Today's program was a presentation on a form of Chinese theater called Kunqu Opera (which appears in a different color here because I've provided a link for my sister-in-law Sandy and our mutual friend Ann who are the only people I know who might want to know more about this art form than I am prepared to share).Kunqu has been around for 600 years but had nearly disappeared by the early twentieth century and barely survived the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s when there were deliberate attempts to suppress it.
Today there are seven professional Kunqu troupes performing in Mainland China and Taipei. It was listed as one of the "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO in 2001. (Maybe I should try to get a job with UNESCO. I wonder how much they pay people to come up with fancy titles like that one.)
This was all explained to us in Japanese by the actor Lu (pronounced 'Lee') Hairong (33) and then translated into English by a young Australian who had to wrestle that microphone out of his hands to do her job.Lu entered the Shanghai Academy of Performing Arts, a boarding school, at the age of 10. Students there are selected to learn and perform one of the five Kunqu roles when they are 11 years old or are sent home to (presumably) live out their days working in the rice paddies. Lu spent the next seven years, until he was 18, training for martial arts roles. He was allowed to visit his family only once a week during all those years. When he was 26, he moved to Japan where he currently attends Keio University.
We were then treated to a PowerPoint presentation about the five basic Kunqu roles and variations thereof. I will spare you the details since (a) the balding Russian lady sitting between me and the screen ruined most of my shots, and (b) my attention started wandering about 10 seconds after the overhead lights were dimmed.
The lady sitting in front of me, for instance, was wearing an interesting sweater, or perhaps it was a detachable belt . . .
. . . and the lady on her right had a net thing on her head, the likes of which I haven't seen since the mid-60s when my mother sometimes splurged on custom-designed Easter bonnets . . .
. . . and then there was the Chinese mask dangling from the rafter over my head.
"Perhaps if I attach a little camera to my makeup mirror and project a live image of myself on the screen I can recapture the attention of that gaijin in the third row," schemed Lu. We watched him apply his makeup. This normally takes 90 minutes. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when Lu said he was going to do a quick version for today's performance. (Sighs of relief are apparently universal as they sound the same in Japanese and English.)
His fellow actor, Kong Fanqi (29), helped Lu into his costume. That polka dot ball off to the side of Kong's head signifies he is playing the role of a hero (assuming the translator understood Lu correctly and assuming I heard the translator correctly, so you might not want to quote me on this one).
Lu's outfit was pretty cool and featured lots of cranes in flight. Kong's outfit was all about butterflies. I couldn't help wondering if anyone helped poor Kong get dressed.
Oh, look! Lu's playing a hero, too!They performed a farce for us, in which two best friends mistake each other for mortal enemies in the dark and narrowly miss killing each other. It was really quite funny, and the American children in the audience were squealing in delight which made all the adults break out in laughter.
The ladies mobbed the stage at the end of the performance. The blonde kneeling in front of Kong is the Russian ambassador's wife.Next month we're going to learn a Japanese handicraft technique called kimekome so we can make something called a goten-mari ball. I am definitely going to have to drag a guest or two along to that one. Probably not Mimi.
*Cool*
ReplyDeleteLove,
Sandy