Download or read book The Secrets of Noh Masks written by Michishige Udaka and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In terms of style, Noh drama is the quintessence of simplicity. Performed by a handful of players, mostly masked and using minimal props and exceedingly understated movements, this is theater pared down to its essentials. Yet, as an art form, Noh drama is highly complex—richly symbolic, nuanced and exquisite in its austerity. Since the emergence of Noh drama over six centuries ago, the masks worn by the actors have been integral to the work. A Noh mask, with its subtle fusion of the real and the imaginary, is a beautiful object; but it only comes fully to life when a talented actor is able to transcend the mask's unchanging expression and convey a wide range of emotions. In recent years, Noh drama has seen a resurgence in prestige and popularity, both in Japan and abroad. Today, the masks worn by most Noh thespians are either old, passed down from generation to generation within a particular school of acting, or the work of an artist who specializes in this craft. Only one Noh master-actor continues to make masks in addition to teaching, writing and performing. Michishige Udaka is a shite-kata (lead and producer), with a career spanning almost 50 years. As an actor and playwright, he is able to bring to the task of mask-making a deep understanding both of the character the mask represents and of the actor's intentions while playing that role. These insights have enabled Udaka to add greater dimension to his own performances. The Secrets of Noh Masks presents 32 pieces, a representative sample of the more than 200 produced to date by the author. Every one has passed the ultimate test—use in actual performances—and may be seen on stage today. The stunning photos are accompanied by captions and essays about the history of Noh, its performance style, mask-making philosophy and techniques. There is also an index listing each mask with a thumbnail sketch. Those who know little of this ancient dramatic form, might assume that Noh masks lack expression. But the images showcased in this volume reveal an emotional depth and humanity that is as powerful in the 21st century as it was over 600 years ago.
Download or read book Japanese No Masks written by Friedrich Perzynski and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 120 full-page plates of magnificent, elaborately carved, museum-quality masks worn by actors playing gods, warriors, beautiful women, feudal lords, and supernatural beings. Captions.
Download or read book Kissing the Mask written by William T. Vollmann and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central, a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extra-ordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look at the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself. Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a trans-vestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of desire and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann uncovers secrets of staged femininity and mysteries of perceived and expressed beauty, including specific makeup procedures furnished by an L.A. transgender bar girl, a Kabuki female impersonator, and the owner of a semi-clandestine studio for Tokyo cross-dressers. Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.
Download or read book The Street of a Thousand Blossoms written by Gail Tsukiyama and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers. It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks. But as the ripples of war spread to their quiet neighborhood, the brothers must put their dreams on hold—and forge their own paths in a new Japan. Meanwhile, the two young daughters of a renowned sumo master find their lives increasingly intertwined with the fortunes of their father's star pupil, Hiroshi.
Download or read book Shine written by Jessica Jung and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen-year-old Rachel Kim confronts the dark underbelly of the K-pop world as she strives to become a K-pop star.
Download or read book Noh Masks written by Toru Nakanishi and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Secret of N Plays written by Zeami and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Yurei written by Zack Davisson and published by Chin Music Press Inc.. This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I lived in a haunted apartment." Zack Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan's ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Eerie red marks on the apartment's ceiling kept Zack and his wife on edge. The landlord warned them not to open a door in the apartment that led to nowhere. "Our Japanese visitors had no problem putting a name to it . . . they would sense the vibes of the place, look around a bit and inevitably say 'Ahhh . . . yurei ga deteru.' There is a yurei here." Combining his lifelong interest in Japanese tradition and his personal experiences with these vengeful spirits, Davisson launches an investigation into the origin, popularization, and continued existence of yurei in Japan. Juxtaposing historical documents and legends against contemporary yurei-based horror films such as The Ring, Davisson explores the persistence of this paranormal phenomenon in modern day Japan and its continued spread throughout the West. Zack Davisson is a translator, writer, and scholar of Japanese folklore and ghosts. He is the translator of Mizuki Shigeru's Showa 1926–1939: A History of Japan and a translator and contributor to Kitaro. He also worked as a researcher and on-screen talent for National Geographic's TV special Japan: Lost Souls of Okinawa. He writes extensively about Japanese ghost stories at his website, hyakumonogatari.com.
Download or read book The N Plays of Japan written by Arthur Waley and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Theatre of Dreams Theatre of Play written by Khanh Trinh and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of Japanese Theatre written by Jonah Salz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 1066 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan boasts one of the world's oldest, most vibrant and most influential performance traditions. This accessible and complete history provides a comprehensive overview of Japanese theatre and its continuing global influence. Written by eminent international scholars, it spans the full range of dance-theatre genres over the past fifteen hundred years, including noh theatre, bunraku puppet theatre, kabuki theatre, shingeki modern theatre, rakugo storytelling, vanguard butoh dance and media experimentation. The first part addresses traditional genres, their historical trajectories and performance conventions. Part II covers the spectrum of new genres since Meiji (1868–), and Parts III to VI provide discussions of playwriting, architecture, Shakespeare, and interculturalism, situating Japanese elements within their global theatrical context. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and prints, this history features interviews with key modern directors, an overview of historical scholarship in English and Japanese, and a timeline. A further reading list covers a range of multimedia resources to encourage further explorations.
Download or read book Traditional Japanese Theater written by Karen Brazell and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book of its kind: a collection of the most important genres of Japanese performance--noh, kyogen, kabuki, and puppet theater--in one comprehensive, authoritative volume.
Download or read book The Popol Vuh written by Lewis Spence and published by New York : AMS Press. This book was released on 1908 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Between Theater and Anthropology written by Richard Schechner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In performances by Euro-Americans, Afro-Americans, Native Americans, and Asians, Richard Schechner has examined carefully the details of performative behavior and has developed models of the performance process useful not only to persons in the arts but to anthropologists, play theorists, and others fascinated (but perhaps terrified) by the multichannel realities of the postmodern world. Schechner argues that in failing to see the structure of the whole theatrical process, anthropologists in particular have neglected close analogies between performance behavior and ritual. The way performances are created—in training, workshops, and rehearsals—is the key paradigm for social process.
Download or read book The Noh Theater written by Kunio Konparu and published by Floating World Editions. This book was released on 2005 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first work in either English or Japanese to offer a comprehensive explanation and analysis of the principles of the Noh theatre. The book painstakingly outlines both physical and intellectual aspects of Noh, its technical principles and its philosophical perspectives, unknown until now.
Download or read book The Noh Theatre of Japan written by Ernest Fenollosa and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This outstanding, scholarly work by an American-born authority on Chinese and Japanese art and literature, edited and translated by one of the most ambitious, influential, and innovative poets of the first half of the 20th century, provides Western readers with a valuable interpretation of an important aspect of Japanese culture. In addition to the complete translations of 15 plays, the text discusses historical background and development of the Noh theater.
Download or read book Spaces Speak Are You Listening written by Barry Blesser and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we experience space by listening: the concepts of aural architecture, with examples ranging from Gothic cathedrals to surround sound home theater. We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and "hear" the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture's attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to "see" objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling. Integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines—including architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering, and many others—Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? establishes the concepts and language of aural architecture. These concepts provide an interdisciplinary guide for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how space enhances our well-being. Aural architecture is not the exclusive domain of specialists. Accidentally or intentionally, we all function as aural architects.
