Last week we learned about noh theatre in my World Theatre class. I had heard before that noh is so impenetrable that it takes a good deal of study for a Westerner to understand it at all, and though that isn't quite the truth, it's not far from it, either! The noh stage is extremely important to the form. It has very exact standard dimensions and structure. Interestingly, nine large pots or bowls are placed under the stage to make the sound reverberate when performers stomp their feet!
Noh plays are usually tragic in nature. The picture above is from a play called Aoinoue, in which a woman (signified by a folded kimono at the front of the stage) is suffering from a mysterious illness. It turns out that a demon with a grudge (pictured) has been haunting her. A priest comes along and exercises the demon, after which the demon sees her own hatefulness, repents, and goes off to die. And here's a fun fact: scholars believe that the "mysterious illness" from which Aoinoue suffered was actually what we know today as anorexia.
The whole style of noh is very quiet, slow, and restrained. The music consists solely of a few drums and sometimes a flute. These features tend to make it a very unattractive form to Westerners. I agree with this somewhat -- I think noh is very interesting, but I'm not sure I'd want to go to a five-hour performance of it!
