3 - Theatre History Midterm Study Guide

Shamanism

Practices in which a specialist (a shaman) communicates with spirits, often through trance, song, and dance. It is seen as an early root of performance in China and Japan, including spirit possession and ritual dance.

Silk Road

The network of trade routes linking China, Central Asia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. It carried goods, religions (especially Buddhism), music, and entertainers, which influenced Asian performance traditions.

Confucianism

A philosophy stressing social harmony, hierarchy, family duty, and moral conduct. It shaped attitudes toward theatre, so plays often carried moral lessons, and performers generally had low social status.

Xiqu

The general term for traditional Chinese theatre ("song theatre"), combining song, speech, mime, acrobatics, and martial arts. Peking opera is one example.

Nanxi

"Southern drama" from the Southern Song dynasty (12th-13th centuries), generally considered the earliest fully developed Chinese theatre form. It grew out of folk traditions and usually told romantic stories.

Character roles (sheng, dan, jing, chou)

The four main role types of Chinese theatre. Sheng are male roles, dan are female roles, jing are painted-face roles (powerful or rough male characters), and chou are clowns or comic characters.

Zaju

"Variety play," the dominant drama of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). Typically it has four acts and one principal singer who performs all the songs. Guan Hanqing is its best-known playwright.

Snow in Midsummer

A zaju by Guan Hanqing. Dou E, a young widow, is wrongly executed and vows that three signs will prove her innocence, including snow in midsummer. When they happen, her case is reopened. The play deals with injustice, corrupt officials, and the supernatural.

Shinto

Japan's indigenous religion, centered on kami (spirits or gods) in nature and ancestors, and on rituals of purity. Its ritual dances (such as kagura) are among the roots of Japanese performance.

Buddhism

Arrived in Japan from China and Korea around the 6th century. It shaped performance through themes of impermanence, attachment, and the salvation of troubled spirits, which are central to noh.

Gigaku

A masked dance-drama introduced to Japan from Korea and China in the 7th century (traditionally 612 CE), associated with Buddhist temples. It faded by around the 10th century, but many of its masks survive.

Dengaku

"Field music," a form linked to rice-planting rituals that developed into professional music and dance entertainment. It influenced noh.

Sarugaku noh

"Monkey music," an entertainment of comic mimicry and acrobatics that developed into noh. Early on, sarugaku and dengaku troupes competed and borrowed from each other.

Noh

Japan's classical masked dance-drama, which took shape in the 14th century. It is slow, stylized, and minimalist, with chant, music, and dance, and often features ghosts and spirits.

Kan'ami

A sarugaku actor and playwright (1333-1384) and father of Zeami. He impressed the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and began shaping sarugaku into the more refined art of noh.

Zeami Motokiyo

Kan'ami's son (c. 1363-1443), who refined noh into a courtly art. He wrote many plays and the earliest major treatises on acting and aesthetics. He is associated with the ideals of yugen and hana ("flower").

Ashikaga Shogunate

The military government that ruled Japan from 1336 to 1573. Its shoguns, especially Yoshimitsu, patronized Kan'ami and Zeami, which helped noh become a refined elite art.

Character types (shite, waki, tsure)

The shite is the main character, often a ghost, god, or spirit. The waki is the secondary role, often a priest or traveler who encounters and draws out the shite. The tsure are companions to either.

Kyogen

Comic plays performed between noh plays. They use everyday language and satirize ordinary life, with characters such as servants and masters, in contrast with noh's solemnity.

Hashigakari

The bridge-like walkway connecting the mirror room to the stage, used for entrances and exits.

Kagami-no-ma (mirror room)

The room off the stage where the shite puts on the mask and prepares, seen as a moment of spiritual transformation.

Bashira

The pillars at the corners of the noh stage, which support the roof and serve as markers for actors' positions.

Kiritoguchi (hurry door)

A small, low door at the side or rear of the stage, used by chorus members, musicians, and stage assistants, or by minor characters for exits.

Noh mask use

The shite (and sometimes the tsure) wears a carved wooden mask. Tilting it changes its apparent expression ("brightening" and "clouding"). The waki, who plays a living man, does not wear one.

Yugen

"Mysterious depth" or profound, subtle grace. It is the aesthetic ideal of noh, favoring suggestion over explicitness.