Yukio Mishima

Modern Nô Plays

Photo: Luca Quaia

Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste

Première: 8 May 2014, Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste
Running time 1 hour and 15 minutes. No interval.

Original title Kindai nogaku-shu

Translator Marija Javoršek after french translation by Marguerite Yourcenar
Director Mateja Koležnik
Dramaturg Goran Ferčec
Stage designer Mauricio Ferlin
Choreographer and costume designer Matija Ferlin
Composer Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar
Language consultant Jože Faganel
Lighting designer Rafael Cavarra

Cast
Luka Cimprič
Nikla Petruška Panizon
Lara Komar
Primož Forte
Romeo Grebenšek

Nô plays represent an artistic form that belongs to the great tradition of classical Japanese theatre. They are still being performed in a canonised manner. In 1956, Yukio Mishima, the most famous Japanese author of the second half of the twentieth century, transposed some of those plays into contemporary theatre, managing to maintain their genuine inner spirit, while breathing into them a new and fresh life that made them sound modern and straightforward, as if written in the present. Thus they were able to surpass their rootedness in Japanese tradition and find their abode on world stages as well.
The stories unfold through paradoxes and unexpected twists that never happen by chance but speak of the deep logic of desire. In a series of short dramatic texts, Mishima took over the themes and characters of Nô theatre and placed them in contemporary environments, easily recognisable even for Western audiences. The director Mateja Koležnik focuses on the play Hanjo as the centre around which the stories, symbols and characters of other selected plays revolve in oneiric and vision-like dimensions.