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.
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2 comments:
As I watched the onnagata performer, Tamasaburo I was struck by the beauty of his dances.
In an interview that I watched last year he discussed some of the reasonings of why he plays a woman and the thought behind these gender questions. From what i could gather he thought that becuase he was outside of being female he could better portray something that he respected and honored.
There were several female performers who talked about their impressions of him and how they watched him to impact their own views of dance and how they approached their own sense of being female.
I found this to be very interesting as I had intially questioned why women were not allowed to be in the Kabuki dances.
And in some respects i felt honored that I was being portrayed so beautiful - that being female was encapsulated in such grace.
I suppose my question is why women are not allowed to portray men then - and if the same ability to stand outside of the gender for women doesn't also apply to view of men.
So there seems to be some sort of contradiction in this. But as was stated by Amy I am looking at issues of gender from my own American experience. And I realized even more fully, after the look at some of Tiffany's pictures and presentation on Japanese modern culture how those gender questions are more complicated than I can grasp from a brief encounter with them.
Perhaps that is one of the mysterious parts of culture - the contradictions that we take for granted within our own cultures that seem so outlandish to those looking in from the outside.
Bunraku response:
Absolute amazing how in unison these artist move. When in Dr. Harris' Asian Theatre Class we learned of the training. 30 years to control body and right arm. 20 years to control left arm. 10 years of training to control the legs or skirt depending on type of doll.
Could you imagine the response of a western artist if he was to be in training for 10 years.
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