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Suehirogari (The Fan of Felicity) is one of twenty-three Auspicious Plays (waki kyōgen) in the current kyōgen repertory. This play uses the relationship of a servant to his master, contrast of country simplicity and city trickery, misunderstandings of language, and dance for humor.
This translation of Shimizu (Spring Water) pays attention to issues of haru (stretching) and osaeru (holding down) in the delivery of text. Shimizu is a complex piece. It works best as part of a longer program where the audience can become conversant with kyōgen conventions. Though it initially seems a standard play featuring Tarō Kaja as a trickster, his impersonation of a demon to frighten his master and other aspects make it more appropriate as the third play in a full program.
This examination and translation of Sakon Zaburō, the Hunter, offers observations on the textual and performance histories of the play, including remarks on a previous English translation by A. L. Sadler. It discusses one practice from medieval Japanese religion that the play cites—the "Suwa phrase." Further, it considers Zen and related religious phenomena in Sakon Zaburō, and ends with speculations on the play's authorship.
The Tea Sniffing Blind Men is one of nine kyōgen plays featuring a blind man as shite (main character). It is unique in that it presents a formal community of the blind rather than two or three characters, and shows them conducting a rather unconventional tea ceremony. The characters make up the category of plays known as zatō mono in the Izumi School, and shukke zatō in the ōkura School.
Mikazuki (Winnowing Love) is an unusually sympathetic and realistic portrait of medieval marriage, when a husband enthralled by poetry parties threatens to ruin the household. The introduction situates the play within other kyōgen featuring female characters, and discusses the improvisatory dynamism of renga linked-poetry parties as metaphor for both marriage and kyōgen performance.
In this play, a peasant called Oko accuses Sako, another farmer, of letting his cow graze on Oko's grass. While Oko's wawashii (bold) wife offers to help him rehearse his lawsuit, she secretly hopes to dissuade her husband from bringing it to the local steward. The rehearsal satirizes the oppressive feudal justice system as the domineering wife and steward role overlap.
Susugigawa is a pivotal play in post–World War II kyōgen. An adaptation of the medieval French farce Le Cuvier and virtually indistinguishable from traditional plays, its success marked the beginning of the "kyōgen boom." This introduction traces the many permutations of the play, from its first shingeki (modern Japanese theatre) adaption to recent bilingual and English-language kyōgen productions.
Ana (Hole), written by Fujita Asaya in 1965, adapts kyōgen structure and style to portray a contemporary social problem: three unemployed coal miners struggling to survive in rapidly industrializing Japan of the 1960s. The author analyzes the play's political sensibility, and its clever use of onomatopoeia and mime.
This introduction traces the playwrighting and directing processes in the creation of thenew kyōgen, Japannequins. The combined suggestions of producers, playwright, director, and actors created humor from intercultural bilingual frictions and depicted the discrepancy between the traditional and contemporary worlds.
The kyōgen world has undergone an amazing transformation since the end of World War II. This translation has been adapted from Seki Kobayashi's extensive (140-page) chapter "Kyōgen," in Yokomichi Mario and Seki Kobayashi's Nihon koten geinō to gendai: Nō kyōgen (Japanese Traditional Performing Arts and Today: Nō and Kyōgen, 1996).
With its tension of wildness and self-control, secret teachings, and physical rigor, Tsurigitsune (The Fox and the Trapper) is the most challenging of the kyōgen actors' "roles of passage." This analysis of the play's importance in the training of the young actor is followed by an interview with Maruishi Yasushi, a professional from outside the kyōgen tradition, who premiered the play at a late age, discovering its difficulties and rewards.
Kyōgen is a "cottage industry," performed by teams of family members and their disciples. This interview asks four members of the Shigeyama Chūzaburō family of Kyoto about their responsibilities and ambitions in the kyōgen world.
Laurence Kominz draws on twenty years of experience teaching and producing student kyōgen plays in English to elucidate the challenges involved in creating authentic and accessible kyōgen performances. The essay explains approaches to translating dialogue, poetry, song, and onomatopoeia for the stage, and discusses bilingual productions and kyōgen for children.
The award-winning Theatre of Yugen has been performing kyōgen, nō adaptations, and multicultural fusion productions since 1978. This article traces the challenges and developments in the ongoing process of the company's creation of English-language kyōgen and kyōgen fusion plays.
Gart T. Westerhout introduces the Osugi Musical Theatre (OMT), located in the mountain village of Osugi (pop. 75), two hours north of Kyoto by train. Formed in 1995 to produce original theatre at the community level, the group takes Japanese theatre, folklore, and history and presents it in a new light. The primarily Japanese group performs in Japanese and has appeared in more than forty different venues, including four overseas tours.
This report discusses the transpositions, adaptations, and original departures from kyōgen and music hall that Henry Livings used in creating his delightful popular sketches, Pongo Plays, performed in England in the 1960s and 1970s.
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