ 11:30pm
28th January 2010 (thurs) 7:30pm ~ 11:30pm
29th January 2010 (fri) 7:30pm ~ 11:30pm
30th January 2010 (sat) 3:00pm ~ 6:00pm & 7:00pm ~ 10:00pm
31st January 2010 (sun) 10:00am ~ 1:00pm & 2:00pm ~ 6:00pm
Number of Participants: 20 participants
Workshop Fees : RM 300
Website: www.pentasproject.com | http://pentasproject.blogspot.com | http://www.jfkl.org.my
Contact: pentasproject@gmail.com / 012-266.1579
Supported by : HSBC in The Arts + The Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur + KLPac + Colorganda!
How to register:
1) If you are interested, please e-mail or give us a call, we will then e-mail an application form to you. 2) Please complete the application form and e-mail it back to us. The workshop fees must be paid before 10th January 2010. If payment is not received in time, the organizer has the right to cancel your application.
3) Payment :- a) Pay cash directly to the person in charge of the workshop. b) Bank directly into our account or write us a cheque Account Name : Pentas Project Theatre Production Bank : Public Bank Account Number : 3141760724
4) After banking in, please notify us via phone or e-mail details of your name and deposit numbers.
5) Please keep the deposit slip for further confirmation.
如何报名：
1) 有兴趣者可用电话或电邮方式和我们联络，之后我们将把报名表格寄到你的电邮信箱。
2) 报名后须在２０１０年１月１０日前缴交学费，如没在指定的限期内缴交学费，主办单位有权利把名额转让给其 他有兴趣者。
3) 缴交方法：可亲自把费用交给工作坊负责人或ATM转帐付费或支票汇款。 银行户口名称： Pentas Project Theatre Production 银行： Public Bank 银行户口号码： 3141760724
4）汇款后请用电话或电邮的方式和我们联络，以确认您的姓名及汇款账号。
5）请务必保留提款机列印的收据或任何汇款回条，做为证明。
Professor Richard Emmert Richard Emmert has studied, taught and performed classical noh drama in Japan since 1973. He is a certified Kita school noh instructor, and has studied all aspects of noh performance with a special concentration in movement and music. A professor at Musashino University in Tokyo, he directs an on-going Noh Training Project. In summers, he leads the intensive three-week Noh Training Project in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania sponsored by the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. He has co-authored a series of Noh performance guides published by the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo. He has also led extended Noh performance projects in Australia, India, Hong Kong, the UK, the US, Canada, and most recently at the University of Hawaii, has composed, directed, and performed in eight English noh performances, and has released a CD entitled Noh in English by the Japanese Teichiku Records. He has also performed and/or directed several Asian multi-cultural performances including Siddhartha by Teater Cahaya performed in Kuala Lumpur in 2003. The founder and artistic director of Theatre Nohgaku, a company dedicated to performing noh in English, he has led performance tours of At the Hawk's Well and Pine Barrens and also toured in Crazy Jane. Richard Emmer
教授从1973年开始在日本学习、教导并演出日本传统能剧。他是喜多派系能剧的指导老师，着重于能剧动作和音乐的研究。他是东京武藏野大学的教授，并领导一个长期进行的能剧训练计划。他也曾经在美国、澳洲、印度、香港、英国、美国以及加拿大等地教导能剧演出。Richard Emmert教授也曾是东京的国家能剧剧场所出版的指南书的共同作者。他创作了共8出的英语能剧，并发行了英语能剧的音乐光碟。他曾参与数个亚洲的多元文化演出，其中包括Cahaya剧团2003年在吉隆坡的演出“Siddhartha”。他也是能乐剧团的创始人与艺术总监。该剧团致力于发展英语能剧，并已在多国进行巡回演出。
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能劇，是日本獨有的一種舞台藝術，是佩戴面具演出的一種古典歌舞劇。能劇在日本作為代表性的傳統藝術，與歌舞伎一同在國際上享有高知名度。日本國際著名導演鈴木忠志，也從日本傳統能劇當中尋找表演的身體性，開發出一套注重下半身的重心與腰部力量的表演身體訓練體系：「鈴木方法（Suzuki Method）」。鈴木忠志說：「能劇是步行的藝術」。
日本的表演藝術總是給人一種危險但是有趣、壓抑而精準、簡單卻能量飽滿的印象。而且，最具象徵性的特點是，日本的表演藝術總是給人一種既前衛又傳統的矛盾印象。
２０１０年，【平台計劃】再次啟動「劇場工作坊系列」邀請了國外的指導老師前來馬來西亞，與本土劇場工作者及有志於表演藝術的朋友作近距離的接處。 此次的活動獲得「吉隆坡日本文化協會」的大力支持，邀請日本「东京武藏野大学」的教授 Richard Emmert 來馬進行五天的的能劇工作坊、公開演講及示範演出。為本地有志表演藝術的朋友提供一個優質的充實機會。除了介绍我們能剧的一些基本概念，工作坊也将带领参与者认识日本传统能剧的表演方法与技巧，并以动作和音乐为主要导向。 引領大家去認識到從傳統藝能發展出的戲劇美學。 About Noh Theatre (english) 能劇是具有600多年歷史的日本傳統戲劇之一。 能劇作為日本古典戲劇，在室町時代以流傳的傳說、故事等為題材配以謠曲、舞蹈、伴奏而形成戲劇，是世界現存最古老的舞臺藝術。 能劇具有假面劇、音樂劇、化妝劇、歌舞劇、詩劇的要素，演員頭戴“能面”（能劇面具），身著絢爛豪華的裝束進行舞蹈。 演員有稱作“仕手”的主角和稱作“肋”的配角，能面只有主角佩戴而配角不佩戴。 能面也是能劇的代名詞，數量多達200多，大致分為老人、男人、女人、鬼神、怨靈和翁6種。能面原則上為木制。如果是表現非人類則在眼睛周圍貼上金屬塗成金色，好像眼睛在放光；翁面與其他面具不同，嘴巴上下分開而用帶子系上，所以具有下顎可動等特徵。 能劇不使用大型設置、大道具等，只由演員的舞蹈、發聲或謠曲、樂師演奏的曲子構成，推進劇情。 能劇舞臺由帶屋頂的6m見方的“主舞臺”、主舞臺左側延伸的走廊式“橋懸”，登臺前主角用於佩戴能面、裝束等的“鏡間”構成。舞臺用原色柏樹建成，沒有多餘的裝飾，地板下放入壇罐，重視聲音效果。 樂器只使用笛子、小鼓、大鼓和太鼓4種。 能劇多與狂言配套演出，多數情況下能劇分成前後兩場上演，兩場之間上演狂言。 與狂言是喜劇相反，能劇基本上是悲劇。 另外，與作為日本獨特的舞臺藝術而廣為人知的歌舞伎不同，能劇佩戴能面。 能劇歷史悠久，起源于散樂。散樂是古希臘假面劇通過絲綢之路與中國戲劇融合而成，在奈良時代傳入日本。之後，散樂與日本古代戲劇相互融合發展成“田樂”、“猿樂”，室町時代其中猿樂的樂者“觀阿彌”和“世阿彌”父子把猿樂作為戲劇不斷提高，發展成了能劇。 狂言和能劇合稱“能樂”，並作為“能樂”在2001年被指定為日本首個教科文組織世界無形遺產。
English Noh---A Brief (and Biased) History
Richard Emmert
Theatre Nohgaku Artistic Director
Theatre Nohgaku (TN) got its start in 2000 when I invited advanced students from my Noh Training Project workshops in Tokyo and Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania to gather for a week in Bloomsburg to work on William Butler Yeats' At the Hawk's Well, music for which I had composed in noh style in 1981 and which had several productions thereafter. I also invited several other English speakers who had also studied noh in Japan. These people gathered with the idea of attempting to see whether noh in English was both interesting for them and viable as an art form.
Yeats and Noh
The history of plays in English being called "noh" seems to have originated with Yeats when he wrote his At the Hawks' Well in 1916. He however did not use the style and instrumentation of the music of noh but used musicians who played music composed for the production by Edmund Dulac.
And here immediately is what I consider a misunderstanding of what noh is. Noh plays cannot be considered in the same way as Shakespeare plays. A Shakespeare play might be done in many different ways and still be called a Shakespeare play. Noh however is more like opera. Taking the text of a Verdi or Mozart or Britten opera, discarding the music and performing it in another style other than opera, would make it difficult to call an opera. Perhaps one could call it a performance based on opera lyrics. But is it still a Verdi opera when the lyrics are just spoken? Is it still a Mozart opera if the text of Marriage of Figaro is done in the style of Beijing opera without Mozart's music? Is it still an opera if it is done in the style of noh?
I personally don't think so. An opera is one which is done in a particular style that we recognize as opera. Likewise, a noh play (and perhaps "play" is misnomer---it is more a musical or dance-drama) is one which is done in a style that can be recognized as noh. A Mozart opera performed without Mozart's music in the style of noh is a noh performance. A performance using the text of the classical noh play Kiyotsune sung in the style of opera is not a noh play, but it is an opera.
And for this reason, though Yeats called his play a "noh" play, it was, in my opinion, a Western musical performance whose text was influenced by noh. But it was not a noh play. That really had to wait until the Japanese noh scholar, Yokomichi Mario, made an arrangement for Hawk's Well in Japanese in 1949 with members of the Kita school performing, and then yet another version of it in 1965 with members of the Kanze school. Both of these so-called shinsaku or "new works" were in Japanese and have been performed occasionally since. In the noh world, these versions are considered noh plays, but doing a version using the original music by Edmond Dulac is not.
On the other hand, the version I composed in 1981, followed both the Yeats English and the musical style and structure of noh. It was, to my knowledge, the first time that anyone had written strict noh music to go with the original English of Yeats' play. It was an English noh.
Other English Noh
Since Yeats, I can imagine that there might have been others who have written texts influenced by noh, and likely even called them "noh plays." Of course, according to my perspective, they are not noh until they are done in the musical style of noh.
One that came very close to being a noh performance was the play St. Francis, written by Arthur Little with music by Leonard Holvik. This was performed at my alma mater, a small Quaker liberal arts college in Indiana called Earlham College. In 1970 when I was in my second year of college, the two professors conducted a seminar on noh which I joined. The seminar commenced with reading noh texts in translation, listening to recordings of noh music and seeing the one film about noh that was available. We then began to rehearse the play in English which the two professors had created. The structure of the text followed closely some of the typical structures of classical noh. The music was meant to suggest noh, but was written so students not trained in actual noh musical techniques could still perform it. I was chosen to be the main actor, or shite, for the performances we gave, hardly imagining at the time that this was a first step in what would develop into a lifetime relationship with noh.
It was only later when I went to Japan in 1973, that I happened to meet a young noh actor---Mr. Akira Matsui who has joined this tour---and decided to take lessons from him in the chant and dance. Later, I began taking lessons in the four noh instruments as well and developed an understanding of the music of noh, in particular the relationship between the drums and the text and how text and rhythm are so important in creating what we can call the style of noh.
After studying noh in Japan from that time and even though I was told by several people that the music of noh developed from the Japanese language and therefore could not be done in other languages, I began to feel the typical rhythms of noh in my body. It wasn't a stretch for this native English speaker to begin to think of English text and how it fit with those noh rhythms. When Jonah Salz, a young American director based in Kyoto, asked me in 1981 to write music for a production of At the Hawk's Well that he was planning, it was easy to throw caution to the wind and to dive in and write music for the Yeats text in noh style. Performances followed in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. Yokomichi Mario, the director of the earlier Hawk's Well versions in Japanese and my professor of noh music studies at Tokyo University of Fine Arts, told me at the Tokyo performances of our Hawk's Well, that my version was "too noh-like." On reflection, his complaint told me that I could have explored the noh style in a way which departed from typical classical noh structures, but it also seemed to clearly recognize, if there was still any doubt, that yes, noh can be performed in English.
Over the next several years, I composed music for and directed and performed in several English noh. They were: 1) a Tokyo production of American Janine Beichman's play Drifting Fires, a story about space travelers in the distant future visiting the place where the planet "earth" once existed and there meeting the spirit of the last human being (1985); 2) an Earlham College production readapting St. Francis in a stricter noh style (1988); 3) a University of Sydney production of Australian Allan Marett's Eliza, a story of a British woman shipwrecked off the coast of Australia and forced to live with aboriginal people, and who in turn came to appreciate the unique sense of dream and time among them (1989); 4) a San Francisco Theatre of Yugen production of Crazy Horse by American Erik Ehn which collaborated with Native American performers to tell the story of the great Native American chieftain (2001—later retitled Moon of the Scarlet Plums for a 2005 Japan-US tour); 5) a Vancouver production of Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt's The Gull, a play about cultural identity issues of Japanese fishermen and their families along the British Columbia coast and touted in Canada as "the first Canadian noh" (2006); 6) a University of Hawaii production of my own English translation of the classical Japanese noh Sumidagawa.
During the 1980s, there were two others in Japan who produced plays which can be considered English noh or at least noh-influenced English plays. First, Kuniyoshi Munakata Ueda, a Shakespeare specialist at Shizuoka University, began using noh with Shakespeare, notably Hamlet and Othello. Although the plays sometimes lacked a clear sense of the relationship between poetic text and drum rhythms that give noh its vitality and intensity, they did include chant and movement in noh style as well as noh musicians. And second, my good friend and now fellow member of Theatre Nohgaku, David Crandall, wrote and directed two plays, Crazy Jane and Linden Tree, both which had a strong noh structural feel in terms of text but employed his own musical composition for a Western instrumental ensemble and voices.
Theatre Nohgaku and Its Work
In the above list of English noh, you might have noticed the large gap between the noh plays I wrote music for in the 80s and the next one which didn't follow until 2001. It was in 1991 that I started an ongoing semi-intensive Noh Training Project in Tokyo, and then in 1995, a summer intensive Noh Training Project in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. After working on English noh in the 80s, it seemed clear that if it was to become viable, that it was necessary to have a group of trained native English speakers to make it happen.
After years of workshops which planted these seeds, Theatre Nohgaku was born. We had our first tour in the United States in 2002 of Yeats' At the Hawk's Well. In 2003, we began an annual Writers' Workshop geared toward playwrights and poets interested in writing plays in the style of noh. In 2004, we collaborated with the Noh Training Project for its 10th anniversary performance in Pennsylvania of the classical noh Kurozuka in Japanese. In 2006, we toured TN member Greg Giovanni's Pine Barrens, a story of the so-called New Jersey devil said to roam the pine barrens of New Jersey. In 2007, we toured David Crandall's Crazy Jane which he readapted to be sung in noh style with a noh ensemble. And finally, earlier this year, we once again collaborated with the Noh Training Project for its 15th anniversary by performing the classical noh play Funabenkei in Japanese.
This production of Pagoda in collaboration with the Oshima Noh Theatre is of course another step in our development as a company. But perhaps more importantly, it is another big step in making noh an accessible art form for the English-speaking world.
