Curtains up, it was time for Kabuki theater. Kabuki is basically a very very very old traditional Japanese drama style. It has a lot of parallels with Moliere's theater style or Shakespeare's. There's a ton of language that even the Japanese cannot understand unless they've read a manuscript of the play. The end result is that half the audience falls asleep during the play haha. Its fun to watch though, and a great experience.
All the roles are played by (male) actors. They do quite a good job of looking and sounding feminine. The Japanese is also in a sing song rhythmic tone accompanied by a live soundtrack (aka musicians sitting in hidden rooms built into the scenery).
A key aspect of Kabuki theater is the extravagant make up, poses, and voice tones. The poses are often held for dramatic effect.
Are entire class went along with one of the Japanese sensei's who though probably around 60 years old had never seen a Kabuki play. Needless to say, she too was asleep half way through .
These are the traditional kabuki colors. Every kabuki curtain for 100s of years has had this exact design and these colors. The best part about these plays is that every opening has a 30min, very amusing, introduction that explains every part of the stage, the make up, the plot of the play, the history, etc. So even if its your first time, you can't miss out on anything. They also provide english audio walk-mans to help you follow but the translations are given as summaries. As if the person sitting next to you was the one explaining the scenes to you. It kind of gets annoying, but its much better than sitting and not having any clue what the hell is going on.
I managed not to fall asleep by at this point taking out my homework (just in case). The Japanese is almost impossible to follow so its not so much that its boring just difficult for the listener since the plays themselves are older than the sum of any two individuals ages who are watching it.
Afterwards we got a sneak peek backstage. Amusingly, they spend hours working on these wigs to get to look perfect. There are mirrors placed all over the backstage area so actors can check themselves out and "freshen up" in a hurry at any point on their stage-rush.
The most interesting part of the stage is the plentiful 16 trap doors accompained by a huuuuge revolving stage. During a play you only end up seeing about 1/6 of the stage area at a time--which is plenty enough. The scenery is amazingly elaborate and below the theater building they have a huge two story basement that houses tons of equipment, stage props, set designs etc.
It was definitely an experience that I would never want to miss out on. That being said, 1 hr probably would have been plenty : )
