HANA & MANA: Noh Theatre in the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Good morning everyone, this paper takes the form of an account of my own activity in the domain of creating Noh plays here in New Zealand, basing the plays on New Zealand themes and stories and using English and Maori language. The Japanese scholar Kunio Komparu introduces Noh in his book Principals and Perspectives in the following way:
Kan’ami and his son Zeami refined and transformed the Noh of their times, (their times being the Muromachi period 1336-1568) from a form of entertainment performed at religious festivals based on an encounter between god and man, into a stage art with dramatic elements woven around the main characters of gods, men, women, lunatics, and demons, based on an encounter between performer and audience. In order to create an art out of this dramatic communication between human beings they needed to establish a central concept of beauty, and for this Zeami chose the word hana, of which the literal translation is flower or blossom. Endquote. Hana is the term in the title of this paper. The other term mana is a Maori concept meaning pride, strength, integrity and I will explore this more in relation to the third play I wish to discuss today.
I first went to study Noh in 1984 with Udaka Sensei of the Kongo family based in Kyoto, and a pupil of his Ogama Becky Teele, an American woman who has lived almost her entire life in Kyoto and has become a fully licensed performer and teacher of Noh. I subsequently returned to continue study in 1986, 1993 and 2007. I founded the New Zealand Noh Theatre Company in 1990. The New Zealand Noh Theatre Co has produced three full length New Zealand Noh plays, and presented numerous short performances based on sections of these plays. What I would like to do now is briefly lay out the fundamental structure of a Noh play and the functions that the different characters serve, then discuss the first two plays, and the difficulties I encountered with the whole idea of New Zealand Noh and then I will look at the third of these New Zealand Noh plays and how I took a different approach in order to try and address what I saw as fundamental problems.
Many of you will be familiar with Noh Theatre but I will just briefly present a basic structural device which concerns the function that each of the characters are expected to fulfil.
The actor who performs or ‘does’ the main role is called the Shite, the ‘doer’ or performer. The Shite mediates a dramatic shared experience, guiding the flow of the consciousness of the audience.
The next character, who is lower in terms of status in the overall meaning of the play is the Waki. Komparu calls the waki the audience’s representative on stage. The most important function of the Waki is to cause the Shite to appear. The Waki then draws forth from the Shite the meanings and actions of the play. The Waki is dark to the Shiites bright, they balance and harmonise one another.
Always at the half way point in a play the Kyogen will appear. The Kyogen appears in order to tell the story in a colloquial fashion, and is usually a local person of the place.
There is a stationary chorus, a flute and two, sometimes three drums.
Now to the plays that have been presented by the New Zealand Noh Theatre Co.
The first is called Rakiura. Rakiura is the original name, the Maori name of Stewart Island, the third largest Island in the New Zealand archipelago and lies some 300 kilometres south of where we are right now. Rakiura translates as Land of the Glowing Sky which of course refers to the aurora australis, the natural coloured light displays that appear at night in these southern latitudes. The play is based on an actual incident and this incident has served as inspiration for a short story by the novelist Peter Wells, Of Memory and Desire which was subsequently made into a film directed by Niki Caro (of Whale Rider fame) called Memory and Desire. But before either of these efforts appeared, an Auckland writer named Eileen Philipp inspired by the incident that took place on Stewart Island wrote a Noh Play which she called Rakiura. The true story which inspired all these fictional/interpretive works took place in 1978.
In that year a young Japanese woman was discovered living in a cave at Doughboy Bay on Stewart Island. Doughboy Bay was in the early 19th century a whaling base used extensively by American whaling ships, hence the name Doughboy which is an old American colloquial term for a foot soldier. Doughboy Bay is on the South-west side of Rakiura, the most southern point in the hemisphere that an ordinary traveller can legally go. Winter was approaching and the local people became concerned for her welfare as her living conditions were rough and exposed to the freezing Antarctic winds. It was then discovered that she had overstayed her visitors’ visa and the local police escorted her to Invercargill where she was taken care of at the Salvation Army Hostel. Her elder brother came from Japan; she appeared before the magistrates’ court and was deported.
Often the theme of a Noh play will concern the resolution of spiritual estrangement and salvation of anguished ghosts, and this is what happens in Rakiura. The Shite is the woman herself, the Waki is her brother who comes from Tokyo, and the Kyogen is the local police constable. In the play Rakiura we meet the waki who takes us to Stewart Island in a plane which lands upon the beach. The Shite appears and she expresses her shame at being discovered by her brother. She then retreats to her cave. The Kyogen is the local police constable who appears and tells the Waki –the Elder Brother-why he and other locals became concerned for her. Then the Shite reappears, transformed and we meet the spirit, a former incarnation of the woman living in the cave and she explains why she has come to this lonely place. As a young woman living in the coastal city of Kobe she was betrothed to a fisherman, a whaler. In those days the Japanese would hunt whales from rafts which often capsized in the violence of the kill and one day the betrothed fisherman was on a whaling raft off the coast of Kobe when the ferocity of the wounded whale smashed the raft throwing him into the sea. He floated for many hours clutching a piece of timber from the raft. An American whaling ship plucked him from the sea and he sailed with them all the way south to Doughboy Bay and there as he harpooned a whale the rope caught at his leg and he was pulled into the sea and as he drowned he called aloud for prayers to rest his troubled soul. So the construct is that this woman in a former life loved a man whose ghost is now trapped in endless torment upon the beach at Rakiura. Upon this elucidation the waki, the elder brother says I understand you must do what you must do and he withdraws to wait while she performs the necessary rite. She does so and the final couplets of the play state the resolution for the anguished ghost.
No spirit roams
These distant sands
Holy prayers have lead
To paradise.
The shite has completed her task.
In 1993 whilst studying in Kyoto I met up with Rachael McAlpine who was teaching at Kyoto Women’s University. Rachael is a New Zealander and published author of poems, novels and plays. We went one evening to see a program of Noh plays and half way through she nudged me in the ribs and whispered, “I’ve had an idea.” Six months later she sent me the first draft of her Noh play The Dazzling Night. The New Zealand Noh Theatre Co performed this play in 1998. On this occasion Ogama Becky Teele came from Kyoto to assist with choreography, performance protocol, style and costuming.
In the play Sir Harold Beauchamp, father of Katherine Mansfield, once chairman of the bank of New Zealand is the Waki. He tells us his name and why he has travelled from New Zealand to Fountaine Bleau on the outskirts of Paris to the Gurdjiev Institute, for this is the place where his famous daughter died. Both Sir Harold’s’ children have died young in France, Katherine’s older brother Leslie was killed at Flanders field in 1917. He seeks to put to rest his anguish by visiting Katharine’s dying place, by finding out why she sought out the rustic comforts of this bohemian community, and to satisfy himself as to what was her state of mind as she faced her impending fate. Here he is made welcome and given a bed in the stable. In the first half of the play, as he sits considering the poverty that Katherine spent her last days in, a woman comes to milk the cow. This is the Shite, the enquiring presence of the Waki has brought her forth. He questions her and she is able to tell him that yes Katherine lived here, in fact died in a room above the stable. Following the after dinner dancing that community members did most nights her lung haemorrhaged badly, she was taken to her room and some hours later she died. She was not unhappy, the Shite tells Sir Harold, how would you know he asks. She excuses herself and leaves. A man enters to muck out the stable, this is the Kyogen and he tells in a colloquial fashion the story of Katherine arriving to seek solace from the wise Gurdjiev and comfort in the simple surroundings of the community he had gathered around him. In the second half of the shite reappears, Sir Harold asks, are you my daughter, yes she says, I am the spirit of Katherine.
The woman in the first half is a reincarnation of Katherine, in the second half it is her ghost, her spirit, her true form that comes to put her fathers troubled heart to rest.
In both these plays I slavishly attempted to replicate as closely as I could a Noh Play performance. I instructed the singers to bend notes as a Noh Shite does and even included some Noh melodies in the musical composition of the sung text. I attempted to teach the actors to move and behave like Noh actors.
My reason for this approach came out of my believing that the essential attraction and distinctiveness of Noh is the aesthetic of its form, therefore if I was to do Noh I should replicate the form as closely as I could. Each of these productions have in my view, some merit in terms of telling New Zealand stories in a distinctive way , and the New Zealand Noh Theatre Co has introduced New Zealand audiences to Noh Theatre. I have now come to the point of view Rakiura and The Dazzling Night were interesting cultural artefacts but ultimately not satisfying because in the attempt to replicate the form of the Noh actor, to try and dance and move as an Noh actor does we placed a barrier between what we wanted to achieve and the audiences perception. The audience although receiving the work very politely, to the extent that critics praised the work as interesting and unique, they were also slightly bemused. It was a sincere yet purely intellectual appreciation, the heart to heart encounter that is the essential desire of the Noh actor did not take place. It was clearly an imitation, an academic exercise.
This attempt to teach New Zealand actors the stylised movements of the Noh actor is a failed mission before we begin. The Noh actor trains from childhood so it is something that is ingrained within them and when they perform the stylised movements of the Noh kata it is something that has become natural to them. The skilled Kiwi actor or dancer after a period of a month will be able to do a superficial imitation of the kata but it will never be something that would appear as an authentic expression. My own personal experience of this is so. I first studied in 1984, and have intermittently done so ever since, and yet in 2007 when I went to Kyoto to resume study and I presented the shimai or dance that I had been preparing specifically for this occasion Udaka Sensei said to me You dance like a King. And this made my little heart go pitter pat and then he said, but you have no rhythm. What he means is that I have to a certain degree been successful in a superficial imitation of the dance but I have no understanding of the underlying dynamic, the rhythm that underpins the dance. When I perform it I am still remembering the dance, not actually dancing with free body and a clear and responsive mind. And so in my productions of Rakiura and The Dazzling Night I now see that my approach was flawed and our efforts would only ever be seen as a curious postulation, an intriguing endeavour. This doubt as to our authenticity would eat away at me for I have come to value Noh Theatre as a dynamic and distinctive expression of spirit, a form that achieves a certain splendour and contemplation that is singular to Noh, and I wanted to somehow make this authentic to myself, but I realised I had failed. I abandoned any further public attempt and nurtured my dream in the privacy of the rehearsal room.
In August 1984 I saw my first Noh play in Nara, the ancient capital of Japan. It was Takigi Noh, outdoors on a temple stage. There were fires lit at the beginning of the performance near the edge of the stage, and beneath the benches we sat on were mosquito coils burning. It was dusk, mid summer and as the actors in their resplendent robes and haunting masks moved in ritualistic dance I felt my sense of time slip away and I was not any longer of the 2oth century. On stage sat 14 people, one of them standing/moving/dancing intoning in an ancient language. There was contemplation, quietude. The great vowel sounds of Japanese language resounding deep in the bodies of the singers. I thought of the marae, of whaikorero, of listeners gathered to hear a speaker. I felt as if the time didn’t matter. All was being considered and it came to me that it was the sound of Te Reo Maori, and the aesthetic of marae architecture, stylised carvings, embroidered cloaks, a single voice singing, a monotone chorus joining and leaving, all these aspects were there as well. At that moment the history of the New Zealand Noh Theatre began with the wish that one day I would be able to build a Noh play that would bring these two worlds together.
After my experiments with Rakiura and The Dazzling Night I kept coming back to this idea. Could it be possible? All the spectres of cultural appropriation and political correctness lurked about but I couldn’t put the dream away. I spoke of it to Maori friends who were encouraging and I carved a mask from Kauri wood for the express purpose of singing Te Reo Maori through the mask. I took it to my Kaumatua Haare Williams who took me to a spring that flowed from the base Owairaka in Tamakimakaurau and he sprinkled the mask with water and intoned karakia and said, go for it Hone. You have come and learnt some of our language and tikanga, take it into your world and let it be your culture. But still I kept it to the rehearsal studio and my own private developments. Then came an opportunity.
In November of 2006 I was invited by Angeline Greensill of Tainui Awhiro, Tainui Iwi of the Raglan region, to participate in the Te Ao Marama festival which is held each year in Raglan. Raglan is a moderately sized coastal town on the west coast of the North Island in the Waikato region. The festival is usually a whanau based event with a predominantly music program running over a period of two days in early February. However the 2008 festival has a special significance as it is the 30th anniversary of the arrests that were made on 12th February 1978. On that date a number of Maori people had gathered on the Raglan golf course in order to conduct a ceremony of special meaning. This ceremony needed to be on that location because the golf course is ancestral land with spiritual significance for the people of Whaingaroa, but this land had been taken from Tangata Whenua by the government during the Second World War for the purposes of building an aerodrome. After the war this necessity passed and a golf course was built instead. As the group of Tangata Whenua gathered for the ceremony on 12th February the police arrived and for no apparent reason 17 people were arrested and charged with trespass. The charges were later thrown out of court.
This incident compelled a number of people to protest through due process for the return of these lands, and after a long and painfully drawn out procedure this was duly achieved. The Kuia who lead this fight for justice was the late Tuaiwa Hautai Kereopa Rickard, known to many as Eva Rickard; the mother of Angeline Greensill. After some conversations with Angeline and her daughter Hineitimoana and upon their invitation to be part of the festival I resolved to write a play especially for the occasion of the 30th anniversary. I did not want to write a history play, or stage a re-enactment of the incidents, but rather find within the stories of that time something that could celebrate the strength and spirit of the people. I began thinking about a Noh play for its emphasis is on heart and spirit rather than emotion and psychologically motivated action. The aesthetics and stately masks and costumes, all articulate aspects of the spirit and heart. Members of the family central to the incident, people who had been there encouraged me in this direction recognising the folly of attempting to ‘re-create’. We decided to not portray real people, recently passed away or still living, we decided this was to be avoided, but rather the wairua or spirit and heart of the shared struggle, along with the tides, winds and land of Whaingaroa would be symbolised by the actors and the gowns and masks they would be wearing.
As part of my research and preparation I read, in book form, a collection of stories and memories about Eva Rickard written by many people who loved and respected her, this collection has been titled Nga Puna Roimata. In this collection there are printed waiata and proverbs in tribute. One song in particular haunted me. The waiata Aumihi kau ana has a feeling within it of almost abandonment, as if the past has deserted the present, that the past and all the knowledge and heritage has been stolen away and the vacated space is full of desolate wind. In translation the waiata asks ‘where are you the many who have departed, you have left us just floating’ there is something in this image of a people lost without their past. This resonates for me, speaking of both Maori and Pakeha experience. Maori because of the impact of colonisation and Pakeha because the mission of colonisation means that you abandon the past, you come to the new world that for you has no past. This dilemma of abandonment articulates the post colonial situation that became violently manifested the day those 17 people were dragged from the Raglan golf course and charged by the police for the supposed crime of trespass on their own land. All through the process of assembling this piece I have checked in with Angeline as to how we were progressing and when I asked about this waiata she told that it had been a favourite of her mothers and she very often sang it. It was one of those moments when you think, this is ok, we can do this. But what? What could I possibly write?
Then I read in the book of tributes the following story.
About 20 years ago a woman named Old Woman Bear, an indigenous Cree Indian and leader of her people was given by her father, to commemorate her graduation from university, a Blue Shawl. Later on a visit to Aotearoa Old Woman Bear gave this shawl to a Maori woman. Seven years after this first visit Old Woman Bear once again came to Aotearoa and upon visiting Eva Rickard one evening she saw a photograph of Eva wearing the same Blue Shawl. She asked about it and Eva said that it had been given to her; that it was her favourite and she wore it often with an appreciation for its colour; she then went to the cupboard, took it down and showed it to her. Old Woman Bear never told her at that time that it had once been hers. When Eva passed away and her whanau were gathering stories about her life, Old Woman Bear wrote to them and told them of the Blue Shawl and how it had been passed from woman to woman. The Blue Shawl that her father had once given her had, as if with a mind of its own, found its way to Eva Rickards. On her third trip to Aotearoa, just three years ago, Old Woman Bear went with members of Eva Rickards family to the urupa or cemetery where she is buried, and there at the grave the Blue Shawl came finally once again to the hands of Old Woman Bear.
When they handed it to her she said “It smells the same as the day my father gave it to me”. The circle had been completed and the Blue Shawl went home with its original owner.
My secret desire suddenly had a shape.
This Blue Shawl is surely a symbol of generosity, respect, loyalty and the spirit of shared struggle that brings mutual victory. This shawl is a symbol of the heart to heart encounter which is the fundamental meaning of a Noh play. Could we tell this story? I requested permission of the family and they said yes. If ever the dream I had glimpsed in Nara 25 years ago was to have a chance of becoming a theatre reality, it was now.
Last year I made my fourth trip to Kyoto. Udaka Sensei was turning 60 and the custom on such occasions is for the master to produce three days of performance activity. So, I was invited to attend, to perform a shimai from Hagaromo, and sing in the chorus for a full noh Tsurukame. It was a wonderful occasion. Not only to have the experience of performing in The Kongo theatre but also to relish the deep friendship that has evolved over 25 years between Udaka and the 8 internationals who came to celebrate and enjoy his achievements. Udaka has recently written a Noh called Genshigumo, in which the shite journeys up the river of the dead to find her daughter who perished in the atomic blast at Hiroshima. Being a questing and curious fellow he had made his own addition adjustment in that he put on stage an additional chorus of fully masked actors. We had much discussion about this additional chorus and it caused me to think in a number of different directions, and one of these directions lead to the idea that this new Noh play about the Blue Shawl could also have an additional chorus, not masked and based in Noh tradition, but unmasked, vigorous, graceful and from the Maori tradition of kapa-haka. Maori of course have vital and dynamic forms of performance and entertainment. Some forms that made up the traditions of Te Whare Tapere, the house of entertainment arts have disappeared due to the impact of colonisation however many have survived and there is an evolving form that we have come to know as kapa haka. Kapa haka is most certainly based in the traditions and ancient dance and song forms of Maori people so it is distinctly Maori but it is also distinctly contemporary. So as I began writing the play a new and evolving form began to take shape.
I would have a Noh chorus, a noh flute and drum and Maori taonga puoro or flutes and trumpets. There would be the shite, waki, kyogen and the kapa haka chorus. The structure of the play would be based on Noh, the heart to heart encounter. Murray Edmond in his book Noh Business lays out a short list of the basic dynamic of a Noh play. I refer to this as a Structure of Encounters.
-A journey
-A surprise encounter.
-The revelation of some crucial information or feeling
-A disappearance from the surprise meeting
-An interlude of explanation
-A reappearance in a transformed state
-This results in an expiation or resolution, often of a past event
-A dance or abstract encapsulation of this event
All done imbued with the power of this past event, embodied by some ghost or spirit or
god.
For the Waki I created Moko. Moko is the Maori word for grandchild. This character is generic, everyone is a moko so he stands for all of us. He greets the audience with his mihi or introduction and using both Maori and English, but predominantly English, he tells the audience who he is and why he has come to this place. The waki is a student who travels to the Raglan golf course because he wants to learn about what happened there 30 years ago. He is a young Maori investigating stories of his heritage possibly of his own ancestors. An old woman appears. The Waki calls forth the Shite. She is Maori and is accompanied by a group of 5 Maori women who are the K-H chorus. They are her guardian spirits, her kaitiaki. They move in a highly stylised fashion and accompany the shite chorographically and vocally.
The waki asks her can you tell me what happened that day 30 years ago and the shite does not directly answer but suggests that he should listen to the land, learn to read the tide and sands of the shoreline. She and her K-H chorus sing of the famous and beautiful Karioi te Maunga, the mountain, and as is often the case in the Noh she answers obliquely and alludes to what he is searching for but never directly tells him. His persistent questions irritate her she tells him look and listen, that’s how I learnt. Then annoyed with his unrelenting approach she leaves, her guardians in concert.
Moko the Waki is confused, his questions remain, and then the Kyogen enters he is a local man on his way down to the shoreline to cast for kahawai that are running on the tide and so the Waki questions him and this time gets plain answers. The Kyogen remembers the day 12th February 1978 and he tells his own humorous and at times chilling version of what took place. As he leaves, he encourages the young Moko, taihoa e hoa, wait here, that old lady you met before, she’ll be back. And yes she does return transformed into a spirit, a manifestation of aroha ki a manaakitanga, and she concludes the story of the Blue Shawl and how on that whenua, the land where those 17 were so ungraciously dragged from the arms of their families and the land of their ancestors, there on that same spot, the whanau returned to Old Woman Bear the Blue Shawl she had so generously given so many years before.
The premier of The Blue Shawl, there on that ancestral land was truly a wonderful night. When the crowd of almost 2000 had dispersed and I had folded away the robes and zipped up the tent I went into the wharekai, or kitchen of the marae. I wanted to hear from the old people, the young people who crowded around at the conclusion of the performance telling us we were massive and awesome cher you dudes rock was gratifying, but what of Eva’s own cousins who had been there that day in 1978 and had watched our play, I wondered if they would have anything to say.
I sat with Aunty Ra for over an hour, she told me-
Maoris don’t like plays, but we liked that.
She said
When that old lady left, I knew she would be back. And those kehua, we’ve got them down on the beach, some people can see them. They have the feet of an animal and the body of a human.
Aunty Piki said
Your play left a good feeling, I felt calm as if everything was going to be alright. My brother said stop crying, go inside if you’re gonna cry and I told him never I’m gonna sit here and then he started crying to. After your play we went to the grave and had another cry and then came back and had a dance.
My conversations with them and others, left a good feeling. They liked what we had done. Their comments spoke of the functional and constructive role that our theatre served in their community.
I’m not going to frame these comments as authenticated research but on the ground, in the frontline of community theatre where a group of Maori and Pakeha join to tell stories of our mutual troubled heritage, they mean everything.
I have a much different feeling about this third Noh play, than I did about the first two. The form of kapa haka gave us an authentic aesthetic in which to ground the appearance of the work and the Noh play structure of encounters, a way to tell the story. My approach was not to attempt an integration of the forms, or to make an effort at replicating something beyond our experience, but rather to set each influence alongside each other and propel them in the same direction. I realise now that my future work with the New Zealand Noh Theatre is to design the opportunity so that Noh, kapa haka and poetic speech storytelling can exist in the same moment in the same space. Each have value, each belong and is this not the ultimate challenge? That any of us with our divergence and discrepancy can exist in the same space and move together, keeping distinct but remaining in harmony. Early on in my years of Noh when I first trained with Udaka Sensei he told me that he saw Noh Theatre as a path to enlightenment and a way for humans to reach a collective salvation. I nodded in bewilderment at his ambitious aspirations for song, dance and storytelling. But what else do I have?
Hana & Mana. It is perhaps audacious to bring these concepts together. Zeami was the 14th century Japanese actor who brought Noh in from the fields of sympathetic magic to the halls and gardens of the emperor’s palace. Hana as a concept is to be aspired to. Mana is to be earned and not to be claimed. Therefore beyond the cheeky title I make no further assertion.
Our company will appear with another season of The Blue Shawl at Te Whare Tapereiti on Waikato University campus on the 11th and 12th of this month. We are in good spirits and preparations are going well.
I wish to express my gratitude to Angeline Greensill who has with generosity and humour guided us to a place where we could work together.
Also my sincere thanks to Waikato University Cultural Committee for their support.
There are so many stories that need to be told.
Thank you.