Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

210 Chapter 7 Theatre Traditions: East and West
centuries almost entirely by a single father-son team
(Kan’ami and Zeami), who between them wrote and produced
approximately 240 of the surviving plays, nō is
a highly ceremonial drama that almost always portrays
supernatural events and characters. All nō plays center
on a single figure, the shite (“doer”—pronounced “shetay”),
who is interrogated, prompted, and challenged
by a secondary character, called the waki. Whereas
waki characters are always living male humans—
usually ministers, commoners, or priests—shite characters
may be gods, ghosts, women, animals, or warriors.
The shite, unlike the waki, wears a mask. Nō actors, all
of them male, train for only one of these role types and
then perform them throughout their careers. Extensive
training provides actors with the precise choreography
and musical notations required of their danced and
chanted performances.
The actual nō stage is a square of highly polished
Japanese cypress flooring, about eighteen feet across,
supported from below by large earthenware jars that
resonate with the actors’ foot-stompings. A bridgelike
runway (hashigakari) allows for solemn entrances and
exits; an ornate, curved roof sits atop four wooden pillars,
each with its own name and historic dramatic function.
A wooden “mirror wall” at the rear of the stage
bounces back the sounds of music and singing to the
audience. This wall depicts a painted pine tree, which
provides the only scenery. A four-man orchestra—flute,
small and large hand drums, and stick drum—provides
continuous musical accompaniment at the rear of the
In kabuki’s famous dance-drama Kagami Jishi (The Lion Dance), the lion (played by Nakamura Kankuro V) is teased by butterflies (played by his sons
Nakamura Kantaro II and Nakamura Schichinosuki II). © Tomoko Ogawa