Asian and African Theatre

Acting Types of Beijing Opera

-Actor is the heart of BO -Male roles (sheng) are subdivided into old men (lao sheng), young men (xiao sheng) and warriors (wu sheng). Female roles (dan) are subdivided into quiet and gentle (qing yi) the vivacious OR dissolute (hua dan), warrior maidens (wu dan), and old women (lao dan). -Originally all dan roles were played by women but from the late 18th until the early 20th century women were actresses were forbidden. They returned to the stage in 1911 and now have mostly surpassed male dan actors. -Other roles include the painted face (jing) roles and the comic actor or clown (chou) roles. -Jing characters include warriors, bandits, courtiers, officials, gods and supernatural beings. Their basic attributes are their swagger and exaggerated strength. -Chou characters speak in an everyday dialect, improvise, tell jokes and is the most "realistic" of the characters. They are servants, businessmen, jailers, watchmen, soldiers, the always fun shrewish mother-in-law or matchmakers

Characteristics of Yoruba Opera

-An opening glee (rousing energetic musical number) -Followed by a topical and satirical story with dialogue, songs, and dances. -Ends with another glee. -Emphasis is on entertainment but there is always a clear moral message. -After independence Ogunde sought to encourage national unity through plays such as Yoruba Awake (1964). -He created and performed some 38 different operas - many of which had anticolonial themes that caused hij to be imprisoned for a time.

Beijing Opera

-Beijing Opera is primarily a theatrical rather than literary form; its emphasis is upon rigidly controlled conventions of acting, dancing, and singing rather than upon the text. -Plays of BO are generally classified under 2 headings: civil plays (dealing with social and domestic themes) and military plays (involving adventures of warriors and brigands) -Dramas are derived from earlier literary plays, novels, history, legend, mythology, folklore and romance. -All end happily -The text is seldom strictly followed and all great actors make their changes at certain points.

The White-Haired Girl (1945)

-By Hi Jingchi and Ding Yi, in its original form borrowed heavily from Western operatic conventions. It was translated into a spoken drama, a Beijing Opera, several regional types, and a ballet. -During the Cultural Revolution it was treated as a model work. -It tells the story of a girl who, sold into slavery and raped by her master, flees to the mountains where she is mistaken for a goddess because her hair turned white. She eventually joins the Communist rebels and with their help achieves an honored place in society

Cao Yu

-Cao Yu (1910 - 1996) was considered the finest Chinese dramatist of the 20th century. -His plays such as Thunderstorm (1933), Sunrise (1935), and The Bridge (1945) deal with contemporary social problems, especially the conflict between old and new.

Characteristics of Concert Party

-Characteristics of Concert Party include: always performed as a trio, opening section which included a musical number sung and danced by a trio, a ragtime song, a joking duet, followed by a play that lasted about an hour in length. -The plays were always improvised and always used music, sometimes they are performed in English, sometimes in a local language and sometimes in both. -Concert Party was meant to be entertaining but also sought to provoke audiences by confronting them with contemporary topics. -In 1960, Johnson formed the Musicians' Union of Ghana and they were about 28 trios performing throughout the country but the number has declined in recent years. -The Concert Party is considered the first fully professional theatre in Ghana.

Kathakali

-Dance form of theatre. -Performed by highly skilled, all male companies of actors in Kerala. -They rely entirely on dance, mime, costume and makeup while musicians tell the story through song and musical accompaniment. -Subject matter is primarily from Hindu epics. -Unlike Sanskrit drama, death and violence can occur onstage. -Its stories center around the passions and furies of gods and demons, or the loves and hates of superhuman characters. -The forces of good and evil clash in desperate struggles but good always wins -The gestural language includes more than 500 separate signs -Characters fall into 7 basic types, each with its own elaborate and layered costume and symbolic makeup, which takes hours to apply -Kathakali uses boys or men to perform female roles. -Training begins in childhood and a dancer is not considered mature until he has performed a role for about 20 years. -Kathakali has traditionally been presented in a temple courtyard or other open space about 20 feet square covered by a flower-decked canopy and lighted by torches. -In modern times it has been performed on proscenium stages. -Performances last all night.

Yoruba Opera

-Developed by Hubert Ogunde (1919 - 1990) -The Garden of Eden and the Throne of God (1944)., Strike and Hunger (1945) -1946 established the first professional theatre company in Nigeria and toured wherever there were concentrations of Yoruba-speaking populations in and outside of Nigeria.

Ama Ata Aidoo

-Former Minister of Education for Ghana. -Best-known for 2 plays: The Dilemma of a Ghost (1964) and Anowa (1970). -Her plays concern the lack of positive models of male-female communication -The Dilemma of a Ghost concerns a man who returns from America with an African-American wife and tensions this creates within the man's family, who have deep-rooted prejudices about slave ancestry.

The Market Theatre

-Founded in 1976 by Mannie Manim and Barney Simon in Johannesburg gained international prominence as the home for the plays of Athol Fugard and other South African playwrights. -Notable playwrights whose works appeared there include Fatima Dike, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Matsemela Manaka, Maishe Maponya and others.

Efua Sutherland

-Founded the open-air theatre the Ghana Drama Studio in Accra in 1957 and helped establish the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana, where she encouraged research about traditional performance. -She established and organized the Kodzidan (Story House) and designed the space to fit the storytelling tradition rather than using the colonialist proscenium arch theatre. -She also helped encourage children's theatre with her plays such as Vulture! Vulture! and Tahinta. -She was also a major director. -Sutherland's best-known plays are Edufa, Foriwa, and The Marriage of Anasewa -The Marriage of Anasewa draws on the Anansesem spider tales tradition to create what Sutherland called Anansegoro. -The storyteller sets a scene and comments on the action and helps direct the audience's attitudes. Actors not directly involved in a scene also serve as a stage audience by commenting on the action on stage.

Aspects of Kabuki

-From about 1650 until after 1850, a Kabuki production could last up to 12 hours. Programs were arranged according to a 4 part division - 1. historical play (jidaimono), 2. dance 3. domestic drama (sewamono), 4. humorous one act drama to close. -Dance is the key to Kabuki, with dance expected to reflect and illuminate the text. -Kabuki acting is a combination of speaking and dancing.

Robert Serumaga (1939 -1982)

-Graduated from Trinity College, Dublin and worked in England before returning to Uganda and founding the company Theatre Limited in 1968. -The theatre travelled internationally and Serumaga sought to find an authentic African form for his theatre. -He also ran the Abafumi Players in Nairobi and this theatre heavily featured music, songs, dance and imagery. -His best known play is The Elephants (1970) which concerns characters in an East African university who manipulate each other to maintain their own self esteem, the play implies they may be elephants on the outside but no more than mice on the inside.

Scene of Sanskrit

-Hindu drama was concerned with the emotional and spiritual as opposed to external and materialistic so it avoided realistic production practices. -The Natyasastra describes 3 shapes of playhouses (square, rectangular, and triangular) and 3 sizes each (large, medium, and small) for a total of 9 different types of theatre. -No scenery was used but the stage was decorated with paintings or carvings to provide a symbolic background. -At the beginning of each play, a preliminary section established time, place and situation. -Everything was stylized

Duro Ladipo (1931 - 1978)

-Inspired by Yoruba oral tradition, music, myth, and masquerade. -Unlike most Yoruba companies Ladipo's used more traditional Yoruba musical forms and instruments. -Most famous opera is The King Did Not Hang (1964) which concerned the Yoruba god of lightning and toured throughout the world -Eda is Lapido's adaptation of Everyman.

Kabuki

-Kabuki was a new expression of an optimistic, hedonistic urban society. -Most performers were women, sometimes dressed as men, and featuring erotic themes. -By 1629 Kabuki came to be associated with prostitution and women were forbidden from appearing on stage. -Women's Kabuki --> Young Men's Kabuki --> Men's Kabuki after 1652.

Indian Folk Theatre

-Kutiyattum, the offshoot of Sanskrit theatre, survived primarily because it was limited to performances in temples and because the Kerala region spent the least amount of time under Muslim rule. -Changes in the Hindu sect of Vaisnavism in the 16th century were of the greatest importance to the spread of theatre in the growing number of non-Islamic states, along with areas exposed to European colonialism where theatre was used as a teaching tool for the spread of Christianity.

Most Famous Sanskrit Play

-Most famous Sanskrit drama is The Little Clay Cart, which tells the story of the love of a Brahmin for a courtesan.

Wole Soyinka (1934 -- )_

-Most important Nigerian playwright for our purposes. -Son of an Anglican priest and educated in England nevertheless is familiar with egungen performance styles and other traditional Yoruba performances. -Worked at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1959 -1960, he returned to Nigeria in 1960 and founded a company that presented his first major play, A Dance of the Forests. -Best known for Death and the King's Horseman (1975) based on a true story of Nigeria's colonial past. -Other plays include adaptation of The Bacchae of Euripides (1973) done at the National Theatre in London and and adaptation of Brecht's Threepenny Opera called Opera Wonyosi.

Sanskrit Drama

-Natyasastra (The Art of the Theatre) is a major source of information about Indian theatre. Text seems to date from the 2nd century and it tells that theatre began when the god Brahma taught the dramatic arts to the priest Bharata and his 100 sons. -Brahma provided nymphs to to do the dancing and had the heavenly architect Vishvakarma build a theatre. -About 25 plays have survived, some from perhaps as late as the 9th century but the best come from the 4th and 5th centuries.

Egungen

-Nigerian theatre -major Yoruban festival that can be traced back at least to the 14th century. -It refers to ancestors and is meant to establish a spiritual link between the living and the dead, the past and the present. -Performed annually and the beginning of the planting season -Performers are masked and wear elaborate costumes. -Along with priests, they emerge from a sacred grove and make their way to the chief's home. -They perform until a "carrier" arrives whose job it is to gather up all the accumulated evil in the community and carry it away in a canoe. -A guild system developed to pass on the individual traditions of the Egungen with separate guilds for musicians, mask makers, and actors.

Kyogen Theatre

-Noh is connected to Kyogen, short farcical pieces used as interludes between Noh plays. -Kyogen are meant to be comic and were probably set during Zeami's time as well. -Kyogen places more emphasis on situation than character. -2-3 character plays performed in prose dialogue, sometimes they parody the Noh plays or stories from folklore.

Set-up of Sanskrit Theatre

-Plays varied in length from 1 to 10 acts -A single act must be confined to 24 hours and no more than 1 year should elapse between acts. -Events not depicted onstage are made known through interludes between acts and the action may range freely and often includes both heaven and earth.

Bunrake

-Puppet theatre (ningyo shibai), evolved at the same time as Kabuki. -Some type of puppet theatre was around as early as 1100. -It combined with a form of entertainment in which stories or legends were recited or chanted while accompanied by a string instrument called a biwa. -The most popular of these stories dealt with the love story of Joruri, the daughter of a wealthy family. It was so popular that this form of storytelling was eventually named joruri. -His best known Bunraku plays include The Double Suicide at Sonezaki (1703), Drumming of the Waves at Horikawa (1707), Battle of Coxinga (1715), and The Love Suicide at Amijima (1721).

Rasas of Sanskrit Theatre

-Sanskrit plays are not categorized according to Western forms such as tragedy or comedy and rather than character development, action or philosophical issues, the central concern of Sanskrit drama is the appropriate rasa (loosely translated as aesthetic delight or joyful consciousness). -There are 8 rasas: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrible, odious, and marvelous) and those are related to the 8 basic human emotions (bhavas) that can be portrayed on stage: pleasure, mirth, sorrow, wrath, vigor, fear, disgust, and wonder. -There are also 33 transitory emotional states and 8 types of character temperment. -So, in effect, the Natyasastra is concerned with how emotional states are to be presented on stage through words, actions, costume and makeup in the manner required to induce the proper rasa. - A play may include elements of more than on bhava and rasa, but one rasa must dominate, for the final aim is to induce a sense of harmony and composure. All plays end happily, death and violence do not occur onstage and right and wrong are clearly differentiated. Joy and sorrow may be mingled but at the conclusion all must be resolved into harmony with good triumphant over evil.

Janet Suzman and Antony Sher

-Sher's book The Year of the King should be required reading for anyone who claims to want to be an actor. -Suzman and Sher have been a longtime company member with the Royal Shakespeare Company -Sher has won 2 Olivier Awards and was knighted in 2000 for his services to the British theatre. -Suzman in 2011 was made Dame Commander of the British Empire for her services to the theatre. -She was married to Trevor Nunn from 1969 - 1986 and appeared in many of his productions.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938 -)

-The Black Hermit (1962) Deals with an educated African who must decide whether to return to his tribe or follow other paths. -This Time Tomorrow (1968) concerns the indifference of the rich for the poor and sets the tone for Ngugi's strong anticapitalist stance and political activism as a playwright. -The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1975) Written in collaboration with female playwright Micere Githae Mugo, based on incidents that took place 20 years earlier and focuses on Kimathi, a leading rebel general in Kenya's struggle for independence.

Sanskrit Acting

-The actor had 4 basic resources at his disposal: movement and gesture, speech and song, costume and makeup, and psychological insight. -Movement and gesture was codified into a system of prescribed signs described in the Natyasastra and other Hindu writings. -There were 13 movements of the head, 6 of the nose, 6 of the cheek, 7 of the eyebrow, 9 of the neck, 7 of the chin, 5 of the chest, 36 of the eyes, 32 of the feet, and 24 of the single hand. -Movement and stance were proscribed as well and all these movements and gestures combined to create a kind of sign language as complex as speech

Vaisnavism

-The new Vaisnavism put renewed focus on Krishna and Rama as reincarnations of the great god Vishnu. -The depiction of the stories of Krishna and Rama became devotional acts in themselves, both for those who performed and those who watched. -Ramlila, a devotional theatre form that tells stories from the Ramayana staged along a processional route that gradually came to feature elephants, floats, chariots, earthen stages raised 4 feet high, and gigantic effigies of the 10-headed demon, Ravenna, and his 5 demon brothers, all of whom are consumed by fire in the final scene.

The Development of Chinese Literary Drama

-The plays advocated the virtues of loyalty to family and friends, honesty, and devotion to work and duty. -The plays showed a world out of joint but one where poetic justice prevailed and even plays that ended unhappily for the protagonists often showed the villains being discovered and punished. -In the final scenes, lovers or long-separated relatives were reunited or reconciled, deserving officials were rewarded, and wealth or honor restored.

Yüan Staging practices

-The stage was essentially bare, with one door on either side at the rear for entrances and exits. -A purely decorative wall piece hung between the two doors. -Properties such as fans, swords and belts were used. -Both male and female performers were included in companies. -About 700 play titles were recorded from this era, of which about 170 have survived. -550 dramatists are known to have written at this time but little, even birth and death dates, are known about them.

Aspects of Noh Plays

-The text of a Noh play tends to be shorter than a Western one-act but it provides the framework for telling the story through choreography. -All Noh plays culminate in a dance. -A chorus (ji) of 6-10 narrate many of the events during the play, sing all the lines required while the character is dancing and may sing some of the actor's lines at other times. -Ordinary speech is only used when a player comes on stage between parts of a two-act piece to summarize what has happened during the first act. -Noh acting= "the art of walking" -Main actor (shite) can be masked or unmasked and fall into 5 basic types: aged, male, female, deities, and monsters. -Secondary actors (waki) are not masked. -Professional Noh performers tend to be male but there are female amateur performers.

Types of Noh Plays

-There are 5 types of Noh plays: kamimono, plays praising the gods; shuramono, plays about warriors; kazuramono, plays about women; zatsu, miscellaneous plays, most often about deranged people (usually women); and kirimono, plays about demons, devils and other supernatural beings. -A traditional program is made up of one play from each type - making up a pattern showing the innocence and peace of the world of the gods; followed by human error, repentance and possible redemption, followed by the glory of defeating the forces that stand in the way of peace and harmony.

The Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata) and The Ramayana (Travels of Rama)

-Two great epics would enormously influence Indian drama. -Both inspired by events thought to have occurred between 1000 and 800 BCE and were written down in the third part of the Vedic period (500 -200 BCE). -Both are compounds of history, legend and myth and are to Sanskrit literature what The Iliad and The Odyssey are to Greek literature and would become the major source material for Sanskrit dramatists. -The Mahabharata tells of the struggle between various members of two ruling families, and the tales of love, war, and adventure that revolved around them. -The Ramayana tells of the expulsion of Prince Rama and his wife Sita from their kingdom because of Rama's scheming stepmother, their wandering during a period of 14 years, Sita's abduction by a demon king, her rescue through the help of a monkey king, and their triumphant return to their kingdom.

Stage of Kabuki

-Visual style of Kabuki is a blend of the conventions of Noh and western style illusionism. -Props range from symbolic to realistic. -The most distinctive feature of the Kabuki stage is the hanamichi, a bridge that connects the stage with a small room near the rear of the auditorium and is used for all major entrances and exits as well as important scenes.

John Ruganda (1941 - 2007)

-Wrote in realistic mode -Major plays include The Burdens (1972), Black Mamba and Covenant with Death (1973), Music without Tears (1982), Echoes of Silence (1987), The Floods (1988) -The Burdens deals with a disgraced politician now living in poverty with his wife and children, alcoholic and adulterous. His wife seeks to help him recovery his dignity and position but he refuses and she ultimately kills him

Zeami

-Zeami is considered the greatest of all Noh dramatists. -He wrote more than 100 of the approximately 240 plays that make up the active Noh repertory today. -He also created 26 theoretical treatises that summed up Noh's aesthetic goals and practices. -Noh is a product of the 14th and 15th centuries, no play written in the last 400 years has a place in the modern repertory.

Japanese Bugaku

-bugaku, were imported and are still practiced today, now it means any dance performed to classical court music (gagaku) by dancers whose art has been passed down through generations of families with hereditary rights. -While some of the dances are Japanese in origin, most come from China, Korea, Tibet, and India. -Dances are divided into 2 categories: "Dances of the Right" from Korea, and "Dances of the Left" from China and South Asia. -The dances are structured in terms of jo-ha-kyu ("beginning, breaking from, fast" indicating tempo, mood, emotional intensity, and vitality of performance). -Probably exerted a major influence on Noh drama.

Guan Hanqing

-is the best known and often called the father of Chinese drama. -Guan wrote 67 plays, 18 have survived. -Best known play is The Injustice Done to Ngo Tou, based on a real life murder and trial.

Characteristics of Indian Folk Drama

1. The acting is stylized but uses conventions that are fully understood by the local audience. Music accompanies the entire performance and is coordinated with the performers. 3. Scenery is not used 4. Stage hands and stage managers appear on stage in full view of the audience but are ignored by them. 5. Performances start late and continue all night in the light of flickering torches.

Roles of Theatre

Roles are divided into basic types: tachiyaku (loyal, good, courageous men); katakiyaku (villainous men); dokekata (comic roles, including comic villains); koyaku (children's roles); and onnagata (women's roles of various kinds, all played by men).

Athol Fugard (1932 -- )

South Africa's most important playwright and maybe the most influential playwright alive today. The Blood Knot (1961), Hello and Goodbye (1968), Boseman and Lena (1969) Between 1971-1973 he collaborated with John Kani and Winston Ntshona on collectively creating plays. Master Harold and the Boys (1982) is considered his masterpiece My Children My Africa (1989), A Lesson from Aloes (1978), Road to Mecca (1984) Exits and Entrances (2004)

The Oldest Extant Chinese Drama

The Doctor of Letters, which includes a prologue summarizing the action, and a main story told through dialogue and songs, probably dates from this period

Noh Stage

Two main areas: butai (main stage) and hashigakari (bridge) Stage roof is supported by 4 columns, each with its own name and significance. Upstage right pillar = shitebashira Downstage right pillar = metsukebashira Downstage left pillar = wakibashira Upstage left pillar = fuebashira Rear stage = atoza Contemporary Noh theatre can seat between 300 - 500 people.

Griot

a storyteller who committed to memory and passed on to successors a record of the community.