By means of a cross-cultural analysis of selected examples of early Japanese and early Greek drama, Mae Smethurst enhances our appreciation of each form. While using the methods of a classicist to increase our understanding of no as literary texts, she also demonstrates that the fifteenth-century treatises of Zeami--an important playwright, actor, critic, and teacher of no--offer fresh insight into Aeschylus' use of actors, language, and various elements of stage presentation. Relatively little documentation apart from the texts of the plays is available for the Greek theater of the fifth century B.C., but Smethurst uses documentation on no, and evidence from no performances today, to suggest how presentations of the Persians could have been so successful despite the play's lack of dramatic confrontation. Aeschylean theater resembles that of Zeami in creating its powerful emotional and aesthetic effect through a coherent organization of structural elements. Both playwrights used such methods as the gradual intensification of rhythmic and musical effects, an increase in the number and complexity of the actors' movements, and a progressive focusing of attention on the main actors and on costumes, masks, and props during the course of the play. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The great noh actor, theorist, and playwright Zeami Motokiyo (ca. 1363-1443) is one of the major figures of world drama. His critical treatises have attracted international attention ever since their publication in the early 1900s. His corpus of work and ideas continues to offer a wealth of insights on issues ranging from the nature of dramatic illusion and audience interest to tactics for composing successful plays to issues of somaticity and bodily training. Shelley Fenno Quinn’s impressive interpretive examination of Zeami’s treatises addresses all of these areas as it outlines the development of the playwright’s ideas on how best to cultivate attunement between performer and audience. Quinn begins by tracing Zeami’s transformation of the largely mimetic stage art of his father’s troupe into a theater of poiesis in which the playwright and actors aim for performances wherein dance and chant are re-keyed to the evocative power of literary memory. Synthesizing this remembered language of stories, poems, phrases, and their prosodies and associated auras with the flow of dance and chant led to the creation of a dramatic prototype that engaged and depended on the audience as never before. Later chapters examine a performance configuration created by Zeami (the nikyoku santai) as articulated in his mature theories on the training of the performer. Drawing on possible reference points from Buddhist and Daoist thought, the author argues that Zeami came to treat the nikyoku santai as a set of guidelines for bracketing the subjectivity of the novice actor, thereby allowing the actor to reach a certain skill level or threshold from which his freedom as an artist might begin.

The volume focuses on a wide range of thinkers, including Iris Murdoch on truth and art, Stanley Cavell on tragedy, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on "the death of the author," and Kendall Walton on fearing fictions. Also included is a consideration of the fifteenth-century Japanese playwright and drama teacher Zeami Motokiyo, the founding father of Noh theather.

An up-to-date cultural history of the Japanese theatre in all its forms including primitive rituals, court and popular dance-drama, puppet shows and westernized plays, is narrated here for the first time in English by a western authority in the field. The book underlines Zeami and Zenchiku's secret tradition of the nō, explaining Zen-inspired spiritual teachings for the actor's training on the way to enlightened performance. It also gives relevance to the transformation of an anti-establishment entertainment by prostitutes into spectacular kabuki stagecraft, and to the modernization process which created shingeki modern drama, and moved it into the context of world theatre. The final chapter summarizes the history of western discovery of the Japanese stage. The illustrations, the indexes, the glossary and the extensive bibliography — including all major literature in western languages until 1989 — also contribute to make this volume a must for all students of the Japanese theatre, and for anyone interested in a better understanding of Japanese culture as mirrored in its theatrical component.

For over forty years, Tadashi Suzuki has been a unique and vital force in both Japanese and Western theater, creating and directing many internationally acclaimed productions including his famous production of The Trojan Women, which subsequently toured around the world. An intergral part of his work has been the development and teaching of his rigorous and controversial training system, the Suzuki method, whose principles have also been highly influential in contemporary theater. Paul Allain, an experienced practitioner of the Suzuki method, re-evaluates Suzuki's work, giving a lucid overview of his development towards an international theater aesthetic. He examines Suzuki's collaborators, the importance of architecture and environment in his theater and his impact on performance all over the world. The Art of Stillness is a lively, critical study of one of the most important and uncompromising figures in contemporary world theater.

Aeschylus' Persians is unique in being the only extant Greek tragedy on an historical subject: Greece's victory in 480 BC over the great Persian King, Xerxes, eight years before the play was written and first performed in 472 BC. Looking at Persians examines how Aeschylus responded to such a turning point in Athenian history and how his audience may have reacted to his play. As well as considering the play's relationship with earlier lost tragedies and discussing its central themes, including war, nature and the value of human life, the volume considers how Persians may have been staged in fifth-century Athens and how it has been performed today. The twelve essays presented here are written by prominent international academics and offer insightful analyses of the play from the perspectives of performance, history and society. Intended for readers ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume also includes an accurate, accessible and performance-friendly English translation of Persians by David Stuttard.

Each volume of the Dictionary of World Biography contains 250 entries on the lives of the individuals who shaped their times and left their mark on world history. This is not a who's who. Instead, each entry provides an in-depth essay on the life and career of the individual concerned. Essays commence with a quick reference section that provides basic facts on the individual's life and achievements. The extended biography places the life and works of the individual within an historical context, and the summary at the end of each essay provides a synopsis of the individual's place in history. All entries conclude with a fully annotated bibliography.