Inimkond: Maret Nukke

Her lecture's title is Hamlet & Elvis as the protagonists of the Japanese nō plays: The challenge of adapting a 700 years old theatre form for contemporary audiences.

Abstract:

Most of the Japanese nō plays are genre adaptations that draw their material from well-known classical literary sources or are plays about a famous place. The plays of this 14th century Japanese traditional theater have a relatively rigid canon of form that includes the specific characteristics of protagonist, adaptation methods of source material, a fixed place of poetic quotes, and dual climax in the structure of the play. These conventions set the rules a playwright has to consider when writing a nō play. 

In the 21st century, there have been created numerous new nō plays called shinsaku (“newly created”) that use unconventional themes and sources. This lecture examines the adaptation of canonical form in two contemporary nō plays: a Japanese language nō adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Nō Hamuretto” (2004), and an English play about Elvis Presley “Blue Moon Over Memphis” (2003).

You can find the Facebook event for our next Inimkond here.