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NHK World's Applause!: Yukio Ninagawa
NHK World has a lot of great shows in English about Japan; my local PBS affiliate regularly airs several of them. Awhile back, there was a special program called Applause! that documented the making of a production by director Yukio Ninagawa's Saitama Gold Theater, an acting troupe made up of elderly amateur actors. My Haru readers may recall that I blogged about Ninagawa last year because he was the inspiration behind the fictional Ninagawa in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bronze_ribbons' More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, and I ended up using the same character in my Haru-Shakespeare fics.
The play they are performing is "Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets," which is about a group of elderly women who take a courtroom hostage in order to rebel against the patriarchal Japanese society that has oppressed them. Unfortunately, NHK does not have a version online for viewing, but I did find an episode of a Hong Kong show called "The Works" that did a short segment on Ninagawa and the play. (It's the first segment, and lasts about 7 or 8 minutes.)
It was a fascinating documentary, but one part really caught my attention and amused me. During the rehearsal, the elderly woman who's presiding as judge after the takeover is shouting out her lines, and suddenly Ningawa cuts her off, demanding to know why she's changed the way she's saying her lines. He says that it's as if she's trying to sound like a professional actor, and looking taken aback by the director's criticism, she nods and agrees that was what she was trying to do. He calms down and says he understands that it's because she's passionate about the role, but he doesn't want her to sound like a professional. What he wants is for her "to do it the way you did it before, when it sounded more natural."
It amused me because it reminded me a bit of Mochimune, and how demanding he was with Iwaki while filming the "Lost Heart" movie, saying that Iwaki wasn't conveying the character's malevolence. Basically, that he was only giving a surface projection that didn't have real emotion behind it. I suspect that Iwaki's performance would have been good enough for another director, but not for one of Mochimune's caliber. Of course, Ninagawa is much nicer and certainly much less twisted than Mochimune! He's actually very kind and patient with his actors, at least during the early rehearsals, although I noticed that his criticisms grew blunter and sharper as opening night approached. However, while he could be a bit harsh at times, he was never cruel or insulting.
This is a brief article about the Saitama Gold Theater, and this is a more lengthy article in which Ninagawa discusses his Saitama Next Theater, which is sort of the opposite of Saitama Gold--it's a troupe made up of young actors. (He also talks about Saitama Gold on the third page of the article.) Again, Ninagawa reminded me a bit of Mochimune when he said of the young actors who auditioned:
To me, this sounded very Mochimune-like! Which reminds me, I need to sit down and work on translating that chapter of the manga where Mochi is directing Katou and Onozuka in the historical drama.
Maybe on another post, I'll talk about some of the other NHK World shows that I've been enjoying.
bronze_ribbons' More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, and I ended up using the same character in my Haru-Shakespeare fics.The play they are performing is "Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets," which is about a group of elderly women who take a courtroom hostage in order to rebel against the patriarchal Japanese society that has oppressed them. Unfortunately, NHK does not have a version online for viewing, but I did find an episode of a Hong Kong show called "The Works" that did a short segment on Ninagawa and the play. (It's the first segment, and lasts about 7 or 8 minutes.)
It was a fascinating documentary, but one part really caught my attention and amused me. During the rehearsal, the elderly woman who's presiding as judge after the takeover is shouting out her lines, and suddenly Ningawa cuts her off, demanding to know why she's changed the way she's saying her lines. He says that it's as if she's trying to sound like a professional actor, and looking taken aback by the director's criticism, she nods and agrees that was what she was trying to do. He calms down and says he understands that it's because she's passionate about the role, but he doesn't want her to sound like a professional. What he wants is for her "to do it the way you did it before, when it sounded more natural."
It amused me because it reminded me a bit of Mochimune, and how demanding he was with Iwaki while filming the "Lost Heart" movie, saying that Iwaki wasn't conveying the character's malevolence. Basically, that he was only giving a surface projection that didn't have real emotion behind it. I suspect that Iwaki's performance would have been good enough for another director, but not for one of Mochimune's caliber. Of course, Ninagawa is much nicer and certainly much less twisted than Mochimune! He's actually very kind and patient with his actors, at least during the early rehearsals, although I noticed that his criticisms grew blunter and sharper as opening night approached. However, while he could be a bit harsh at times, he was never cruel or insulting.
This is a brief article about the Saitama Gold Theater, and this is a more lengthy article in which Ninagawa discusses his Saitama Next Theater, which is sort of the opposite of Saitama Gold--it's a troupe made up of young actors. (He also talks about Saitama Gold on the third page of the article.) Again, Ninagawa reminded me a bit of Mochimune when he said of the young actors who auditioned:
Basically, the criteria I used for selecting them was whether they could speak their lines well, whether they can move naturally and the other things is whether they have what I call “lots of noise.” Wanted to find young people with untamed, animal-like instincts. But most of the actors you see are rather square. They have good posture. They have clear skin. Their speech is clean and proper. There is no interest in all of this. There is no noise, at all. It is important to be able to deliver your lines with clarity, but clarity without meaning is only annoying. There has to be something inside that possesses the actor and is brought out in words on stage, but there are few actors like that. What I am interested is having the actors speak to the audience with their acting, without any superfluous theatrics, but I don’t know yet how it will work out. It remains to be seen what we can do.
To me, this sounded very Mochimune-like! Which reminds me, I need to sit down and work on translating that chapter of the manga where Mochi is directing Katou and Onozuka in the historical drama.
Maybe on another post, I'll talk about some of the other NHK World shows that I've been enjoying.