Japan Project

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School

Utah Valley University *

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MISC

Subject

Arts Humanities

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Uploaded by alexdame

Japan Project The scene I chose to adapt was the scene where Biff meets the women. I chose to use adaptations taken from the Kabuki Japanese theatre method. This art form includes dancing, skill, music, and crazy costumes as most Japanese theatres include. Most of the dances performed in Kabuki were originally used in temples or in shrines, so obviously these dances are sacred and are not taken lightly. Kabuki has a long history and goes back to 1575. Kabuki started out as parodies of Buddists prayers and were performed by female artists, sadly in 1629, women were banned from performing in these plays and was made a male only performance and to this day still is. Eventually historical events were transferrded to the stage, one example is the famous incident in 1703 where a band of masterless samuratis took their revenge on a man who forced their master to commit suicide. In this way Japanese theater is similar to American theatre in which we take historical events and put them onstage or on the big screen. Although we definitely don't do it in any way, shape, or form the Japanese do it. It's still recreating historical events for others to learn in an entertaining way. Kabuki strongly relates to another form of theater called Noh which was puppet theatre and is the longest lasting theater art in history and is still being performed today. In order to adapt a scene from Death of a Salesman I had to use certain elements used in Kabuki. Such as dance, song, colorful costumes, exotic makeup, and lively actions as used by the performers. Even though Kabuki is an art used to put historical events on stage, I won't do that here since Death of a Salesman isn't a historical event. If I was the director of this scene and I wanted to incorporate Japanese theatre elements. I would first give Biff, Willy, and the women these exotic costumes with loads of makeup on

them. Let’s start out with the woman singing about Biff being self centered and dancing with very lively actions and Willy getting nervous. I chose to go with this scene because it was easy to adapt this scene into the Japanese theatre form kabuki. I wanted to show the exotic costumes that are an important part of Kabuki. I just wanted to try to use the elements in the best way possible. And I expect these changes to play out semi decently, but not the best since these are two very different things and Kabuki is used to bring historical events to the stage. What I learned about theatre through this is how different and how many kinds of theatre there are in this world.

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