Word: noh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...namely, certain traditional types of Oriental theater. As a youngster Wilder lived and went to school in Shanghai and Hong Kong for a time. In the abovementioned preface he notes that in Chinese drama an actor may straddle a stick to suggest horseback riding, and that in the Japanese Noh theater a circling of the stage may stand for a long journey. He might have added that the centuries-old Noh drama uses no curtain and no change of lighting. The plays are acted with few or no props beyond a fan, which may represent a cup of wine...
Throne of Blood. Akira Kurosawa's film transports the Macbeth story to medieval Japan. An effective stylization that draws on techniques from the Japanese Noh theater, though at times the Samurai sensationalism flattens both the characters and the tragedy...
...Hawk's Well begins just before young Cuchulain's first meeting with Aoife. The play is done partly in the style of the Japanese Noh drama, a form that intrigued Yeats for its simplicity and ritual: it begins with the ceremonous unfolding and folding of a large cloth, a less mechanical and more suggestive device than a curtain for marking the division between the presence of actors and the progress of a play. William Barnum's slow and deliberate opening mime as the Old Man at the elusive fountain of immortality does more to set the scene than the other...
Benjamin Britten's Carlew River is in many ways the direct antithesis of The Play of Daniel. Contrasted with the spontaneity of Daniel. Britten is extremely self-conscious and studied. The libretto, by William Plomer, based on a Japanese Noh-play, presents the story of a madwoman in search of her lost son, in straightforward, narrative manner. It is the music however, not the libretto, which is responsible for the overly calculated effect of the work as a whole. Through his use of a highly declamatory vocal style, with jagged melodic lines. Britten concentrates attention of presentation of the words...