Hamlet in China

This weekend I watched a film entitled The Legend of the Black Scorpion or the Banquet. There were many things that stood out to me in this film - and many in part because of the things we have been considering in class. The film is a reference to Hamlet- with some of the plot aspects changed and characters adapted in various ways - but non-the-less connecting to the essence of Shakespeare's play.

So here was a film that looked at the story of a western author - and placed it in an ancient made up world in china. Having just watched some Butoh performances I was excited by the opening sequence that took place in an outdoor theatre amidst nature. The performers were all in white with white masks and the "dance" that was shown in this setting was a dance of death as the performers were killed by the kings men. The beauty of the scene was amazing. I kept thinking about our conversations of death and beauty as this scene brought both together.

Even though this was not a Japanese film I was struck by the strong visual images and the physical aspects of Japanese theatre that we had considered. (And even in many of their disagreements there are strong connections between these two cultures in their theatre worlds).

A film that looks at the consequences of desire and death is often a film that finds darkness and "decay" in our Western films - and yet the beauty of this film was breathtaking. The set, costumes, and fight scenes are filled with grace and beauty that reminded me of a ballet.

I know the story of Hamlet - yet watching it in this way was a reminder of some of the themes and parts of the story that I hadn't considered before. The poetry of the interpretation allowed me to consider a story so common to our western world in new light and enjoy the process of this film.

What struck me was that regardless of the culture, being consumed by your desires will drive you to death no matter where you live. Whether Hamlet is set in England or China - the desire for power with no balance leads to death - the desire for revenge leads to death.

As I grow to love the abstract and poetic nature of Asian Theatre I was again reminded that sometimes an image or movement opens the door for discussion and imagination in ways that words are sometimes inadequate for. Sometimes a picture of dance tells the story in a more holistic way that when we confine it merely to words. Watching films like this causes me to want to explore the possibilities of using movement and visuals in new ways in performance. I highly recommend this film - especially in light of conversations this semester.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465676/

Some Observations

I watched 'Body on the Edge of Crisis' and made a few interesting observations about Butoh since our discussion Tuesday.

The first thing that really caught my eye was a costume that Hijikata was wearing.  The movement during this section was very slight and economical (Hijikata was balanced on his right hip).  The costume was however more contrived.  I noticed that some strips of fabric swayed slightly even during the sparest of Hijikata's movement.  The costume to me didn't seem like an extension of Hijikata's body but more like a visible piece of air that showed the energy of Hijikata's movement as it left his body....like throwing a stone in a pond.  Once the stone has been thrown in the pond you can't see it, but you can gauge effect of throwing it as you see the ripples spread across the water.  This is how the fabric worked for me: it showed me the immediate physical effect of Hijikata's performance.  I thought this was consistent with the ideals of Butoh we discussed in class on Tuesday: lucidity of performance, suggestive and evocative movement.

Also, this is the second movie we've seen with Hijikata - and in both he wore his facial hair in the style of an exaggerated Van Dyck (goatee and mustache together).  If the point performance in Butoh is to convey the message as clearly as possible there is no way that his amount of facial hair lets you see his facial muscles clearly.  Especially in the clip we saw Tuesday, where Hijikata was portraying a woman - how can you get past the image of a man.  Then I thought maybe this was a sort of juxtapositional tool.  By keeping the mustache it was clearly visible that he was not a woman, but working towards the image of one.  This I thought, was a sort of Brechtian idea - reminding the audience it's not real life, just a performance.

I wasn't really trying to make any deep connections here, I really just wanted to share my train of thought after watching the clip Amy posted.  Does anyone else have ideas about it?

Body on the Edge of a Crisis

This is a short excerpt from the documentary the library doesn't carry, called Butoh: Body on the Edge of a Crisis. Some of it repeats what Tiffany was saying today in her presentation, but it includes some other images, as well.

Auto-Intoxication and Mishima

I looked up online what exactly it meant to have "auto-intoxication." It is where your colon experiences problems allowing for wasteful chemicals to filter into your bloodstream leading to your entire body including your brain. When I looked it up, it said this about the effects of auto-intoxicaiton on the body..."This process of continued self-poisoning inevitably results in candidiasis and a dramatically weakened immune system, which can lead directly to such common ill-health conditions as chronic fatigue and body weakness, nervousness, depression and mood swings, skin disruptions such as acne and eczema, ulcers and other gastro-intestinal disorders, headaches, arthritic joints, swelling of hands and feet, chronic allergies, bronchial problems, cardio-vascular irregularities (arythmias, high blood pressure, etc.), pathological changes in the breasts, premature senility, epilepsy, and many other serious and debilitating problems."What I found to be interesting is that in Erik's presentation, he was talking about all of these themes in his work about sexuality, violence, death, and blood. The auto-intoxication says that it leads to nervousness, depression, and mood swings. It made me think that Mishima's work was probably heavily influenced by his childhood illness. Which makes me wonder if this takes away from his ritualistic suicide? If you are under psychological augmentation due to illness, does it take away from your desire to have ritualistic suicide performed? If this were true in America would we not force them to be put into an assylum with lots of medication?

What is sacred?

I raised this question today as an internal evaluation. Have we become, as an American culture, totally immune to the idea of sacredness? Because we can walk into any country and blow them up and take what is ours, have we completely lost this idea of identity in culture? Is there a piece of text that we hold dear to our own personal hearts that we feel is sacred? How would we feel if an Afghanistan theatre troupe began to put on their interpretations of our Christian Bible? How would you personally feel? I'm not saying this is wrong or that people are immune; I raise this question in self-diagnosis.Terrance McNally wrote Corpus Christi which is a modern re-telling of the story of Christ in modern day Texas where Jesus is gay. Americans immediately banned this and labeled it as blasphemous. That is a homosexual culture in America that was banned. How would people react to our enemies adapting our Christ-story? How do you feel about it?As theatre artists emerging, I feel we must ask ourselves what is our view on adaptations? How do we feel about work that we may create from scratch? LOL... to quote from Tuna Christmas... "I haven't had this much trouble since that all white production of Raisin in the Sun." Is there such a thing as sacred? What do you hold sacred? How would you feel if someone tried to not necessarily take ownership of it, but definately augment/change it?

More about Mishima

Here's the video I promised of the Mishima interview.  Mishima discusses the Tatenokai, his public unarmed militia.

The most interesting aspect about this militia to me is that the Japanese government allowed the Tatenokai to train with the Japanese armed forces.  Why would the government do this?

After we discussed Suzuki I was reminded of the importance of 'physical control' in the Japanese culture.  This reinforced the idea that Mishima wanted control over his own death.  I thought it might be interesting to know that on the day of his death he left a note on his desk that said "Human life is limited, but I would like to live forever."

Knowing he was going to commit suicide that very day, how could he write this?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IasOkulcDQk

This Beautiful City

What an amazing experience! I saw the production of "This Beautiful City" at Actor's this weekend. It executed the project we did on ethnography. It was great to see these actors perform these interviews in the form of a play. This play was about the evangelical church and its pastor Ted Haggard of how he was exposed as a drug user and homosexual. A lot of this show consisted of doubling and at not one time did these actors seem like they were playing the same person. I know the costumes added to the performance, but the posture and everything was shown. An actor by the name of Marsha Stephanie Blake played a man and a woman. To my knowledge she really didn't change much from the church lady to the preacher as far as her voice goes. The way she carried herself was what really came through. All of this reminded me of the experience of when I interviewed Doug and how I had to pay so close of attention to the gestures he used as well as the way his voice sounded. Emily Ackerman played a woman and a transsexual and she was something to watch. Her walk changed dramatically and she lived in a lower register when she played the transsexual versus her playing the woman she walked differently and was sort of nasal sounding. This was so much like watching Anna Deveare Smith. Watching her was an experience in itself so to see a full out performance was even better. I really enjoyed this show and was glad I was able to see this live.

Who Owns It?

I saw "The Breaks" Thursday night. This was my first experience with a Hip Hop show, even though this was not a full blown Hip Hop show. But I found that I thoroughly enjoyed it. From a performance aspect, the movement and command of the space alone were astounding. The movement and dance were such a blending of cultures. Not being well versed in this genre, it was amazing to me that even I could easily detect the use of Native Dance of Africa, Traditional Ballet and 80's break dancing ( to name a few).

But what really stuck with me was a comment from a boy in the video, which was part of the multi-media aspect of the show. The question was who owns hip hop? Several people answered the question and each answer reflected their own personal stake in the genre. Each person felt they had a right to claim hip hop as their own. And each person had a reason why it should not be claimed by other cultures/races.

But the last interviewees were two young boys. About the age of 12, I guess. The first one said, "Well, if somebody likes it, they like it." The second one said, "Yeah. I think we should just share it." One of the boys was black, the other asian, I think. At any rate, it struck me that ownership of a work of art may not be nearly as important as we think it is. If one culture can adopt a piece into their culture and put their own cultural spin on it, then, in one respect, it becomes a new piece, altogether. It is based on another's work, but it is a new piece, open for criticism and comparison to the original. On another more global level, however, this adoption only serves to create a link between two (or more, if adopted by more) cultures. I think we must ask ourselves why would a culture adopt the art of another? Obviously, there is some meaning in the piece that the culture finds interesting and connects with it. And, if we, as artists, are producing pieces that connect the global art community and individuals involved, then haven't we suceeded in our goal?

Personally, I like the fact that this adoption is happening. I see a connection between humankind on a universal level. I think it proves exactly what Joseph Campbell argued; that humans have the same basic concerns and questions imbedded deep within our psyches.

Tamasaburo interview, Kabuki sites, and Bunraku

Here is a great interview with Tamasaburo, the onnagata performer Gerry and Sarah were talking about in class yesterday (I apologize for being dense when you were trying to tell me his name!) If you're interested, there are lots of videos of him on Youtube.



Also, here is a link to the site from which the images in my powerpoint presentation yesterday came from. (Interesting to note that it's from a program sponsored by the Department of Defense!) And here is a link to the kabuki for everyone website.

And, finally, someone mentioned that the Kabuki actors sort of looked like puppets, and I was reminded that there wasn't room in the syllabus to talk about Bunraku. It's fascinating, though. Here is a brief video about it:



It occurs to me that gender is such an important and complicated thing to observe and discuss in classical Japanese theatre forms. It seems to be one of the things that is difficult to grasp from such a distance, both geographically and historically. It's particularly interesting to consider the fact that in European and American theatre and film, representations of women are often similarly idealized, it's just that they are performed by women instead of men. The appreciation of theatricality and skill that is so prevalent in Japanese theatre is absent in, say, the film performances of Marilyn Monroe - we celebrate actors for their ability to be as "real" as possible, so her femininity is less obviously an illusion or a poetic creation.

the language of the eye

Not having been trained as a visual artist I often forget that the things we see in the visual arts have their own vocabulary and language. When I watch traditional Japanese theatre forms I am reminded of how little I train my eye to look at visual art. Though our own stages have detailed visual backgrounds – delving into the world of realism leaves little room for the development of an in-depth visual language that works through the abstract. Like the Japanese Kimono the visual layers seen on a Kabuki or Noh stage are filled with layers upon layer of meaning. As a casual reader of the visual I am astounded by how little I know – and how much there can be to learn in the world of the visual.

It saddens me that the various art departments around campus are so separate – and I wonder if we had more contact with the visual arts department if we would not experience a richer sense of visual languages in our own theatre forms.

Though I have little understanding and no skill in the visual arts I am amazed by what I can learn about creating and the creative process from the visual arts. I have heard that many martial artists also studied calligraphy – and I wonder how my own art would grow if I spent more time looking into and studying the visual language of arts.

Geography and Global Universities

A while back, after class, I was thinking about the fact that one area in which my knowledge is embarrassingly slim is geography. As we discuss the theatre and performance practices of other countries, I find myself trying to picture where they are on a map and what countries surround them. I noticed that I only have a very general idea of world geography.

So I looked online to see about some quick lessons and found these sites. If you're interested in improving your grasp of where in the world certain countries are, they're helpful and kind of fun. This one asks you just to name as many African countries as you can in ten minutes. And this one has a number of different interactive quizzes on world geography. Since we're studying Japan right now, here is the quiz over Asian countries.

Also, a month or so ago there was a very interesting article in the New York Times about American universities seeking a global presence. It's interesting to consider how this expansion of American education relates to colonization, in the sense that our economy is based quite a bit on knowledge. I doubt very seriously if any of the overseas campuses offer theatre classes, but it would be interesting to consider how a class like this one would be different if this campus were not on U.S. soil.

Thoughts on Japan

I really enjoyed the Japan presentations. What was really interesting to me was the presentation done by Tiffany L. on fashion in Japan. When she discussed the Kimono and its significance, it reminded me of the Nigeria presentation my group did. The specific colors and layers of the Kimono worn for the birth, coming of age, death, weddings, and engagements reminded me of the Yoruba culture and how they wear white and gold dashikis for weddings or another color for just hanging around or the birth of someone.

She also talked about the Wedding Kimono/Osaka and how there are four different layers to this specific Kimono. The white is worn to show a clean slate, red for her marrying into a new family, black for the death of her leaving her family, and red/white for the families blending together. This tradition reminds me of the american tradition of weddings when the bride is given by her family and close friends, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Tiff also stated though that the women can where regular wedding gowns if they want to, they don't have to wear the Kimono.

That just goes to show no matter where or when tradition always has and always will exist. It may vary from place to place, but it's there. I just found that very unique that these three cultures I mentioned (Japanese, Yoruba, and american) all have some type of tradition for weddings.

The Urban Bush Women Experience

I was really fascinated by the Urban Bush Women presentation Sarah did. Viewing this video clip and listening to the research brought several things to my attention. I know that the Bush Women tell stories of history as well as everyday life and that of course is a difference from technical training. I took dance for twelve years and that included tap, jazz, and ballet. I remember telling a specific story especially through ballet, but we always had music and that is one of the differences with the Bush Women because sometimes it's just language. This to me bridges the gap with story telling and dance, because these women don't always have music, so their telling a story with their bodies as well as language. I think technique helps me to express myself more through dance, and the question I pose is could I be expressive if I didn't have technical training? I think they play hand in hand, but these women are very expressive and they may have not been through this type of training. I'm sure they have somthing that helps them prepare but at least they can appreciate their bodies. I was always told that my hips were too big, my posture must be on point, and suck it in, as I went through ballet training. I read about this one particular dance called "Batty", that these women do that questions the audience about attractiveness and how to appreciate the body you have. This brings up another scenario of dance and that is Belly Dancing you're told that it's okay to have a little stomach because you need that for that specific type of dance. That to me is some form of appreciation because when you are belly dancing, you don't have to worry about how your stomach looks. I salute the Urban Bush Women especially for the dance "Batty " because it really allows me to no longer question my body type, but appreciate my hips and other features that come along with being an African American Woman.