Atsumori

This story was pretty interesting, and it wasn’t hard to follow for me. The part that made the reading difficult was the fact that there were so many stage directions I was trying to keep track of and all the characters switching back on forth between lines. This style of writing made sense for the culture and time period, but isn’t very effective now.

When we learned about the Noh theatre traditions, the play’s unique style and structure made much more sense. And when we watched the video and I was actually able to see the effect all of the stage directions had on the actual performance. Performing in the Noh theatre looked like it might be very difficult. Having to remember all of the specifics of the movements as well as your lines seem like a lot to have to remember. The audience had to be well informed as well, and also very intelligent to be able to follow along with the story and use the actor’s body movements to tell what was going on.

When we were in class and Ms. Pierce started explaining what was happening at the end of the play I got really lost. I had no idea what was happening at the end because of the multitude of stage directions and the fact that the Shite was changing between characters. When she explained what was actually going on with the Shite’s line it made so much more sense to the story.

Another thing I found interesting about the theatre of the Noh area is the similarities between the Japanese theatre and the Chinese theatre. The singing element of the plays seems like a very asian feature. We in America would think of these as musicals, but they use the singing as a dramatic effect to add emotion to the play as well as to tell the story.