Shunkan（俊寛）performance

 

Reitaku University English Drama Group has a long tradition performing great plays under the direction of British directors, Gavin Bantock (from 1969 to 1994) and his nephew Merwyn Torikian (Since 1994). On September 21, 2019, celebrating Bantock’s 50th and Torikian’s 30th anniversaries of coming to Japan, the OB production team will perform Shunkan (directed by Bantock) at the Small Theatre in campus. 

 

THE SHUNKAN PROJECT

 

Our performing group, using its working title ‘The Shunkan Project’, consists of about twenty former and current members of Reitaku University English Drama Group. Most of these are acting in the play; others are helping as staff, making costumes, handling finance and information, etc.

 

This ad hoc group are to perform ‘Shunkan’, a play in English based on the original Kabuki play, at least once on 21st September, 2019.

 

KABUKI & SHUNKAN

 

Kabuki drama was originally designed as a popular form of entertainment performed at festivals. It developed into a vastly complex and elaborate extravaganza of dramatic art, with full-scale 'realistic' stage sets, highly coloured and flamboyant facial make-up and stage costumes, some of them so heavy that the actors (all male, even for female roles) could move only with extremely artificial ways of walking and making highly-exaggerated symbolic hand and head gestures. At the same time the words they spoke, due to the fact that basic Japanese is not a dramatic or strongly inflected language, had to be distorted and chanted into forms of utterance almost incomprehensible to the average spectator. Kabuki today maintains all these traditionally perfected techniques. When, however, all the showy paraphernalia and ornamentation are removed, we are left with the bare bones of a drama, which is usually very simple and yet often follows a truly harrowing narrative line. 'Shunkan' is just such a story, simple but profoundly moving, and we plan to present the play in this way, as a straight, tragic drama.

 

Shunkan has been performed as a Noh play and as a Bunraku puppet-play. But our version is adapted from the Kabuki play written by the 17th-century actor and dramatist Chikamatsu Kannosuke (Dates unknown).

 

SHUNKAN SYNOPSIS

 

Shunkan, a priest, and two lords Yasuyori and Naritsune plotted to overthrow the Shogunate (Japanese government) in Kyoto, but their revolt failed and they were exiled to a remote island Kikaigashima, between south Kyushu and Okinawa. When the play opens, they have been on the island for three years,  enduring great hardship. But there is a bright spark of happiness in the dark landscape. The younger lord Naritsune has recently fallen in love with a diving girl on the island and made her his wife. Shunkan conducts a simple marriage ceremony for them and tries to perform a celebratory dance but is too weak and falls over laughing. At that moment a ship is seen approaching the island. On board are two envoys from Kyoto. The first, Senou, pompously announces that a pardon has been granted to Yasuyori and Naritsune, but not to Shunkan. Shunkan is shattered that he cannot return to his beloved wife in Kyoto. Then the second envoy, Tanzaemon, announces that Shunkan also has been pardoned but cannot return all the way to Kyoto. The three exiles and Naritsune's new wife Chidori are about to board the boat when Senou says only three persons can return, and orders Chidori to stay on the island. Naritsune immediately decides to stay on the island with his wife; but Shunkan kindly offers to stay instead so that the other three may leave. Senou officiously will not allow this, and a quarrel develops. Senou cruelly informs Shunkan that his wife Azumaya has been put to death for refusing the amorous advances of the Shogun. Racked with grief and fury, Shunkan wounds and finally kills Senou, and as a result knows he will now never be able to return to Japan. Promising that they will all meet again 'in the next life', he urges the other three to leave. Shunkan is thus left alone on the island. Heartbroken and full of longing and regret he watches the boat sail away across the sea and disappear beyond the horizon.