{"id":459,"date":"2024-11-08T18:27:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T18:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=459"},"modified":"2024-12-28T10:38:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T10:38:54","slug":"between-theatrical-truth-and-historical-fact-the-question-of-female-love-in-miyagis-noh-rendition-of-othello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/between-theatrical-truth-and-historical-fact-the-question-of-female-love-in-miyagis-noh-rendition-of-othello\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Theatrical \u201cTruth\u201d and Historical \u201cFact\u201d: The Question of Female Love in Miyagi\u2019s Noh Rendition of Othello<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tomoka Tsukamoto<\/strong>*<\/a> and Ted Motohashi<\/strong>**<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Othello<\/font> has been staged overwhelmingly through the racial relationship between the two protagonists, Othello and Iago, at the expense of another protagonist, Desdemona, because of the prominence of racial and military perspectives in European modernity, and of Desdemona\u2019s relatively scarce textual presence. Despite the influential contributions of feminist criticism to rectify the imbalance, this female protagonist has been enclosed in the realm of a patriarchal framework that divides women between \u201cchaste wife\u201d and \u201cvillainous whore.\u201d Satoshi Miyagi\u2019s production of Miyagi-Noh Othello<\/font>, was a remarkable attempt to address this issue by transforming the whole play into a memory recollected and enacted by the Ghost of Desdemona through adapting the Japanese \u201cMugen-Noh\u201d format, which is somewhat echoed in the Kafkaesque dramaturgy of transposing the dead into the living by crossing the boundary between the material and non-material, human and the non-human. The authors of this article argue that in this play, through the employment of his unique dramaturgy\u2014the \u201cdivision of speech and movement\u201d method\u2014Miyagi succeeded in recovering not only Desdemona\u2019s truthfulness regarding her affectionate relationship with Othello but also multiple women\u2019s \u201cher-stories\u201d marginalized by colonial histories authorized by the Venetian ruling class. A thorough examination of Miyagi\u2019s innovative production would provide valuable insights into the often-overlooked dimension of Othello<\/font> as an alternative narrative that explores how collective suffering can lead to spiritual atonement. This interpretation highlights the enduring presence of \u201ctrue love\u201d even within a society fractured by racism, sexism, and militarism, which Kafka has depicted in his uniquely tragi-comic oeuvre.

Keywords: <\/strong>Miyagi, Shakespeare, Noh, Othello, gender<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miyagi-Noh Othello<\/em><\/strong> and the Truthfulness of Female Love<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Othello<\/em> has been staged mostly through the racial relationship between the two protagonists, Othello and Iago, at the expense of another protagonist, Desdemona, because of the prominence of racial and military perspectives in European modernity, and of Desdemona\u2019s relatively scarce textual presence. Despite the influential contributions of feminist criticism to rectify the imbalance, this female protagonist has been enclosed in the realm of a patriarchal framework that divides women between \u201cchaste wife\u201d and \u201cvillainous whore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Miyagi-Noh Othello. <\/em>Photo: Miura Koichi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Satoshi Miyagi\u2019s production of Miyagi-Noh Othello<\/em>, first staged in Shizuoka, Japan, in 2018, for the Shizuoka Performance Arts Center, was a remarkable attempt to address this issue by transforming the whole play into a memory recollected and enacted by the Ghost of Desdemona through adapting the Japanese \u201cMugen-Noh\u201d format. By employing his unique \u201cdivision of speech and movement\u201d method, Miyagi succeeded in recovering not only Desdemona\u2019s truthfulness regarding her affectionate relationship with Othello but also multiple women\u2019s \u201cher-stories\u201d marginalized by colonialist histories authorized by the Venetian ruling class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thorough analysis of Miyagi\u2019s innovative production could shed new light on the often-overlooked elements of Othello<\/em>, presenting it as a narrative that transforms collective suffering into a journey of spiritual atonement. This interpretation highlights the enduring presence of \u201ctrue love\u201d even in a society plagued by racism, sexism and militarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper does not specifically address the adaptation of Kafka’s works into a theatrical format; however, it aims to illuminate the significance of theatrical “truth” in an increasingly tragic contemporary landscape marked by regional conflicts and environmental degradation. While the subsequent analysis of Miyagi-Noh Othello<\/em> may not overtly exhibit Kafkaesque qualities, the invocation of the term “grotesque”\u2014often associated with Kafka\u2019s literary oeuvre<\/em>\u2014provides an intriguing lens through which to examine the prevailing critical perspective that positions Othello and Iago, rather than Desdemona, as the central protagonists. This interpretation, at the very least, invites scrutiny, and this paper represents a modest endeavor to address this critical imbalance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miyagi Satoshi\u2019s Method of Dividing Speech and Movement<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In a \u201cDirector\u2019s Note\u201d for his The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em>, Miyagi explains his original motives in having devised the \u201ctwo in one\u201d method where one character is represented by two performers, a speaker and a mover:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think words bring a tremendous feeling of disjunction into human bodies: words cut apart the natural flow that bodies desire, and consequently become the enemy of physiologic pleasure. . . . Human beings are vessels in which bodies and words fight against each other. If that is the case, the actor on the stage should reveal that struggle rather than conceal it, I thought. That is why I came upon the idea of the \u201ctwo actors in one role\u201d method.”[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is partially correct to say that this method is an appropriation of the Japanese traditional puppet theatre (Bunraku), where Joruri chanters describe the story and sentiment of the characters embodied by puppets which are skillfully manipulated by silent puppeteers. However, Miyagi\u2019s dramaturgical strategy goes much deeper than pure exploitation of the traditional Japanese theatre. Its overall aim is to deconstruct and reinvestigate the 2,500-year tradition of Western theatre in which coordination between the actor\u2019s physicality and psychology should be overlooked in the audience\u2019s appreciation of his\/her skills. Miyagi\u2019s strategy in dividing one role between a mover and a speaker is centered on his attempt to make the audience question the apparently transparent relationship between language and body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this sense, it would be fair to say that Miyagi\u2019s \u201ctwo in one\u201d dramaturgy reflects Kafka\u2019s literary instinct in representing the western modernity as the entity torn between language and body, inside and outside, the conscious and the unconscious.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Miyagi sees it, there is a disjunction between human desire and language as a means of expressing what is inside the human body, and the \u201cdivision\u201d method serves to illuminate that rupture. In Miyagi\u2019s theatre, this breach is highlighted as well as contained by the percussion music played by the actors, who alternately take the part of speakers, movers and musicians. Through the incessant exchanges of fragmentation and integration overriding our hearing and vision, we are led to be more aware of the friction, a fault line that we are not conscious of in our daily lives, making the overall theatrical experience uncannily vibrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cdivision\u201d method does not necessarily liberate the speaker from the action, or the mover from the speech. Both, the speaker and the mover, being forced to respectively endure immobility and silence, bear a more substantial burden than actors who follow the conventional \u201cone actor in one role\u201d (\u201cone in one\u201d) method in modern European theatre. When the \u201cdivision\u201d method functions on the stage, the audience perceives a heightened physical energy in the performance and notices a more complex linguistic structure in the movement, captivated by the dynamic interplay between the two distinct yet deeply interconnected theatrical mediums. To borrow Miyagi\u2019s words, \u201cmultiple languages are flying around one actor who speaks lines without moving, and another actor who moves without speaking.\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miyagi creates a uniquely theatrical beauty on the stage by prohibiting the performers from either speaking or moving. By questioning the transparent relationship between language and body, the \u201cdivision\u201d method directly puts focus on the inherent function of human linguistic and bodily communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Othello<\/em><\/strong> and Reinvention of Her-stories Through \u201cMugen-Noh\u201d<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

As we have suggested, Miyagi\u2019s adaptation of Othello<\/em> is an attempt to narrate this tale not through the black and masculine perspective, which has been common modes of presentation in the performance history of this play, but through the collectively female perspective of Desdemona and her fellow women estranged in Cyprus. How can we make Desdemona the principal character of the play? Miyagi\u2019s answer to this question is to appropriate a Mugen-Noh style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mugen-Noh (phantasmal Noh-play), \u201cWaki\u201d (a bystander or mediator usually represented by a Buddhist priest) encounters \u201cShite\u201d (principal, the ghost of a dead person, frequently personifying one who begrudges her past). The Shite\u2019s memories (usually painful and poignant) are evoked through Waki, who recognizes the sheer otherness of the former. Waki is a character who has typically lost his family members or become tired of his profession, wandering through life without any purpose. As someone who carries a profound emptiness within his psyche, he is able to assist a ghost within the Shite, who is consumed by deep-seated resentment. In other words, Waki embodies a state of “in-between-ness,” acting as a bridge between this world and the gods or spirits of other realms. In Noh theatre, the Waki serves as a mediator between the audience and the tradition, but only to the extent that he distances himself from the Shite and relinquishes any claim to ownership over the other’s cultural memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to emphasize at the outset that this production, even if it adopts the traditional Japanese theatrical format of Mugen-Noh, does not intend to appeal to the spectator\u2019s exoticism (regardless of his or her ethnic origin) towards Orientalism. Instead, we would argue that by manipulating a particular dramaturgy based on Miyagi\u2019s theories on language and body, this production attempts to problematize the conditions behind successful Shakespearean productions in translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cross-cultural negotiation in theatrical productions such as this will unsettle the (un-)translatability of the original dramatic language, not through the overt rendition of outer forms but through the inner thematic and communicative reconsideration of political and theatrical conventions, which can be meaningful only at the site of actors\u2019 coeval interventions. As we will analyze several scenes in Miyagi-Noh<\/em>, these interferences, creating and containing frictions between linguistic speech and bodily action, are what make Miyagi\u2019s mimetic dramaturgy with the \u201cdivision\u201d method so infallible in materializing dormant features in Shakespeare\u2019s original, which the usual \u201cone actor in one character\u201d presentation may well have suppressed. By adapting the Mugen-Noh format, this production intriguingly breaches, in an almost Kafkaesque fashion, the normally accepted boundary between the dead and the living, dream and reality, the human and the non-human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To assess the magnitude of this reinvention of an alternative her-story, we should closely follow the action of Miyagi-Noh<\/em>, which consists of three parts, \u201cMae-ba\u201d (Fore-scene), \u201cAi-kyogen\u201d (In-between play) and \u201cNochi-ba\u201d (After-scene), but, because of space limitations, we will concentrate on \u201cMae-ba\u201d and \u201cNochi-ba.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mae-ba: Concord Between the Ghost of Desdemona and the Italian Women<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The setting of Miyagi-Noh<\/em> is the island of Cyprus under Turkish rule some fifty years after Desdemona\u2019s death. The play opens with a Venetian Pilgrim, who visits the island as a tourist enjoying its exotic landscape. The stage imitates the conventional Noh set with \u201cHashi-gakari\u201d (bridge path) on the left (where the ghost enters and exits), \u201cButai\u201d (stage) at the center (where actions take place), \u201cNochi-za\u201d (back area) at the back (where musicians play music) and \u201cJi-utai-za\u201d (chanters\u2019 area) on the right (where a group of chanting singers speak the characters\u2019 lines or narrate the story). Desdemona\u2019s Ghost (Shite, the principal), who has been hiding among the musicians, now moves forward and approaches the Pilgrim, trying to talk to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critical points here are that Desdemona\u2019s Ghost assumes the shape of an older woman, and her utterances cannot be recognized as articulated words but as non-meaningful sounds. As a consequence, the Pilgrim cherishing the exotic landscape does not notice her presence at all. Miyagi, in a way, deconstructs the convention of the Mugen-Noh format in which the ghostly Shite is always-already visible to the visiting mediator, Waki as a Buddhist pilgrim, by making the ghost invisible to the bystanders as in a general conception of the deceased. By doing so, Miyagi paradoxically succeeds in questioning our conception of the ghost in terms of its (non-)visibility and (non-)audibility. Desdemona is not invisible or inaudible because she is a ghost; rather, her ghostly invisibility and silence arise from the Pilgrim\u2019s failure to hear her voice or acknowledge her subaltern presence, as if she were an overlooked, marginalized character in a Kafka novel\u2014ignored and rendered uncanny by those around her<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When then does the Pilgrim become aware of Desdemona\u2019s entity in the Miyagi-Noh<\/em>? The moment she is brought about by the three Italian women, who also appear as old women, each carrying a heavy jar on their head containing local goods to sell. As these women are not ghosts but Venetian-born women who speak the same language as the Pilgrim, the latter tries to get some local information from them. However, the women become upset by some insolent remarks by the Pilgrim, and are about to exit via the \u201cHashigakari\u201d bridge. At this very moment, Desdemona\u2019s Ghost intervenes and introduces their telling of \u201cher-stories\u201d in a collective \u201ccall-and-response\u201d fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Desdemona and the Italian women: Desdemona\u2019s Ghost (Shite)=Mikari; the three Italian women (Tsure) 1= Terauchi Ayako, 2= Kataoka Sachiko, 3=Sakurauchi Yu. Photo: Miura Koichi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It is noteworthy here that Desdemona\u2019s Ghost (Shite) and the three Italian women (Tsure) are conjoined and orchestrating each other in what we call a mimetic dramaturgy devised by Miyagi\u2019s \u201cdivision\u201d method. Let us explain in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the three women are about to exit the stage, the Ghost stops them to say the first line (\u201cOn our haggard bodies, the wrinkles deepen\u201d), pointing to the \u201cwrinkles\u201d on her cheek. Then, the women imitate the action, wondering what this might mean; therefore, their mimetic utterances, \u201cOn our haggard bodies, the wrinkles deepen,\u201d are spoken in a question form. Interestingly, since Shite is Desdemona\u2019s Ghost, she cannot be an actual woman who has \u201chaggard bodies\u201d and \u201cdeepened wrinkles.\u201d Nevertheless, when the Ghost initiates this action, it is bodily transferred to Tsure, the three women, making them aware of their present status. Tsure also repeat the Shite\u2019s second utterance (\u201cOur sins from the past deepen\u201d), imitating the same gesture of the Ghost, but this time with more conviction. As these mimetic gestures inevitably evoke the memories suppressed within the women\u2019s bodies, their inner voices suddenly burst out, ripping their bodies (\u201cOur bodies now are slaves\u201d), as though they now realize their present status as \u201cslaves\u201d who should be responsible for their miseries (\u201cOur motherland betrayed us\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should also remind ourselves that this dramatic interaction between Desdemona\u2019s Ghost and the three surviving women is here carried out by the \u201cdivision\u201d method, in which the Ghost\u2019s words, spoken by her speaker, are mimetically underlined by her mover, while the three women\u2019s words uttered by a group of female voices are also mimetically confirmed by their movers. In Miyagi-Noh<\/em>, because of the Mugen-Noh format whereby a group of Ji-utai chanters chants the women\u2019s words describing their feelings and memories, the relationship between speech and movement is not in a one-to-one correspondence but a collective unison. Furthermore, as we have analyzed above, the mimetic interaction between the Ghost of Desdemona and the three Italian women is carried out without their possessive desire. The women\u2019s memories are evoked through the Ghost\u2019s initiative, and the \u201cdivision\u201d method serves to highlight the passive mode of their actions and the temporal gap between the Ji-utai chanters\u2019 speech and their bodily movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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