Traditional Japanese Street Puppet Theatre Performance: A Drunk Scene and The Lion and the Butterflies.

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Last Sunday 24th, 2011, I went to enjoy a big party in Yokohama, the Noge Street Performance Festival. This festival has place every year since 1974 (this is its 37th year) with dozens of street performers from all over Japan and the World. Of course my main interest was around those japanese performers rarely viewed in our western World and I was not deceived.

Among many of those performances it was this Japanese traditional puppet theatre: charming, simple and very interesting. 

I took some photographs and two videos. Enjoy.

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama
(By Gustavo Thomas. All Rights Reserved. 2011)

Video: 

Presentation and A Drunk Dance Scene

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama 

Video:

The Lion and the butterflies

Traditional Puppet Theatre at Noge Street Performance Festival, Yokohama 

Bunraku Puppets at Kaganawa Prefecture Museum of Cultural History, Yokohama.

Bunraku Puppets. Kaganawa Museum of Cultural History. Yokohama (2011)

I've always loved Bunraku and seeing those amazing puppets was a real gift for me. The Kaganawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History in Yokohama has two Bunraku puppets in exhibition and I could take some photographs of them. 

A 19-Century Zoetrope in Yokohama

Kaganawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, Yokohama (2011)

Well, Japanese also enjoyed the last in technology and entertainment during finals of 19 century, the zoetrope, a simple machine to provoke the illusion of movement. I just saw one similar to the originals at Kaganawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History in Yokohama, Japan; they let you use it so I recorded how this thing works. A nice curiosity.

Zoetrope

If you have not seen before any original image of a zoetrope...:

"La danza del padre" Eleventh Movement: Le père meurt pour dernière fois.

I had delayed your death but today I am willing to assume it and write about it.

There was no last time for me:

Your trail is lost and the pain of a phone call does not change my hatred for you.

They say you died in your bed, of that which you had asked for so much,

of what you had rehearsed so much: "Le père au coeur" comes to my mind.

You left when you were already gone,

already lost from my heart

There was no pain for me.

Dying, I pictured you in your bed

looking at the sky, breathing hard,

and thinking, "am I playing again?"

Your dry lips, cold sweat on your forehead, your hand "au coeur" in a sign of pain.

Maybe an extra beat or an excessive rhythm alerted your truth;

you then surely felt fear, and no longer knew how to stop it,

you got lost in your barbaric game of rehearsals

and it alone, alone stopped, without you to help it.

Distant calls finally announced that you were finally gone.

Some brothers wept, while others prefered to remain silent.

I never knew whether God spoke with you again.

I, ... I think not.

Those had always been lies, nonsense of yours,

remains of a total lack of adventure in your life.

Two Ghosts of my Theatre ( A Dream)

For years I've had to deal with my ghosts, who are my dead ones.

Yesterday, in my dreams, I was visited by two of them:  teachers of art and of the spirit, beloved beings.

One of them was finally using his time to fulfill the desires he forgot for living just for theatre,

while the other one continued his work, searching.

Both had contact yesterday night; they met, they smiled as their heads touched in a strange, friendly greeting.

I was visiting the one that was still making theatre, now in a faraway country, with people of different tongues and different places.

While I was telling him the reason for my visit, he talked to me while his head turned, getting next to mine, following the movement, then we both talked and turned.

I told him of my experience during the years of life we exchanged, of how everything was a result of his steps.

I had forgotten all my recording instruments with which I work nowadays, and I could only assimilate things, with them, participating, living and acting.

My two ghosts left, they got lost in that world that is my dream, fading in my brain.

Awake, they now remain just as a memory.









(Translation by Tadeo Berjon)

Screen Photographs of Physical Actions and Body Postures From Meyerhold's Film "The Inspector General"

Meyerhold directing the film "The Inspector General"

With the new possibility of taking screen shots from the computer screen I got some helpful still photographs of physical actions and postures of each of the scenes of Meyerhold's film "The Inspector General", video extracts I published in the last post of this blog.

I have divided those extracts in 5 slideshow-scenes to better define the physical actions and postures to observe, and at the end you have the video of the film again to see those scenes and actions in motion. You can see the slideshows here in the post or  go to Flickr (just follow the link on each video name).

Unfortunately we don't have the sound of this film, but I am sure that the physical movement itself can be a very useful source of study. 

Enjoy.

Meyerhold Film "The Inspector General" Table Scene

Meyerhold Film "The Inspector General" Seduction Scene

"The Inspector General" Big Group Scene

"The Inspector General" Seduction Scene 2 

"The Inspector General" Inspector on Table Scene

Video of Meyerhold's film "The Inspector General"

"La danza del padre" Tenth movement: Le fils se cache.

I'm walking on one side, and you're walking on the other.

I find you without getting caught.

I'm visiting the land where you live but I never thought about visiting you.

Years of not seeing each other, of you not wanting to see us, of not wanting to see you,

and fate makes me meet you there.

I do not want, I do not want it, I do not want to hug you, nor kiss you,

nor know about your life, nor ask how you are.

I look at you, I hide, and I'm still looking at you.

You look healthy, strong, your hair is dyed.

And you're still there, standing.

How could I know that this would be the last time I was going to see you!

And you will stay there forever,

and I will stay hidden, watching.

Extracts from the original film of "The Inspector General" performance, directed by V. Meyerhold.

"The Inspector General" A film by V. Meyerhold

Peter Brook: "(...) I saw a short video excerpt from his great show "The Inspector General" and I was amazed at the number of small gestures that one of his actors made. There, were not watching neither the system nor the method, but we did discover something far more important and far more useful: the work embodied. " (1)

I have the pleasure of sharing these excerpts that Brook saw a few years ago.

Meyerhold directing the film of "The Inspector General" performance.

Somewhere in Russia there must be the full version of this historic performance of Gogol's work "Revizor" (The Inspector General), but until now it's only accessible through some scenes; thanks to the development, in recent years, of some documentaries for Russian television, the original material has been remastered and excerpts that I show on this blog are, I think, of an admirable quality; in the few scenes shown here you can appreciate that "work embodied", as Peter Brook called it, where Meyerhold's search really becomes body and action in the scene itself. An admirable document.

This video complements the one I posted in this same blog months ago, Original film images from Meyerhold's Biomechanics, and which dedicated a few minutes to original scenes of the training exercises of Biomechanics.

Peter Brook: "I saw in Moscow some students who work very seriously on the biomechanics of Meyerhold, convinced that he taught it the same way. But even if one limits the biomechanics to this precise form, I do not think it can be useful for any montages today. " (2)

By publishing these documents it is not intended that we try to repeat what the teachers have done or to seek to imitate their work in an exact way, but to observe in a direct line their work and learn from them. As I always say, I believe that these original documents of the great creators of the theater scene place us, with much more clarity, in their "real" contributions, with every myth that has been created around them slowly fading away.

As Peter Brook did when he saw these excerpts, we can discover how Meyerhold applied his exploratory work, how far did his applied training go, his practical solutions on the scene. We can not (yet) hear the words of Meyerhold during a training or a montage, but we can indeed see the actual movements of his actors and compare them with descriptions from others and with texts by Meyerhold himself, and then analyze them and place them in our mind with greater precision. I strongly believe that, by doing that, we can learn much more from those experiences in order to consolidate our own creations.

Video: Extracts from "The Inspector General", a film by Meyerhold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuhgGYVT_0

(1) That is a free translation from the original in French: "(...) j'ai vu la video d'un court extrait de son grand spectacle Le Revizor et j'ai été stupéfait par la série de petit gestes que faisait l'un de ses acteurs. A Travers ce minuscule extrait, on pouvait ressentir ce que Meyerhold cherchait, pourquoi il le cherchait. On n'y voyait ni le sistème, ni la méthode, mais on y découvrait quelque chose de plus important et de plus utile: le travail incarné." (Avec Grotowski. By Peter Brook. Préface de George Banu. Actes Sud-Papiers. France, 2009.)

(2) That is a free translation from the original in French: "J'ai vu à Moscou des élèves très sérieux qui travaillaient sur la biomécanique de Meyerhold convaincus qu'il l'enseignait de cette façon. Mais, même si on limite fidèlement la biomécanique à cette forme, je ne crois pas qu'elle puisse aujourd'hui être utile à une quelconque ouvre." (Avec Grotowski. By Peter Brook. Préface de George Banu. Actes Sud-Papiers. France, 2009.)

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