Teaching Japanese Noh Drama through Visualizing Space

In Drama: A Guide to the Study of Plays (2000), J. L. Styan says of the study of dramatic literature: "reading a play is never enough.… A play must move and speak, its actors must walk and talk, and drama make itself seen and heard by demonstration" (5). While this might seem obvious, especially to those who practice or view theatre, in dramatic literature courses the direct exploration of performance and the visual world of theatre are often relegated to a minor afterthought or dismissed altogether as the realm of the practitioner, and thus not suitable for introductory or so-called literature courses. In the drama program of the University of Michigan (which Styan helped develop), the courses I took as an undergraduate were taught using what is called "the direct method." This pedagogical strategy

demands a practical as well as a theoretical encounter with all the components of the dramatic experience. Accordingly, the method of study … combines active experiment and dynamic presentation with critical analysis and appropriate conditions for interpreting, enjoying, and evaluating the living work of dramatic art. The "direct method" encourages the use of the voice and body in direct experiment with the play text, to complement the exercise of the basic intellectual skills in discussion, writing and study. This is a "show-and-tell" method, a mixture of demonstration and explanation, which suits the mixed form of the drama.¹

The term "direct" refers to the exploration of texts as skeletons for performance; it entails serious historical, contextual, and literary engagement, but focuses on the practice of staging pieces of the plays in the classroom. The value of engaging a dramatic text as a performer offers a perspective on interpretation that actively involves the body and voice of the student. The idea that through performance a student is offered a direct line to the meaning and significance of any given drama is obviously a stretch; still, an attempt at physicalizing and vocalizing a text is a more direct form of exploration than reading about and discussing a play's themes, historical context, or staging.

In teaching introductory college-level courses in theatre and dramatic literature at Penn State Berks and Ramapo College of New Jersey, I find that actively engaging the students in a study of the visual elements of performance and in the physical performance of dramatic texts illuminates for the students that theatre is a living creative art that is intrinsically connected to its context and culture. The direct method, which is developed from the belief that one needs to encounter the various forms of theatre in order to understand it, also has resonance in Maxine Greene's Dewey-influenced idea of "aesthetic education." Aesthetic education puts the creative and imaginative work of the students on a higher level of importance than lecture and discussion-based teaching; Greene contrasts it with Dewey's idea of the "anaesthetic," the language-based and hierarchical lecture/discussion format, which can "prevent people from questioning, from meeting the challenges of being in and naming and (perhaps) transforming the world" ("Reflection" x). Similar to the difference between the experience of reading a play and seeing it in production, the embodiment of a text as an actor can help students to experience things that are difficult or impossible to describe or analyze through language. It is sometimes quicker to explain to students, for example, the staging suggested from Stephano's description of the monster that he has found in The Tempest; however, the students learn much more about Shakespeare's comic sensibility and use of language to express physical action by trying to stage the scene themselves, as they are forced to engage their bodies and voices, and not just their minds, in portraying the scene. In an attempt to avoid too much of the anaesthetic and encourage students to engage more fully with the work they are studying and the world around them, I make sure that the creative and performative are not marginalized in the drama curriculum: the non-"literary" aspects of theatre are not found only on the secondary reading list or as...