Theater East and West: Perspectives Toward a Total Theater

By Leonard C. Pronko

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520312708

Leonard C. Pronko

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THEATER EAST AND WEST

PERSPECTIVES TOWARD A TOTAL THEATER

by

LEONARD CABELL PRONKO

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY, LOS ANGELES, LONDON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.

LONDON, ENGLAND

© 1967 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION, 1974

ISBN: 0-520-02622-5

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 67-22176

DESIGNED BY DAVID PAULY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR Takao Tomono

Preface to

the Paperbound Edition

Yeeeooowww! Instant Kabuki! shouted the title over a review of two kabuki performances presented at the American College Theater Festival in Washington’s Kennedy Center in April, 1973. The presentations, on consecutive days, were by a student group from Pomona College and the Kabuki Apprentices of the National Theater of Japan. The fact that two such groups were appearing in the Festival at all was an indication of the growing number of Asian-inspired productions in the United States, and the increasing interest of other theatre people in these productions. The reviewer in the Washington Post went on to say that for one who has been exposed only to the authentic article, Kabuki-in-English is a breakthrough.

Across the country, in Los Angeles, Dan Sullivan, reviewing an English-language production in the Los Angeles Times, called it a reminder that the world of Kabuki isn’t nearly as forbidding as the language barrier makes it seem. Time and again, for performances of Chinese opera, Kabuki, and other oriental forms which, more and more, are being studied and performed with varying degrees of skill and authenticity, particularly in the colleges and universities of this country, reviewers and spectators have described their pleasure and joy at the discovery of a totally new world revealing the larger possibilities of theater, or their surprise at the accessibility of a form which in a foreign language had seemed forbidding and difficult.

Perhaps we are on the eve of a boom in Asian theater productions, and it is to be expected that this should begin in educational institutions, which are not under the same economic pressures as most professional theaters. In a recent survey carried out by Professor Andrew Tsubaki, of the International Theatre Studies Center at the University of Kansas, it is revealed that in the past ten years or so there have been thirtyseven full-length Asian theatre productions in U. S. schools. The majority of these have probably been in the most recent years of the decade. While ten years ago one was hard pressed to locate an Asian production in any given year, the year 1972-73 witnessed the production of Kabuki plays in English in no less than four American schools: Narukami at the University of Hawaii, Kanjincho at the University of Kansas and at the University of Wisconsin, and the double bill of Gohiiki Kanjincho and Fishing for a Wife at Pomona College. In addition to these, Shozo Sato, at the University of Illinois in Champaign, toured his production of Narukami.

It would be tedious to detail all the developments in Asian- American theatre relations since this book was first published in 1967. Much of the exciting activity in this field is covered in the Asian Theatre Bulletin, published by the American Theatre Association, and since the spring of 1971, when it became independent of the African Theatre Program, under the capable editorship of Samuel Leiter of Brooklyn College. New books, articles and dissertations, foreign artists on tour, American productions, news of theatre meetings, symposia, reports from abroad and news of the activities of members are all included in the brief but well-packed issues of this stimulating and encouraging publication. Professor Leiter is also the author of a number of illuminating articles, including Four Interviews with Kabuki Actors, (Educational Theatre Journal, December, 1966) and an account of the IASTA production of Kanjincho (Theatre Crafts, September-October, 1968).

The brief Afterword to the first edition of the present volume outlines a few of the manifestations which came to my attention between the time the manuscript went to the publisher and its publication. In this Preface I would like to update several points which have changed since I wrote Theater East and West, note some of the major advances since 1967, and indicate a few of the problems and dangers which may lie ahead, if, indeed, they are not upon us already.

In Chapter VI I alluded hopefully to the Chinese opera house and Kabuki theater which were planned for San Francisco. The first has never materialized, although a step in the right direction has been taken with the founding of the Chinese Culture Center, under the directorship of Dr. William Ding Yee Wu. The Kabuki Theater Restaurant came and went leaving no trace at all on the cultural life of San Francisco, much less on the country at large. Thanks to a policy of attempting to satisfy all the people all the time, it managed to satisfy no one any of the time. Instead of aiming at a serious theatrical audience by presenting authentic kabuki productions with artists from Japan, the Kabuki Theater Restaurant imported all-girl dance reviews, hoping to bring in spectators by the hundreds, and padded the program with authentic Kabuki selections. The man-out-on-the-town was bored by Kabuki, and the theatre buff put to sleep by the reviews, if he went at all. The true possibilities of an American Kabuki Theater Restaurant remain to be explored.

While waiting for the total feast available only in a theater which is at the same time a restaurant, the American theater has gone ahead exploring the other feasts possible without kitchen facilities, or with only limited ones. The Cafe La Mama, like a few other New York-based groups, has experimented with oriental techniques, most notably in plays of Yeats and in the delightful staging of Demon, an adaptation of the Noh play, The Damask Drum. A dramatic and imaginative staging of Titus Andronicus in Central Park, under the aegis of Joseph Papp, revealed a strong influence of Chinese opera.

The same play, in a college setting, was brilliantly transposed to a Japanese setting by director Henry Horwege of Bakersfield College, and performed in a bigger than life Kabuki style well adapted to the violence and heroics of that melodrama. Macbeth, rewritten, underwent the same transformation in an East coast school. And here at Pomona College a short play, Oedipus at Phokis, was written by a student in the Noh form, with music in a sparse modern idiom recall ing that of Noh, and choreographed in a style blending modern dance with Bharata Natyam and Kabuki dance. More than one reviewer commented on the successful transposition. It proves kabuki to be a form bound by elaborate conventions but marvellously malleable within them, declared Sylvie Drake in the Los Angeles Times.

While professionals and students shared their exploratory discoveries, the Japanese themselves were also exploring. Kara Juro and his Situation Theater incorporate Kabuki techniques into their avant-garde productions, while Tadashi Suzuki, director of the Waseda Little Theater, calls his productions modern Kabuki. Even the conservative world of Noh has seen the imaginative experiments of Kanze Hisao and Kanze Hideo. United States audiences were able to see the production of The Man from the East by Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Buddha Theater on tour in this country in 1973 after highly acclaimed performances in France and England. The Man from the East is an entertaining blend of some traditional stories and techniques with modern theatrical styles, but it struck this viewer as being more a review than a perfectly integrated presentation.

Appearances of authentic classical troupes from Japan, the Republic of China, India, Indonesia and other countries of Southeast Asia, have shown that there is a large and responsive audience for these performers in this country. Even the austere Noh has made two visits to the U.S. since 1967. Such visits have given theater people of the West a better opportunity to observe at close hand the finest traditional artists of Asia. But the very fact that theater people must usually wait for such visits underlines one of the major difficulties for this kind of cultural cross-fertilization: most actors and directors are either so desperately busy, or so desperately poor, that they cannot conceivably take off a year or two to study at the feet of the great masters in Asia. A partial solution might be for us to import these masters to teach us here, but this is impractical for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the finest actors and teachers are impossibly busy in their own countries. But care must be exercised to bring over only actors and master teachers of the highest competence, for second rate actors lack both the experience and the heart necessary to impart the secrets of the traditional arts.

Should the master teachers of oriental theater, or those of us who have had the good fortune to study with them, attempt an authentic reconstruction of the original plays? Should we attempt to adapt them to the capabilities of our own students? Or should we simply use the oriental techniques as a means to develop better actors in the western tradition? These are fretful questions. It should be obvious to the reader of this book that I do not ascribe to the last of these views, although I agree that oriental techniques may profitably be used in training western actors. Indeed, today Tai chi is widely used in theater courses which otherwise make no pretense of exploring Asian modes in their performances.

There is certainly room for authentic performances (or rather, as authentic as we can become in English with actors who have trained for months rather than decades), as there is for transposed presentations. But what I think is irrefragable is the importance of insisting upon a discipline based upon authentic modes, only allowing departures and transpositions once that discipline has been learned. I have treated this question, and related ones, in Oriental Theatre for the West: Problems of Authenticity and Communication, (Educational Theatre Journal, October, 1968).

For the student who is able to spend a year or two, and who is able to gain some mastery of an oriental language, the possibility exists of studying with a private teacher or in one of the schools in Asia. It is not impossible, for example, to get into the Chinese opera schools in Taipei. In Japan, foreigners have already entered the training schools of Noh, Kyōgen and Japanese dance, even appearing occasionally onstage. Even Kabuki, the training for which was traditionally transmitted within families, has recently opened itself to the outside: in 1970 the National Theatre of Japan began its Kabuki Training Program. It is the first carefully planned training program aimed at bringing young men outside the Kabuki world into the Kabuki family system, and was developed, at least in part, to replenish the diminishing supply of young Kabuki actors on the lower echelons.

I found myself in Japan during the year that the program was begun, and was fortunate enough to be admitted to it for fifteen months. I was the only foreigner among ten young men who, in the space of three years, have shown that with talent, dedication, and good teachers, they could in that time master much of what was traditionally imparted in ten or fifteen years. I have discussed this training program in some detail in my article, Learning Kabuki, (Educational Theatre Journal, December, 1971). The second group of students is now being trained, and among them there is another foreigner: a young Australian woman. While the program is intended, of course, for young Japanese who will become professionals, the director, Mr. Sasaki Einosuke, is most kindly disposed toward foreigners, and is making an effort to institute another training program chiefly for foreigners. At this point, however, only a limited participation can be envisaged, in order not to deflect the program from its primary goal.

The appearance of the Kabuki Apprentices of the National Theatre (the graduates of the original training program) at the American College Theater Festival in 1973 may well mark the beginning of a kind of graduation tour of the students to the United States. Those who observed the performances and demonstrations at the Festival were impressed by their skill, seriousness, professionalism and the dazzling brilliance of much of their work—all acquired within the space of three years by young men who, in many cases, had never even seen Kabuki before they entered the training program. The benefits for us, as well as the conclusions to be drawn by the traditional worlds of the East are obvious.

Less dazzling, professional and skillful, no doubt, but equally serious has been the work of young American student actors over the past few years, in their efforts to evoke for their audiences the bigger than life, highly refined world of Asian theater. Professor Tsubaki’s survey shows that Kabuki is far and away the most popular form for performance by students, with at least half of the 37 full length productions being in the Kabuki form. Many of these productions were made up of two plays. A total of fifteen different plays are listed in the survey many of them having been performed a number of times. I mentioned above two performances of Kanjincho in 1972—73. James Brandon, while at Michigan State University, did the first U. S. Kanjincho in 1963, as he did the first American Sukeroku in a splendid production at the University of Hawaii in 1970. During the past year he directed Narukami, the play most frequently performed in English-language Asian productions. It has been presented at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Theatre Arts in New York, by Shozo Sato in Illinois and on tour, by Brandon, and by myself in three different productions.

There have been several Chinese opera productions, notably those by A. C. Scott at Wisconsin, and the handsome Black Dragon Residence directed by Daniel S. P. Yang at the University of Hawaii and taken to the Kennedy Center as part of the American College Theater Festival in 1972.

It is not possible to mention all the Asian productions of the past few years, but it seems only just to recognize the work carried on from year to year in this field at the University of Hawaii, formerly under the direction of Earle Ernst, and at present supervised by James Brandon. Nor can one overlook the dedication to Japanese arts, and among theatrical arts, to Kabuki, by Professor Sato in Champaign, Illinois.

The Department of Theater Arts at Pomona College has sponsored seven different Kabuki productions since 1965. The experience gained through these productions, as well as the insights afforded me by fifteen months of study at the National Theater of Japan and a number of summers spent studying with private teachers, have, of course, brought about certain changes in my outlook on oriental theater and its relationship to the West. My fundamental position, however, remains the same, as does my admiration and enthusiasm for the artists of Asia and the exciting forms in which they work. Some of my more recent perceptions, particularly those related to Kabuki, are dealt with briefly in What’s Wrong with Kabuki? (Japan Quarterly, Summer, 1971), and at greater length in Kabuki Today and Tomorrow, (Comparative Drama, Summer, 1972).

In 1967 I lamented the lack of a new translation of that perennial Kabuki favorite, Chūshingura. This lacuna has now been filled by Donald Keene’s fine translation (Columbia University Press, 1971). Professor Keene is also responsible for two other enlightening volumes of recent vintage: No: The Classic Theatre of Japan (Kodansha, 1966), and Twenty Plays of the No Theatre (Columbia University Press, 1970). Masakatsu Gunji’s impressive volume, Kabuki (Kodansha, 1969), is another invaluable contribution. Less impressive for their texts, but dazzlingly illustrated, are the series on the Performing Arts of Japan, published by Weatherhill in Tokyo.

An outstanding addition to the critical studies of Japanese theatre as a whole is Peter D. Arnott’s The Theatres of Japan (St. Martin’s Press, 1969), in which the distinguished scholar of Greek theater, who is also a well known puppeteer, analyzes Japanese theater in a sensitive and original way.

A. C. Scott’s The Theatre in Asia (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972) presents an excellent historical survey of the vast field, with an overview on The Framework of Asian Theatre. Robert Rickner’s brilliant Theatre as Ritual: Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and the Balinese Barong, as yet unpublished, is the finest work I know dealing with Artaud, and magnificently illuminates many aspects of Balinese theatre. James R. Brandon’s splendid Theatre in Southeast Asia (Harvard University Press, 1967) discusses in great detail the extremely varied theaters ranging from Burma through Indonesia and up into the Philippines. The prolific Professor Brandon is also the author of On Thrones of Gold: Three Javanese Shadow Plays (Harvard University Press, 1970) and an anthology of Traditional Asian Plays (Hill and Wang, xiv 1972), and promises an anthology of important Kabuki plays in the near future.

John D. Mitchell, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts, has recently edited translations of three Peking operas of the new revolutionary theatre, The Red Pear Garden (Godine, 1973).

Vera R. Irwin’s Four Classical Asian Plays includes works from India, China and Japan, among them Miss Miyoko Watanabe’s translation of Narukami, which has been used a number of times in performances in this country.

These are but some of the numerous books on Asian theater which have appeared recently. For a more thorough account of those dealing with Japan, the reader might consult my Guide to Japanese Drama (G. K. Hall, 1973).

If volume and quality of publications and performances are any indication, western theater may just have burst into its Meiji era. As more audiences become aware of the exciting theatricality and subtle nuances of oriental theatrical forms, perhaps we can look forward to the day when we will all sit down to the feast which is suggested in these pages.

Preface

This book is intended for the intelligent lover of theater as well as for the theater specialist. I hope that it will open up new perspectives for the reader and make him aware of the many unexplored theatrical forms of the East which have been described extensively by scholars, theater historians, and Orientalists, but remain an almost totally blank spot in the field of experience of the professional theater people of the West. Since I am dealing with the theatrical, rather than the literary, aspects of the forms, I make no effort at completeness in either historical or descriptive approaches. The reader is referred to some of the excellent volumes mentioned in the bibliography for a more thorough discussion of those parts of Oriental theater. A certain amount of repetition is necessary, and I hope those readers already familiar with one or another of the forms I discuss will forgive the summary descriptions I have given, for other readers, less familiar with the terrain, will find them helpful, and perhaps even too sketchy.

I am indebted to the Guggenheim Foundation for its generosity, without which the research for this project could not have been carried out, at least not so completely and effectively. A study of theater requires familiarity with the theater in presentation; the Guggenheim Foundation made possible a prolonged stay in Asia, particularly in Japan, and a final sojourn in France where I was able to bring together certain strands of the research I had done elsewhere.

I am equally indebted to the many kind theater people around the world who enriched my inquiry by allowing me to talk with them, to watch them in rehearsal and backstage, and on occasion sharpened my comprehension and appreciation by long conversations. I should particularly like to express my xvii thanks to Onoe Baiko and Bando Mitsugoro of Tokyo’s Kabuki-za. Mr. S. Masubuchi, at the same theater, was a world of help to me, aiding me to meet actors and visit them backstage, arranging tickets for me, and obtaining many of the photographs that illustrate this volume. Two specialists in the Japanese theater gave me their time and knowledge most generously, Professor Masakatsu Gunji of Waseda University and Professor Benito Ortolani of Sophia University.

In Taiwan, Professor M. K. Li of the College of Chinese Culture was most helpful in arranging for me to attend performances of Peking opera, and to visit the two training schools of Chinese opera in Taiwan, the Foo Hsing and the Air Force School.

The actors, directors, writers, and scholars in Paris who were of assistance are too numerous to mention, but I should like here to acknowledge the valuable help given me by JeanLouis Barrault, Jean Dasté, Gabriel Cousin, Georges Neveux, Professor Robert Ruhlmann, Professor René Sieffert, Lucien Arnaud, Andre Veinstein, and Mlle Christout, of the Bibliothèque de 1’Arsenal.

Dr. John D. Mitchell, founder and president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Theater Arts, in New York, has been a constant source of information and encouragement. It is a pleasure to record my gratitude here, and my admiration for the work he is doing to further theatrical growth in the West.

Ruby Cohn gave me the benefit of her keen criticism and editorial eye during various stages of the manuscript, and for her help I am deeply grateful. A grant from Pomona College helped in the typing of the final manuscript.

L. C. P.

Pomona College

Claremont, California

Contents

Contents

Introduction

I Antonin Artaud and the Balinese Dream

II Servitude and Grandeur of the Chinese Opera

ADVENTURES

The Butterfly Dream

Lady Precious Stream •

Bertolt Brecht

Jean Genet

III Three Visions of Noh

THE TEXT OF NOH

ZEAMI AND THE THEORY OF NOH

THE EXPERIENCE OF NOH

IV Kabuki Inroads in the West

EARLY INTIMATIONS

LATER VISITATIONS

V Kabuki for the West

PROSPECTS

TRANSPOSITIONS

KABUKI AND ELIZABETHAN

VI Orientai Theater Spirit and, Form

A PARTICIPATIVE THEATER

A TOTAL THEATER

A STYLIZED THEATER

Afterword

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Introduction

A Theater of Feast

And you seriously ask us to admit that we prefer a dull and mechanical theatre such as we have today to one where all the gayest, freshest theatrical art flourishes? It is preposterous!

E. G. CRAIG

The traveler who has feasted on the theaters of Japan, China, and Bali cannot repress the feeling, when he returns to the West, that the actors are exceedingly loquacious and singularly incapable of doing anything other than talking. Our hypertrophied rational faculties have led us in the past three hundred years, and particularly since the industrial revolution and the late nineteenth-century age of science, to a theater that is most often as small as life itself, a theater that requires careful listening and intelligent understanding. We sit in plush seats, fatigued after two or three hours of dialogue interspersed with a bit of movement, then disperse to discuss the issues of the play, if it was a drama of any significance. Our serious theater is so sociology-psychology-philosophy centered that it begins to acquire (as Ionesco claims Brecht might wish) all the charm of a night-school course. Instead of a feast for all the senses and for the mind as well, we are given the intellectual scraps from the top of the table of theatrical history. As Genet has said, for us everything happens in the visible world.

The theater this book deals with treats at least to some degree the invisible world, and it treats that invisible world (as well as multiple facets of the visible, palpable, audible one) in a total way that makes of it a feast—a feast the audience enjoys on most occasions, not for a trifling two or three hours, but for five, six, seven hours and occasionally for the whole night through. It is a theater of the inner eye and of the outer eye at the same time. Like our great theaters of the past, it is both realistic and theatricalized, both illusionistic and presentational. It possesses at once reality and style, whereas we most often seem to embrace one or the other. One reason for this polyvalence is the stress laid upon spectacle, often to the detriment of words; we are accustomed to the converse, and anything else strikes us as heretical, since for us theater is above all dramatic literature. Working with images—that is to say, with a purely theatrical poetry which exists in space and time rather than in any abstract sense on the printed page—the Oriental theater can appeal, in different ways and to varying degrees, to that part of the human makeup which is refractory to intellectual and conscious stimulation. Obviously, no generalization will hold true for all the theaters under discussion. Kabuki, for example, often uses dialogue extensively, while Balinese dance drama in many instances uses no speech at all.

Parallels are no doubt as invidious as comparisons, but it is tempting to imagine the story of a class-B horror film of the supernatural, performed by some Bernhardt who would also be a Pavlova, choreographed by Petitpas or Massine, with music of, say, Stravinsky, and costumes by Bakst. If such a mixture could achieve harmony, and if the supernatural element were somehow connected with our religious life, it might evoke in us a feeling similar to that experienced by the peasants of Bali as they witness the fearful Rangda and Barong play, or the more sophisticated reactions of the Japanese as they view one