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Kabuki, while being one of Japan's three great classical theatre genres, has also benefited from dramatic works written especially for it by a variety of playwrights in the modern period. These are referred to as shin kabuki or "new kabuki." Mayama Seika is one of the best-known shin kabuki playwrights, and many of the plays he wrote in the 1920s and 1930s are still performed today. He is noted for introducing dense dialogue into kabuki, but he was also a practical playwright who knew well the capabilities of the actors for whom he was writing. Yoritomo's Death focuses on the efforts of the shogun Yoriie (1182-1204) to learn the truth about how his father, the great general and first shogun Yoritomo, met his death. We the audience know, because we are told in Scene 1, and three other people close to Yoriie know, but Yoriie himself does not know. For him discovering the truth becomes an obsession, and his inability to force or persuade the three to tell him proves to him that his political and military power, clearly demonstrated at the beginning of Scene 2, is illusory. And because he has chosen to define himself as an individual by his acquisition of this piece of knowledge, it also destroys him as a person.
The municipal government of Shenzhen, China, does not sponsor a huaju (modern spoken drama) troupe. At the same time, the Ministry of Propaganda still controls cultural production. Consequently, Shenzhen thespians must creatively manipulate the state apparatus in order to secure approval (pizhun) for dramatic productions. But, as the playwright's introduction to Xiwang (Hope, 1997) indicates, the lack of institutional support for huaju has also produced a unique opportunity not only to redefine the relationship between artistic production and the Chinese state but also to push the envelope of acceptable plots, style, and form. A journalist by profession, Yang Qian came to the attention of the huaju public when the National Experimental Theatre of China staged his play Guyi Shanghai (Intentional Injury, 1994). In 1997, he registered Ling Ri Yue (Zero Sun Moon)--the first experimental theatre troupe in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone--as a social club, a gesture that finessed and restructured the administrative organization of huaju in Shenzhen.
Nakamura Ganjiro III, one of kabuki's outstanding contemporary actors, has made it one of his life's goals to reintroduce the long-abandoned kabuki plays of Japan's great playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Chikamatsu is best known for his puppet plays, many of which later became kabuki classics, but the plays he wrote solely for kabuki are not widely known. Reviving such "lost" plays is fraught with difficulties that assume a particular interest because the revival process is undertaken within a highly conventionalized theatre genre. A classical actor-director like Ganjiro faces the problem not only of how to bring three-hundred-year-old plays back in a semblance of their original form but how to make them viable for modern audiences. Laurence Kominz's essay on Ganjiro's recent revival of Keisei Mibu Dainenbutsu (1702) provides fascinating insights into the process. Kominz was present at rehearsals and was with the production at its first and last performances. He discusses not only the production process but the business and artistic environment in which Ganjiro's noble experiments are trying to take root.
The art of male dan--specialists in female roles--is one of the most important issues in traditional Chinese theatre, especially in jingju (Beijing or Peking opera). In this article, Min Tian considers the problem from a combined gender-sociocultural-historical perspective. Tian traces the convention's historical development, examines its contemporary status, and deals with such issues as the dynamics of sex and the paradox of acting, which are central to the art of the male dan. Not only does he explore modern perceptions of the art of female impersonation with respect to the tradition of the male dan, but he also discusses similar traditions, most notably that of the classical Japanese theatre.
Perhaps a rose by any other name would indeed smell as sweet, but a lot of people might be upset if they suddenly had to call a rose by something less familiar. How they might feel may be measured by the emotional controversies that continue to swirl around the appropriate names for certain forms of Asian theatre. ATJ has more than once discussed the problem with regard to traditional Chinese theatre. In the present article, Hanne M. de Bruin examines the issues surrounding the name for the folk theatre of Tamil Nadu, India--usually known as terukkuttu (one of several possible spellings), but which some now prefer to call kattaikkuttu. De Bruin's position as a theatre researcher not only gives her firsthand insights based on her own participation in the debate but, as she notes, also clouds the issues because of her status as a foreign scholar. In her essay, De Bruin closely examines the sociopolitical ramifications of the naming problem.
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