No theatre

See what I've done there? The title is a slight hint that I am not the biggest fan of theatre (yup, no typo, that's British English). Nevertheless, you know, moving to other countries for me is also about getting to know the culture of those. Plus, they offered traditional Japanese theatre shows for free for students, so I've already been to two shows here. Hah, if you thought I'll only blog about shopping here, let me prove you wrong ;-) even though shopping is a very important activity for young Japanese people.

So, here we go. The first theatre show was called "Jiuta-mae" and it was actually traditional Japanese dance. Two musicians playing on traditional instruments, and once dancer. At a time. All in all there were about five different dancers. In full make-up, meaning that their faces were completely white, special hairdo, and what i guess are kimonos. Gracefully doing their thing, i.e., dancing. Here are some blurry pics:


As you can see - a t least a bit - it's a wooden stage, with a wooden roof. The whole thing built inside a bigger hall. I imagine that in 'the old days' these kind of stage were built outdoors, in villages, and people sat under the sky, kinda open-air.

The stage looked the same for the second show that i saw in a different place: Noh theatre. For hundreds of years, this traditional form of Japanese drama has been performed by male actors. Interestingly enough, there were female actors in this one. It was the show of the Todai theatre group and it took place here. I was happy to see that even with this very, very traditional form of theatre, nowadays both women and men can play it.

Anyway. It reminded me of classic Greek theatre - choir and all. Quite similar setting, choir in the back and few actors in front. Well, plus some musicians.
And unlike the first one, this was a full play, plot and all. It was the classic Atsumori. Fortunately they provided the text, in both Japanese and English. We got that in my language course, the day before. One of my teachers told me that sometimes even she reads the English text, since the Japanese is a bit old-school and can be hard to understand even for native speakers. And another teacher told me that she doesn't like to go to Noh because it makes her fall asleep :D sweet.
Some pics:

One of the first scenes. Many actors, choir in the back, drummers/singers on the left.

Atsumori's ghost doing his thing with a sword. Wearing a mask since he appeared in his ghost form.

To give you a better idea of the atmosphere, here's a video:

Especially note the two guys on the left. Doing the "oooh/wooh/ooih" thing, followed by a clap on their wooden drum. They did that during the whole show.


The luxury 'seats' in the loges. Actually Tatami mats with some pillows. I wouldn't be able to sit comfortably like that, so i would not pay more for these seats...

The nice group of people from my department who were in the theatre with me.

After the theatre i went to a vernissage where i knew one of the artists. So i had a cultural Saturday last week, you might say :)