The Dazzling Night; A Noh play about Katherine Mansfield. by Rachel McAlpine.

 As I take soft steps to place myself upon the stage I become the final stroke of colour in a brilliant painting.  Mental paintings prompted by the atmospheric lights, the dim shadows, the emptiness of the stage, the silence. Then the shrill flute as it summons the presence, calls the spirit to come be with us. The eerie cry of the drummers punctuating the stillness, ending the silence, and beginning it again. Mental pictures built by the mercurial writing of Katherine Mansfield, images and feelings conjured into the mind of the reader, brought to the theatre, associated with the name, living in the mind’s eye of the audience.  I step onto the hashigakari, the bridgeway from the spirit world to the quick. Guided by the flute and the urgency of spiritual need, the elaborately robed and masked figure hovers before the audience.

“Who are you?” Asks the waki, Sir Harold Beauchamp, Katherine’s father.

“I am Katherine”, the shite sings in reply.

I am Katherine.

(Excerpt from: Meeting the Dead on Stage: Noh Theatre and its Solution. 2006 John Davies.)