For those of us that teach and learn in the Northern hemisphere, the end of the academic year is soon to be upon us. I always quite like this period, as you tend to find yourself developing new curriculum materials for the forthcoming year. This week I have been researching and writing materials for different kinds of documentary theatre, most specifically verbatim theatre and Living Newspapers, and it is the latter I want to write about today.
Now my knowledge of Living Newspapers was not huge. I knew that the form first emerged in Russia in the early 20th century, where it was used to present news and Bolshevik propaganda to the illiterate masses. Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Mayakovsky are connected with the genre, as are Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. The form included using lantern slides (projections), songs, newspaper readings, and film segments – so, very ‘multimedia’ for the time. During my research however, I was intrigued to come across the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which in certain sources, is mistakenly claimed to be the originator of Living Newspapers. FTP was part of a government funded arts program established in the US in the 1930s, which wrote and presented a number of Living Newspapers on social issues of the day. You can see some of the scripts here. The Manual For Federal Theatre Projectmakes fascinating reading. Not surprisingly, the political ideology behind the Living Newspaper was controversial and the FPT was disbanded in 1939. However, as noted by Alexis Soloski in an article for The Guardian, the Federal Theatre Project
….codified the genre, drawing on techniques first introduced by Bolshevik artists and the Italian futurists. A series of documentary plays with an activist bent, Living Newspapers used theatrical techniques to render complicated social and political issues relevant and intelligible. Playwrights researched various topics – poverty, the invasion of Ethiopia, venereal disease – and then invented a narrative and characters to dramatise them. Low ticket prices made them accessible to a popular audience. Living Newspapers weren’t subtle – for better or worse. They simplified complicated issues and felt no particular compunction to represent all sides of an argument. Some of the scripts are quite preachy and end with a call for action, such as joining a union or being tested for syphilis.
It seems there are few companies currently engaged in creating Living Newspapers. One exception is C & T Theatre Company, who run a project for young people, called, not surprisingly, Living Newspaper. They have created a series of ‘5 Rules’ – Be Funny, Be Direct, Juxtapose, Agitate and Let the Facts Speak For Themselves – with accompanying videos that tell you how to create effective Living Newspapers:
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C &T have a global reach, having created Living Newspapers in Japan about passive smoking, in Australia about Climate Change and lead workshops in Gambia about how to create online Living Newspapers using mobile phones.
Essentially all documentary theatre is political by nature, being a call for social action. In the U.S. The Civilians Investigative Theatre is leader in the field. In the UK, Common Wealth Theatre are a force to be reckoned with too. The difference with the Living Newspaper form is that it is meant to agitate, to call for direct action with a view to bringing about change in a very visceral way.
I think I’m off now to make my own, featuring a certain Donald Trump!
My second share today is a series of videos made for the UK’s National Theatre by Gyre & Gimble, a celebrated puppet company founded in 2014 by Finn Caldwell and Toby Olié, who were associate puppetry directors on the global theatrical hit, War Horse.
In the first video, Olié and Caldwell demonstrate a step-by-step guide for making a brown paper man puppet, which would be an excellent alternative for anyone want to work with Bunraku puppets.
The second video is a master class in bringing oversized puppets to life.
The third and final video focuses on storytelling through puppetry.
If you haven’t seen them, there is a whole series of excellent puppetry videos from The National here, including more from Olié and Caldwell about their show The Elephantom, created for temporary stage at The National.
I have just returned from a short trip to Penang, Malaysia and while I was there a came across a real little gem, the Teochew Puppet and Opera House Museum. Based in an old shophouse in the George Town UNESCO World Heritage site, it tells the story of a Chinese puppet and opera form I had never come across before. To call it a museum is a bit misleading, as they also stage puppet performances and operas on the premises, as well as leading workshops in both forms they promote.
To give it some context, Teochew is a dialect that is native to the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong, whose people spread across the region in the 19th Century (and later, the world), taking their culture with them.
In an article for New Straits Times, Pauline Fan gives a short history of the Museum which is now run by the a 5th generation opera performer and puppeteer, Ling Goh. In another, for the Malay Mail, Vivian Cheong gives a more detailed sketch of family, which is quite fascinating.
Although the Opera House doesn’t have it’s own website, it does have a very well kept Facebook page, here, which has much more information.
If you find yourself in Penang, I thoroughly recommend a visit and if there is no one else there when you drop by, you will get your own personal tour, as I did, as well as some hands on experience with the puppets themselves.
A play at the National Theatre in London recently made headlines, but for an unusual reason. In the first 6 days of previews, 5 people fainted and 40 people left the auditorium apparently shocked at scenes of graphic violence and torture.
The play in question was Sara Kane’s 1998 Cleansed, directed by celebrated and controversial British director, Katie Mitchell. According to a report in The Guardian,
the revival of the production features characters being electrocuted, force-fed and tortured – including the removal of one character’s tongue 20 minutes into the play – which has proved too much for dozens of audience members during the first six performances. Five others were so overwhelmed they fainted and required medical attention. During one preview, the lights in the auditorium went up and ushers came into the audience to help a man who had collapsed.
Mitchell admitted the production had taken its toll on the cast, who all had “very strange nightmares where very extreme events take place”. She [said]: “We have to laugh a lot in order to balance the despair and the darkness of the material.” But she argued people’s shock at the violent production was also related to the fact it was written by a young woman. “There isn’t a big tradition of putting the violence of atrocity on stage in Britain,” she said. “We’re afraid of that dark female voice that insists we examine pornography and violence. We just don’t feel comfortable being asked to do those things, particularly by a woman.”
Amongst other things, this of course raises many questions about verisimilitude on stage, but when violence is clearly ‘done this well’, you have to commend the theatre practitioners behind it – both on and off stage. I say this not because I particularly enjoy watching human suffering being performed in front of me, but because I spend a lot time talking to younger students about why such acts only work when they are truly believable. Kane’s plays are never easy on the audience and nor are they meant to be and in Mitchell’s hands this production was bound to be particularly brutal. The play itself is based on a university campus turned interrogation centre, in which a series of misfits are subjected to vicious tests to prove their love, with scenes including hands being cut off, incest, electric shocks, murder and suicide amongst other horrors.
Some think of her as a vandal, ripping apart classic texts and distorting them to her own dubious purpose. Others consider her to be the most important British director of theatre and opera at work today – indeed, among the greatest in the world. Her critics characterise her as high-minded and humourless, a kind of hatchet-faced governess intent on feeding her audiences with the improving and bleak. Others, though, talk about her gentleness, empathy and swiftness to burst into a joyous and slightly dirty laugh. One theatre professional told me that some agents only reluctantly put forward actors for Mitchell’s productions because of her fearsome reputation; and yet there are actors who have worked with her for 30 years.
In an interview for the BBC strand Front Row, Mitchell said those who focus on the violence are missing the point:
All of the torture that is going on is led by a doctor whose making tests about love, its durability. The gay couple in it, the durability of their love is being tested, and they are being tortured to see whether their love will survive, and their love does. So love wins in this play, not violence.
She also talks about the technicalities of staging a play like Cleansed and why British theatre-goers struggle with seeing violence on stage in this way. Fascinating – I recommend a listen:
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In an equally compelling interview with theatre critic Matt Trueman, Mitchell talks in greater detail about the production and her approach to the play.
As the academic term comes to a close, I have been pondering the fact that nearly all my students, no matter what grade, have recently been working in some kind of collaborative physical theatre form. We teach and use Viewpoints in a lot of our work, even if the students don’t realise it, with Anne Bogart and Tina Landau’s now seminal publication, The Viewpoints Book, being a well thumbed tome on our bookshelves.
In addition, I have spent this week at an International Schools Theatre Association (ISTA) Festival in Taiwan, where the students were exploring the language of theatre. Almost all the work they created communicated through bodies in space and again it struck me that spoken narrative played a secondary role in the stories they were telling.
All this has prompted me to share this video from a TEDGlobal event. In it, choreographer Wayne McGregor demonstrates how he communicates ideas to an audience, building his work in a seemingly simple way. It revolves around the concept of physical thinking which particularly resonates with me as a theatre maker. Give the video a watch for sure, but don’t miss out on the discussion that follows in the comment section afterwards. Together they make for a great way into thinking about physical representation and storytelling on stage.
I have been intrigued by an article in The Independent, by Emily Jupp, about the latest offering from immersive theatre company You Me Bum Bum Train. Founded in 2004, the company has been at the cutting edge of the immersive theatre form, winning awards for their work which relies heavily on significant groups of volunteer performers. Jupp writes the article having experienced being one of those volunteers.
You Me Bum Bum Train: The latest journey into challenging immersive theatre
As a volunteer at the immersive theatre production of You Me Bum Bum Train, I’ve been able to do things I wouldn’t normally do. I’ve fixed two sewing machines, I’ve lugged furniture around, I’ve painted walls and I’ve felt incredibly capable and resourceful while doing them. Tackling things outside your comfort zone is at the heart of the You Me Bum Bum Train experience, where an audience member, or “Passenger”, is thrown into the heart of the action.
From tonight, Passengers will arrive at the old Foyles bookshop building in London where the new YMBBT show takes place, and be hurtled from one short scene to the next, in each of which they have to improvise their part while the rest of the cast react. The Passenger has no idea what is going on behind each door and the YMBBT team would like to keep it that way. They don’t even have publicity photos. Instead, the founders strike silly poses against surreal backdrops – see right. So I can’t reveal what’s happening this year. But previous scenes have involved discovering you’re the head of MI5 and making a world-changing decision or having to operate a forklift truck without any guidance.
In each scene the audience member is the focus of attention and the cast of volunteers – who aren’t professional actors but who often have skills or experience relating to the context of the scene – interact with that Passenger. Each scene is timed and during the one I was cast in we had about two minutes before resetting and then running the scene again with the next Passenger. There are about 70 Passengers passing through in one night, so it’s frantic.
Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd founded You Me Bum Bum Train at art school in Brighton in 2004. It was held in the basement of an office block. “I found it very depressing trying to find something that meant something to me at art school,” says Bond. “A lot of art is very egocentric but what I love about this is there is no one leader and it’s not a production where every scene is rigidly fixed, so it’s accessible for everyone. No volunteer ever gets turned away.”
YMBBT has grown to huge proportions. It was awarded the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust prize for its show in 2012 at the Barbican in London and an Olivier award for outstanding achievement. Stephen Fry, Dominic West, Jude Law and Sir Ian McKellen are just some of the show’s celebrity fans, but there aren’t many detailed reviews or articles about the experience. That’s because secrecy is key.
“If a Passenger has been forewarned then they always say they regret knowing about it,” says Bond. “In the early days, people would just find a flyer in a pub saying You Me Bum Bum Train, a time and a location and nothing else.”
In a recent show, one Passenger had been told by his friend that they were going to see Billy Elliot and had no idea what would happen. “He had to take a break from the show because he was shaking and he just wasn’t prepared for what was going on, but he said it was amazing, he just felt overwhelmed.”
“A lot of the shy people say if they knew what they were going to do they would never have taken part but they get a huge confidence boost from realising they can.”
The show is run on a shoestring budget; props are scavenged from websites like Freecycle and car boot sales. It’s amazing how detailed and realistic they are considering they started with a building site three months ago. In one of the scenes I rehearsed for, the scene director suddenly stopped talking to examine the ceiling. “It still needs cornicing. It won’t look right without it,” he said. The cornicing was added the next day.
YMBBT receives a grant from the Arts Council to help with running costs, and Bond and Morgan pay themselves a small wage (Bond is on working tax credits), but the army of volunteers are all unpaid, aside from being given meals. “It would be nice if Bum Bum could give back more,” says Bond. “We have a fantasy of treat chutes going through to every floor with snacks and vending machines and making it more Willy Wonka for all the volunteers, but we haven’t been able to yet.”
They’ve been criticised for not paying, but the production couldn’t happen any other way, Lloyd and Bond worked out that a ticket (£48.50 for this production) would cost around £2,000 if they paid their volunteers minimum wage and broke even on the running costs.
The best bit about the volunteer experience is that people from all walks of life and all ages get involved. “It makes people more open-minded because it is such an open-door policy and you meet people from different backgrounds,” says Bond. “We had a lawyer who asked to volunteer and afterwards she became a human rights lawyer instead of a commercial lawyer because of the experience.”
The bonding element has even produced some Bum Bum marriages over the years, says Bond. “A bit like going to war, it brings people together, and they achieve things that are really huge.”
The criticisms leveled at Lloyd and Bond go back a number of years, some of which from 2012 you can read here in The Guardian and The Stage. I think it raises an interesting issue for immersive theatre, which by it’s nature often require very large casts indeed. Also, if you audience are expected to become characters in the story, as is often the case, why not invite non-professional actors to be part of the permanent cast?
In a not unconnected story from The Guardian in September a German theatre company, Schauspielhaus Bochum asked their audience to pack into a refrigerated truck to give them a glimpse into the hardships experienced by the migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe from war zones.
The event was billed as a memorial to the 71 people, four of them children, who were found dead inside an abandoned lorry in Austria. About 200 people took part in the event, entering a 7.5 tonne refrigerated truck similar in size to the one found in Austria.
Next to it on the ground was a rectangle marked out to measure 2.5 metres by six metres which represented the size of the original truck’s interior.
Seventy-one volunteers first tried to stand inside the rectangle before trying to cram inside the lorry. When they did the truck’s doors could not be closed.
“The lorry was completely full, the people were squeezed right up against each other,” explained Olaf Kroek, the theatre’s artistic adviser.
“This action is not disrespectful,” he said. “What is disrespectful is the political reality in Europe that people suffering so greatly hand over thousands of euros and must take such unsafe routes while for the rest of us Europeans it is so easy … to travel in the other direction.”
Both pieces pay testament to the ever-changing nature of theatre as an art form and in an increasingly digital world, it should come as no surprise that audiences are demanding, and expecting, their theatre experiences to be more visceral, more real.
With apologies to all my regular readers, Theatre Room has been on an extended summer break. During that time I have been storing up a host of the all things theatre to share and I’m going to start with an article published last week in UK’s The Stage. Written by Lee Anderson, How dramaturgy is finding its place in British theatreexplores the growing role of the dramaturg in the UK. As I have written here before, dramaturgy is a difficult beast to define, not least because it takes many forms. As Anderson quite rightly explains, in the UK, the adoption of the role of the dramaturg has been sluggish, simply because the playwright dominates. The article itself gives a good definition of the role and purpose of the dramaturg in the theatre making process.
Dramaturgy is a tough nut to crack. Despite occupying a vital role in countries such as Germany and across continental Europe, we in the UK have struggled to pin down a precise definition for the dramaturg. Because of the playwright’s pre-eminent position within our own theatre culture, the tendency has been to conflate the dramaturg with the literary manager. Meanwhile, the dramaturg of German theatre tradition has long fulfilled the role as a creative curator; collaborating closely with a director or specific theatre to conceptualise a season of work.
But with a new generation of theatremakers now inspired by practices from abroad, these artists are now shaking things up on British stages. Influenced by new models of working and reinvigorated by bold aesthetic choices, directors and playwrights in the UK are challenging traditional ways of working and adopting a fresh, internationalist approach to their work. As the landscape begins to shift, so too is our understanding of the dramaturg’s role within it.
One of the reasons the dramaturg has remained difficult to define is to do with the fluidity of the term itself. There are no hard and fast rules for mapping the precise function of dramaturgy. As a practice, its principles are based on adaptability and versatility.
Duska Radosavljevic, lecturer in European and British theatre studies at Kent University, and author of Theatre Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century, considers the dramaturg’s role to be above all else a relational one; not anchored to any specific criteria, but responsive to the demands of the process. “The dramaturg’s job is often determined by the kind of relationship they have with any given collaborator,” she explains, “so in terms of methodology or models of working, they don’t always apply in the same way from one process to the next.” In other words, it is far from being an exact science. In the absence of an all-encompassing definition, it is easy to see how the dramaturg has remained such a puzzling concept for many.
Joel Horwood worked as dramaturg on Show 5 – A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts
When the Lyric Hammersmith’s artistic director Sean Holmes launched Secret Theatre, playwright Joel Horwood came on board as associate dramaturg. Born out of the Lyric’s earlier production of Simon Stephens/Sebastian Nubling’s Three Kingdoms, Secret Theatre was created with the intention of building on this production’s cross-cultural experiment and forming a permanent ensemble of actors committed to making work outside the hierarchic parameters of more traditional theatre. For Horwood, his role as associate dramaturg involved being “whatever the director needs me to be, while at the same time, maintaining my own creative voice. It wasn’t strict or formal and I think if it had been then we couldn’t have made the work we did. A traditional set-up might not have led to something so instinctual.”
Joel Horwood, dramaturg
The dramaturg thrives in the space between the creative and critical disciplines, scrutinising the decision-making process while generating his or her own creative ideas to stimulate the devising process itself. “I think I gave myself the task during the creation of Show 5 of being ‘logic police’,” explains Horwood. “I just wanted every moment to be clearly thought through, to really expose and clarify the themes and to be entirely and utterly rigorous.” When it came to Show 5 – A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts – Horwood adopted a more active role and provided instrumental support for the overall devising practice – both in structuring much of the action in collaboration with Holmes and contributing ideas and stimulus for the actors to work with: “The really fun stuff in making this show was in the details of the process, rewriting and reimagining Shakespeare, for example. I would reimagine an ‘impossible’ scene from a Shakespeare play as a ‘task’ for the company and then give the company that ‘task’ to perform. So, Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene became: tell us about your first kiss while someone else in the cast falls passionately in love with you.”
It is a model of working that draws consciously on European dramaturgical practice – combining conceptual inventiveness with critical rigour. It is this critical impulse that is essential to the dramaturg’s practice. While the principle elements that define British and European models of dramaturgy show significant cultural differences, it is this analytical function that underpins both disciplines. Whether it is scrutinising the decision-making process, acting as a spur to the director or playwright’s vision or helping to build a conceptual framework for a given production, the dramaturg is often something of a pathfinder. As dramaturg for Robert Icke’s Oresteia for the Almeida Theatre’s Greeks season, Radosavljevic describes her role as akin to that of an interrogator – whose task it was to test the conceptual rigour of Icke’s bold reimagining of Aeschylus text: “Sometimes the ideas became modified as a result of my questions. It was very important for me to have some ambiguities ironed out and I often questioned what the thinking was behind particular decisions.”
It is a function of the role that Rob Drummer believes is central to his own process as associate dramaturg of the Bush Theatre: “It’s about trying to ask as many questions as possible, as early as possible, about the story of that play, the gesture of the play and the central question of that play. It’s about giving the writer a sounding board. To give the writer a point of resistance – something to react against. It’s about guiding a text to an audience.”
Traditionally, the dramaturg’s role in our own theatre culture has been inextricably connected with the development of new writing. Unlike the Regietheatre tradition of modern German theatre, in which an emphasis on reconceptualising classic texts has resulted in a director-based dramaturgy, the British theatre dramaturg has focused ostensibly on artist – namely, playwright – development. It is a model that prioritises critical development above creative intervention.
For Drummer, whose day-to-day job involves managing the 18 new plays currently under commission, it is a process that relies on building a relationship with individual artists and establishing a dialogue with playwrights in particular: “We build a development process that has several dramaturgical stages. This could include a single day of working with the playwright, talking through notes on a script or it could include work with actors and directors. It could include several workshop weeks. All of that work is activated through my relationship with those writers.”
Duska Radosavljevic
Nevertheless, even within a culture that locates the playwright at the centre of its activity, the influence of theatre practices from abroad have continued to influence artists and playwrights: “We’re finding that more and more playwrights in this country are increasingly exposed to theatre from around the world,” says Drummer. “They’re exposed to new and interesting ways of telling stories. We want to harness that and experiment with how we can push our theatre, our artists and our audiences.” This commitment to expanding the boundaries of what is theatrically possible has resulted in a programme as diverse as it is eclectic. Recent works such as Caroline Horton’s bouffon-inspired Islands and American playwright Marco Ramirez’s The Royale testify to the dramaturg’s role as an advocate – supporting the work of artists and curating a season of work.
Despite a range of approaches, the dramaturg remains something of an unsung hero. In Radosavljevic’s words, the dramaturg occupies an “invisible role”, operating beneath the radar of the creative process they are serving. And yet the dramaturg’s liminal status remains his or her greatest asset, whether as conceptual curator, creative pathfinder or critical provocateur.
Theatre Room is closed for the summer. Along with much of the educational world (apologies to my antipodean readers) we are done for another academic year and headed off for sunnier (or in my case, cooler) climes. Having said this, a few things have happened in the world of theatre over the last few weeks that give some pause for thought, so over the next few days I will be writing about these.
However, today I want to share a beautiful place I found on the first stop of my summer holiday. Based in Helsinki for few days, I took a ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia to have a wander around the old city of Tallinn and turning a corner, stumbled across the NUKU Theatre and Museum. Nuku (which means puppet in Estonian) is the current guise of the Estonian State Puppet Theatre which was founded in 1952.
Set beautifully in restored buildings, parts of which date back to the medieval period, NUKU comprises a puppet museum, puppetry research centre, puppet making workshops and various sized theatres (with another currently under construction within a neighbouring building) as well as housing the Estonian office of UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette). The museum’s exhibits are curated using the latest technology, with an extensive puppet and marionette collection that includes those created in-house as well as pieces from around the world amongst which are shadow puppets from Indonesia, bunraku puppets from Japan and exquisite old world Eastern European puppets.
The theatres had just closed for the summer and a couple of the exhibits were under a bit of reorganisation so it was quiet when I visited and I ended up talking to one of the staff, Maria Usk, who turned out to be the museum’s director. As a result I ended up getting my own private little tour from Maria which was just wonderful.
So if you find yourself in Tallinn, do go to NUKU. It is really well worth a visit if you are interested in the history and current practice of European puppet theatre. A real gem.
In an article originally written by Rosita Boisseau for Le Monde and then published in translation in The Guardian, Costumes of Complexity makes interesting reading about the exhibition and the history of costume in Asian theatre:
It is surely something of a miracle to explore 2,000 years of theatre in Asia in a single exhibition. But From Nô to Mata Hari, currently at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet in Paris, does just that, showing costumes used in traditional Kathakali dance in India and Japanese Noh drama, Thai Khon and Balinese Barong masks, while also explaining the connections between them. This confrontation produces a real aesthetic shock: it is unusual to find in the same place, almost face to face, these dramatic forms, often very old, certainly infinitely complex and remarkably beautiful.
In geographical terms the exhibition, which features almost 300 items – masks, shadow puppets, costumes and films – reaches from India to Japan, Thailand to China, deploying a mass of detail. These simple yet elegant theatrical forms, some of which are covered by the Unesco convention on intangible cultural heritage, create an exciting set of postures and colours. “The exhibition was designed as a spectacle,” says Sophie Makariou, head of Musée Guimet. “We couldn’t make speech and movement part of the show, even if a sequence of several plays is being staged at the same time, but the costumes are heavy with history and symbolism. We have tried to enliven the various spaces with a breath of theatre.”
The overall effect allows the visitor to observe how apparently very dissimilar styles fit together. “The original plan was for me to work exclusively on the Beijing opera,” says Aurélie Samuel, who curated the exhibition and heads the Guimet textile collections. “Then as I advanced with my research I started picking up on common ground between the various dramatic arts. Most of them have religious origins and started in temples. In moving from the sacred to the profane, from street to stage, they retained a very spare approach. But the often extravagant costumes, always loaded with meaning, serve as a decor. Also all the actors in these plays are men.”
“We think,” she adds, that “the first theatre, born in India, was an offshoot of Buddhism, an influence shared by all the religions [which originated] in Asia.”
Fair enough, but what has Mata Hari, who was born in 1876, to do with this broad panorama? Born Margaretha Zelle, the famous spy first appeared under the guise of Mata Hari (“rising sun” in Malay) in 1905, at an evening of exotic entertainment staged by Musée Guimet. At the height of the Orientalist fashion, her show, designed in consultation with industrialist and art collector Emile Guimet, was inspired by Brahmanic ritual, midway between “an invocation to Shiva and a war dance”. It concluded with Javanese puppets. This number, which some spectators thought she performed naked, misled by her flesh-tinted suit, was staged in the museum library on the first floor, decorated like a Hindu temple.
Here she awaits us, for one of the high points of a deliberately dramatic exhibition, as we progress in our understanding of the many traditions and dresses presented here. We are treated to a close-up of five costumes for dance, drama and mime.
A minimalist decor – an embroidered curtain, a table and two chairs – serves as a backdrop for these sumptuous robes. The equation of Asian theatre found in Beijing opera, with its combination of song, music, dance, poetry and acrobatics, is a singular incarnation. This art form finally coalesced in the 19th century, but it has roots in 13th-century Chinese opera. It dramatises the history of China and its myths, but also stories of thwarted romance, comic police investigations and folk tales. The costume, sublime and heavily ornamented, provides a host of clues essential to the show.
The unbelievable court robe that features in the exhibition reveals the social status of its character. The dragon and wave motifs, head-dress sporting pink pom-poms and pheasant plumes tell us that a general would have worn this garment. This type of geometrical robe distinguished a high-ranking official, indicating not only his age, social status and importance, but also his feelings.
Over and above its meaning, the costume from the Beijing opera contributes to an appearance of luxury while exaggerating the actor’s gestures. The latter, though relatively simple and clear, carefully composed, reach out into the surrounding space thanks to the supple motion of the long plumes and ample sleeves.
One feature which was specific to the Beijing opera was the “water sleeves”, fitted to the costumes of both male and female characters. They were put to many uses, flicked and waved in the air, but also concealing the mouth (while eating) and cheeks (down which tears were running).
The existence of this costume is a miracle in itself. It belonged to the actor Shi Pei Pu (1938-2009), a leading light of the Beijing opera. In the mid-1960s the Cultural Revolution initiated by Mao Zedong and his wife Jiang Qing, a former actor, set about eradicating such bourgeois aberrations. Performances were banned, actors prosecuted and even murdered, and costumes burned. Shi managed to save some of his by hiding them. After emigrating to France in the 1980s he danced again in shows he had personally redesigned. So at least some of his wardrobe was saved.
Kathakali (literally “story-play”) originated in Kerala, southern India, an offshoot of Kutiyattam, the oldest form of entertainment which is still performed in the subcontinent. In keeping with the larger-than-life heroes of this dramatic form, which includes music and dance, and was dreamt up by a well-read rajah in the 17th century, Kathakali delights in big sagas such as the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. Shows of this sort are generally staged near temples, in the open air, at nightfall or in the very early morning. “This theatre is inconceivable without a complete shift in body and mind,” says the specialist Françoise Grund.
The costumes are extravagant and oversized, weighing more than 10kg. This allows only limited movement, apart from the arms. But on the other hand the mass of the skirts and the diversity of facial mimicry exaggerate what movement there is. Costume is both dress and decor, fitting into a set with only very limited props, generally a stool and a small curtain, which changes colour to mark the entrance and exit of characters.
Makeup starts at least four hours before the performance, turning the face into a real mask, to such an extent that it gives the impression that any life has been wiped out. It is a key step in the process of integrating a character’s heroic attributes. After touching a copper bell, the frontier between the land of the living and the realm of the divine, each man in the troupe – here too they take the female roles as well – starts to apply makeup using the stem of a coconut leaf.
The symbolism of the colours enables the audience to identify the various categories of character: noble heroes are associated with green; red with villains; black, the colour of evil and death, for demons; lastly orange for women. Each category comprises about 50 roles, which actors learn in the course of a 10-year apprenticeship. Just eye movements bring into play a sophisticated form of gymnastics, placing high demands on the player.
Chutti – painstakingly cut out paper beards or ridges – are then added to the geometrically precise makeup motifs, in order to broaden the face with fantastic jowls. An aubergine seed is placed inside the lower eyelid, in order to redden the eye. Finally an equally impressive head-dress is fitted, to complete the face which no longer looks in the least bit human.
The actors are then wrapped in loads of fabric and overlapping skirts. Resembling some fascinating or monstrous doll, they attain an inhuman dimension commensurate with the gods they embody. The ritual may now begin, backed by the feverish rhythm of the drums, accompanied by cymbals and chanting.
Japan: Noh or the aesthetics of slowness
The decor-costume favoured by theatre in Asia attains a subtle plenitude with Noh costume. The fabric and embroidery provide the spectator with accurate and remarkably detailed information on the dramatic action, its characters, time and space. Noh theatre, which combines song, mime and masque, first appeared in the 14th century, driven by the actor Yusaki Kiyotsugu Kan’ami and his son Motokiyo Zeami. It gradually established a literary, philosophical and theatrical identity all of its own. It was Noh that first produced librettos, known as utai bon, or chant books, which contain the script, score and rules for performance. “This art form was particularly appreciated by Japanese emperors, samurai warriors, in short the aristocratic upper classes,” Samuel explains.
The brocaded, embroidered kimono exhibited by the Musée Guimet dates from the second half of the 18th century, a period when costume started to play an increasingly important part in the drama. Particularly emblematic of the social codes expressed by Noh, “it [costume] deployed geometrical shapes evoking paths,” Samuel adds. “The maple leaves, with their orange hues signify autumn in the woods. The darkish material and the preference for embroidery rather than a woven pattern mean that the character must be a woman.”
With progress in the techniques used for weaving and dyeing Noh kimonos became increasingly sophisticated, enhancing the magic and luxury of the dramatic ceremony. In contrast to Kabuki – another spectacular form of Japanese entertainment, which appeared in the 17th century, but in a more expressive, less elitist register – Noh emphasises slowness and suspended animation. It attaches particular importance to yugen, a subtly profound, less obvious grace.
Kimonos dialogue with masks, often fashioned out of cypress wood by famous sculptors, and painted white, then yellow. “An object for contemplation, it even became the focus of a cult, preserved and venerated by acting families,” says Hélène Bayou, an expert on Noh theatre. “How hallowed it is depends on the age of the mask and the length of the lineage of actors, who have handed down a quintessential art form and aesthetic cult.”
As is the case for most dramatic rituals in Asia, costume is an integral part of the show, or at least its process. The layers of kimonos are stitched on to the performer. The mask, smaller than a human face, is adapted to suit their face. It conditions acting: the eye slits are so narrow that little light enters, prompting the actor to internalise his part.
Always backed by musicians and a chorus which chants and recites, the very slow, almost weightless movement of the shite (leading player), accompanied by the waki (secondary role) unfolds on a stage, which always consists of a raised platform covered by a roof. A gangway connects the stage to the wings; a movement of the curtains punctuates players’ entry and exit. The backdrop sports a Japanese symbol of strength.
Thailand: Khon, the art of pantomime
The mask, representing the monkey god Hanuman, belongs to the masked Khon theatre of Thailand. It is made of papier-mache, metal, glass and mirrors. The general commanding the monkey army is one of the heroes in the Indian Ramayana epic, which travelled as far as Thailand, where it was adapted to become Ramakian. Rooted in pantomime this spectacular dramatic form is accompanied by an orchestra, including metallophones, xylophones, gongs and oboes. It brings to the stage battles between gods, demons and monkeys. Khon was first seen in palaces, then temples, only entering theatres in the early 20th century, its arrival coinciding with the end of the ban on women attending public entertainment.
Khon players are masked. They circle the stage, their bust facing the audience, but their head looking to one side. Mute, they mime the situations described by two narrators – one for the story, the other for dialogue – and a chorus, supported by the orchestra.The impressive Hanuman mask must have demanded long hours of work. A plaster mould was covered with about 15 layers of mulberry paper, bonded with rice glue. The shell was then sculpted and painted. Masks are always white. This one has a jewel in its mouth, another on the forehead. The associated figure is valiant, swift and light-footed, but not short of humour either, particularly in amorous encounters. He consequently became a popular character in Thailand. Contemporary Khon no longer uses masks, which have given way to makeup.
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Bali: Barong, from dance to trance
The mask and costume are beautiful, but huge and frightening, so lifelike the beast might at any moment open its jaws and eat us whole. This extraordinary dragon-lion is in fact a protective figure, always overcoming the evil witch Rangda, and one of the heroes of Balinese mythology, which still delights audiences today. Barong dance is rooted in the struggle between these two protagonists’ armies, an ancestral combat that varies as one travels round Bali, sometimes featuring a wild boar, elsewhere a tiger.
The fight between good and evil is central to most drama in southern and south-eastern Asia. In Barong dance many characters – monkeys, witches, ogres, princes, the god Shiva – appear as the action unfolds. Though now a tourist attraction, it was originally performed in temples as a purification ritual, quickly achieving a trance-like effect. The dancers threaten one another with wavy kriss swords.
Several players are needed to make the dragon mask and costume dance. The whole apparatus – consisting of wood, leather, plant fibre, hair and feathers – weighs about 25kg. The more lively Barong becomes, the more effective it is in driving out evil spirits. “It makes a place sacred, too,” Samuel explains, “which is why it’s so important that it should travel far and wide.”
From Nô to Mata Hari, 2000 Years of Asian Theatre is at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet in Paris until 31 August
For those of us that teach and learn in the Northern hemisphere, the end of the academic year is soon to be upon us. I always quite like this period, as you tend to find yourself developing new curriculum materials for the forthcoming year. This week I have been researching and writing materials for different kinds of documentary theatre, most specifically verbatim theatre and Living Newspapers, and it is the latter I want to write about today.
I have just returned from a short trip to Penang, Malaysia and while I was there a came across a real little gem, the 
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Theatre Room Asia 