KYOGEN AND bUNRAKU
Traditional Japanese Theatre
Bunraku is different from most of the theatrical performance forms regularly practiced in the West. and even from the other Japanese traditions, in that Bunraku is a performance that is trifold by its own nature. The development of the story is reliant upon the relationship between, at the absolute minimum, five different performers. In every Bunraku performance, there is a primary musician known as the shamisen, a narrator known as the tayu, and three operators per puppet, referred to as different titles based on which part of the puppet they operate. The oldest, most experienced operator is known as the omo-zukai, and he controls the right hand of the puppet, as well as its head. The next oldest operator is known as the hidari-zukai, and he is responsible for controlling the left hand of the puppet, and the least experienced puppeteer, who controls the feet of the puppet, is known as the ashi-zukai.
This video is extremely interesting because it provides close up views of the actual manipulation of the puppets, and details the more integral machinery necessary to create such vivid characters on stage, while simultaneously showing the interaction between the three operators. The mechanisms within the head assemblies of Bunraku puppets enable the omo-zukai to express a wide range of visceral emotions, using a block of wood and some string. This video also provides a clearer sense of the scale of Bunraku puppets, and how important the role of the wigmaker in a company is to providing the sense of gravity that a character has through the framing of the face.
The other two primary elements of a Bunraku performance are the shamisen player and the tayu, who work together to form what is known as the gidayu-bushi, which is the spoken and musical sense of the story. There is only one tayu for a specific performance, and one shamisen, and they sit together, traditionally downstage left, and provide the aural environment of the performance. The tayu is responsible for giving third person narration of the story as it develops, as well as first person dialogue between every character on stage. This requires an intense amount of training and preparation.