More Mother Courage

Here, in fact, are a few more videos of recent productions. The first was at William and Mary.  (The picture above is from this college production.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeYwFzBNk2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC7senNIlyo



The second is the production that starred Meryl Streep. Tony Kushner did the translation of Brecht's play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mz5I1LmLLw&feature=related



Another is by the Antaeus Theater Company, a professional theater company from LA. It includes many of the songs from Mother Courage so that you may see them acted out.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find a picture from this production!  Below is a picture from rehearsal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0






Here is a YouTube video on Brecht's life and works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu_jOEAwQ6Q

The picture is from USC's site on Brecht.

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 2 (film)

Before the midterm, we watched some films that were based on English-language novels.  These films included Apocalypse Now, the 1944 Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles, and the 1999 David Copperfield with a very young Daniel Radcliffe.  (Note: the version of David Copperfield that we saw was a TV miniseries and not intended for theatrical release.)  However, English-language novels are not the only literary sources that filmmakers draw on!

One could also adapt a play by Shakespeare as director Franco Zeffirelli and two other authors did with The Taming of the Shrew in 1967.  (Zeffirelli has also directed two direct adaptations of Shakespeare's plays: the 1968 Romeo and Juliet that you may have seen in high school as well as a 1990 Hamlet starring Mel Gibson as well as a 1996 theatrically-released version of Jane Eyre and film versions of various operas such as Otello and La Traviata.)  Although, as we saw, The Taming of the Shrew was filmed in the studio,  the set designer and the director did enough to counteract the staginess that older films based on plays often have.  Many scenes take place outdoors.  We first glimpse the "good" sister Bianca at a festival in the town square where students serenade her and lift up her veil.  Later on, Kate and her bridal party wait for Petruchio on the stairs into the cathedral, and the newly married couple are caught in the rain.  This film version contains a good deal of physical comedy as Petruchio pursues Kate, even on the rooftops, and they plunge into a bed of feathers.  As Kate, Elizabeth Taylor rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at Richard Burton's Petruchio.  Kate is introduced with a really intriguing shot as she looks out through a keyhole at her sister's would-be suitors.  Later on there is another shot where Bianca looks out through a keyhole.  I wish that we had been able to watch the scene where Kate gives her speech on a wife's duty.  How did Ms. Taylor perform that speech?!

EN 202 being a course in world literature, we also watched Chinese director Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, a film from 1991, just two years after the events in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.  Raise the Red Lantern is  based on Su Tong's 1990 novella Wives and Concubines.  (I have just ordered this book from Amazon!) Zhang Yimou has also directed the historical films Red Sorghum and To Live as well as The House of Flying Daggers, a more action-oriented film.  In Raise the Red Lantern, university student Songlian (played by Gong Li) travels to northern China to become the fourth wife (or Fourth Mistress) of Chen.  She lives in a compound with Chen's other wives although each woman has her own house.  This compound is in the country, but we do not see much of the countryside, except in the very beginning of the film as Songlian walks to the compound.  The other wives are the older and psychologically distant First Mistress, mother of Chen's older son; Zhouyan, the second wife who appears to be very friendly and cheerful but is plotting against the others; and Meishan, a former opera singer who is the mother of Chen's younger son as well as the mistress of Doctor Gao.  Raise the Red Lantern takes place in the 1920s, a time of unrest throughout China although the Chinese Civil War did not begin until 1927.  The scene pictured above is of the lighting of the red lanterns, which signifies the house where Chen will spend the night.  In the film, it is a family tradition; therefore, Chen does not wish to question it.  Above Songlian is shown with her maid, Yan'er, who had had hopes of becoming the Fourth Mistress and, as we see, has hung red lanterns in her room.  (Or has Chen hung them there?)  After Songlian's ruse to feign pregnancy is discovered, and she betrays both Yan'er and Meishan, acts that result in their deaths, Songlian has a breakdown.  In the next to last scene, she is observed by Chen's new bride, the Fifth Mistress.

What did you make of the ending to Raise the Red Lantern?

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 1 (drama)

This study guide for drama & theater will cover A Doll's House, Mother Courage, and The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The Taming of the Shrew will be included in our film unit.  The Japanese play Shintoku-Maru and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean will not be included on the final--unless you'd like to mention them in the extra credit section! 

The picture above is from the now defunct Boston Shakespeare Company's 1984 production that starred the 4'9" actor Linda Hunt as Mother Courage.  One of my former professors has argued that Ms. Hunt's Mother Courage is among the best portrayals of that role (other than Helene Weigel's, of course!).  Below is an undated picture of Ms. Weigel in this role:


I've also highlighted the midterm study guide because that entry contains information about the difference between drama and theater *and* some historical background about A Doll's House.

To begin with...here is a review of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's "problem play" from 1879.  It was originally written in Norwegian although it was soon translated into other languages including English.  At the time it was first performed, A Doll's House was controversial, especially because of its ending!  The play is set at Christmastime in Norway (Oslo?).  The characters are Nora Helmer, a youngish woman whom no one takes seriously; her husband, Torvald, a lawyer who has finally been hired to manage the National Bank; Krogstad, a bank employee who has lent Nora money and whom Torvald is about to fire; Mrs. Linde, Nora's school friend who is about to be hired by Torvald; and Doctor Rank, a dying friend of the family who confesses his love for Nora.  Nora and Torvald have three children.  Nora borrowed money so that Torvald (who was then ill) could travel to Italy's warmer climate.  However, as Torvald refused to borrow money, she forged her dying father's signature so that she could borrow money from Krogstad.  (In the 19th century, a woman could not borrow money on her own; furthermore, very much unlike today, her husband was generally awarded custody of their children--if their marriage dissolved.)  The play begins as Krogstad threatens to blackmail Nora.

The 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht's work can be considered in opposition to the previous generation's plays (like A Doll's House) that are well-made, are very much suited to the proscenium stage with its fourth wall, and have consistent characters with back stories and motivation that we can discuss.  (Note that Ibsen's advocates in English included the failed playwright and ground-breaking novelist Henry James.)  On the other hand, Mother Courage takes place over twelve years (1624 to 1636) as Anna Fierling (aka Mother Courage) tries to hold her family together and profit from the war, selling food, drink, clothes, and ammunition to both sides.  At one point, as the Catholics overcome the Protestant forces, Mother Courage, her family, and their hangers-on change religions.  Mother Courage's family is made up of Eilif, who joins the Protestant army despite her protests; Swiss Cheese, who is killed while his mother haggles over the means to pay a bribe; and Katrin, the mute daughter who is raped and later sacrifices herself to warn villagers of an approaching army.  The hangers-on include Mother Courage's two suitors, a Protestant chaplain and a cook (who tries to convince her to abandon war profiteering and help him run a tavern in Utrecht, away from the battlefield), and Yvette, a prostitute whose red shoes are stolen by Katrin.  Mother Courage and Her Children (the full name of the play) was written in 1939 when the playwright was in exile from Nazi Germany.  (Brecht was a Communist and known for his politicized theater.)  Ideally, the audience is discouraged from sympathizing with Mother Courage and the other characters, and actors are expected to be critical observers of their characters' actions.  Practically, this approach may have made this play difficult to stage although this is probably not the only factor.  Other plays by Brecht include The Threepenny Opera and The Good Woman of Setzuan.  As in The Threepenny Opera, the characters of Mother Courage (except for Katrin, of course) often break into songs intended to comment on the play's action.  Can you imagine Nora and Torvald breaking into song like that?!  OTOH, as I mentioned in class, an actor who has done well with roles like Chicago's Mama Morton, Velma, or Roxie probably could do well with the role of Mother Courage!

With the unit's final play, The Love Suicides at Amijima, we move back in time to 1720 and to a very different theater.  The playwright Chikamatzu Monzaemon wrote this play for the bunraku theater, a Japanese theater that relies on puppets and a chanting narrator.  However, as has been noted, the play was also performed in the kabuki theater by human (male) actors.  From 1629 until very recently, women were not allowed to act in kabuki.  The Love Suicides at Amijima tells the story of Koharu, a young prostitute, and her lover Jihei, a married man, youngish father, and struggling paper merchant.  Because they cannot be together, the lovers commit suicide at a Buddhist temple.  Jihei's wife (and cousin) Osan is surprisingly accepting of her husband's involvement with Koharu, but her family tries to break up the love affair.  At one point, Jihei's brother disguises himself as a samurai and pretends to be Koharu's customer. 

Here is a picture of The Love Suicides at Amijima

  The picture below is a close-up of bunraku, a puppet theater for which The Love Suicides at Amijira was originally written:
  Below is a picture of images from Kabuki theater:

The Love Suicides at Amijima

I should be grading my papers from EN 101A, and in class we are moving on beyond drama to...film, but I thought that I would post a quick blog entry on the play that we have just read, The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The picture above is from a 1997 English-language version performed at NYC's LaMama Theater.  For more information about this production, see this link below:

http://www.theatrejapan.com/amijima.html

A professor at Washburn University in Kansas has posted background on the play. 

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Chickamatsu.html

For more information about bunraku (the genre that this play originally belonged to):

http://www.japan-zone.com/culture/bunraku.shtml

http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html

http://www.puppetcentre.org.uk/animationsonline/aotwentyone/ao21_whatsinaname.html

Here are video clips of bunraku although not of Love Suicides:

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/video.html

In 1969, a film version of Love Suicides (Double Suicide) appeared:

http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/shinoda-masahiro/double-suicide.html

Southside by Dream City Theater Group (in progress)

The Washington DC area offers a wide variety of theater.  Just a couple of weeks ago my husband and I went to see international theater director Yukio Ninagawa's production of Shintoku-Maru at the Kennedy Center.  Last spring I saw a thrilling production of Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater near the Verizon Center.  The Gala Theater stages various productions, many of which are in Spanish.  (My husband and I saw Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas' two-man play, Representa! there.)  There are also the Synetic Theater's non-verbal performances grounded in Russian theatrical tradition.  (Someday I have to go out to Virginia where this company is based.)  Tonight we saw the Dream City Theater's staged reading of Southside, a play reworking the story of the 2004 Ballou shootings in which one young man killed a football star who was bullying him.  (The picture above is of Ballou Senior High where Thomas J. Boykin shot James Richardson.)

Unlike many of the theater companies in the area, the Dream City Theater is very local.  Its productions retell the stories of people living in Washington.  The first production of Dream City Theater's that I've seen was The 70, a play set on a Metrobus traveling from downtown Silver Spring down Georgia Avenue past Howard University and then Gallery Place and to the Southwest Waterfront.  Having lived in Silver Spring and spent much time near Gallery Place, I have often seen this bus.  Here is a little more about The 70:

http://www.dreamcitytg.org/projects/the70.htm    

This summer The 70 will be performed at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street.  It will be interesting to see this play in a more final form. 

Here is more information about tonight's play, Southside:

http://www.dreamcitytg.org/projects/southside.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021401125.html

Washington Post journalist Rachel Beckham interviews an actor from this play, Eddie B. Ellis.  He plays the role of a thirtyish prisoner who befriends Rondell, the young shooter.  Ellis served 15 years, many in super-max prisons, for manslaughter and now speaks to audiences about his experiences. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002771.html

As the evening's performance was a staged reading, the actors read from their script, and there was some blocking but no props.  The individuals in a given scene would stand up at the front of the stage and read their lines while those not in that scene sat in a row of chairs at the back of the stage.  Actors wore street clothes although one actor playing a grandmother wrapped a sweater around herself as if it were a shawl. Several people played more than one part.  For the most part, this was not confusing.  One man played a scared security guard, a character based on former Mayor Anthony Williams, and a corrections officer.  He really was a ringer for the mayor, even without the bow tie! 

The play is not an exact retelling of the events in 2004.  The playwright, John Muller, has added a subplot about a young boy, Yummy, who sells loose candy to make money for his shiftless mother and his family and eventually takes money from a local thug ("Kojo") to shoot Rondell, the boy who shot Pee-Wee.  Yummy is based on a boy from Chicago who had committed 23 felonies and five misdemeanors before being killed himself to avenge a murder.  He became the subject of a Time cover story in 1994:  http://www.gregneri.com/Time_magazine.html  Here are links to stories about the 2004 shooting:  http://www.washingtonpos.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24158-2004Feb8.html
http://www.washingtonpos.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13630-2004Feb4.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60982-2004Dec13.html

After the performance, the theater group held a question and answer session, beginning with questions directed to the playwright and moving on to those directed to the actors.  The topics of questions ranged from the playwright's writing process to the relationship between the play and the actual events in 2004 to the casting process to the lessons that the cast had learned from the experience of performing this play to future performances in the area where the play was set.  Again, this play is a work in progress, so the playwright was eager to find out what we thought. 

I will continue to keep an eye on Dream City Theater's work.

Midterm Study Guide -- Spring 2008 -- part 2 (films!)

  Now let's have something more than this picture of Martin Sheen as Willard!

At this point, we've seen scenes from three films.  I am going to take out the copy of A Doll's House that the Rockville campus' library has, but I will include any information from that film on the study guide for drama/theater.

Apocalypse Now (1979) dir. Francis Ford Coppola (who also directed The Godfather--parts 1, 2, and 3).  According to Coppola at the time, "This isn't a film about Vietnam.  This is Vietnam."  The cast included Martin Sheen (Willard), Marlon Brando (Kurtz), Robert Duvall (Lt.Col. Kilgore, the officer with the cavalry hat), a very young Laurence Fishburne (Clean, one of the men on the boat), Albert Hall (Chief, the captain of the boat), Frederic Forrest (Chef, another of the men on the boat), Timothy Bottoms (Lance, the surfer on the boat), and Dennis Hopper (the photojournalist/a revision of the Russian in Heart of Darkness).

Jane Eyre (1944) dir. Robert Stevenson.  The novelist Aldous Huxley was among the screenwriters for this film.  In a number of scenes, Jane's narration appears as highlighted text in a book.  Some of this narration is not Bronte's novel but Huxley et al's screenplay.  Similarly, Dr. Rivers, the one adult who is kind to Jane, appears in the film but not in the book.  Joan Fontaine plays Jane as an adult; Peggy Anne Garner plays her as a child.  Orson Welles plays Mr. Rochester, her Byronic employer and later husband.  Margaret O'Brien plays Jane's pupil and Mr. Rochester's illegitimate daughter, Adele.   With this film's deep focus, it is hard to believe that it was filmed on a set and not at an actual castle.

David Copperfield (1999) -- This version of Dickens' novel (the closest thing we'll probably ever get to his autobiography) stars Daniel Radcliffe as the young David Copperfield.  We saw the following scenes: the evening that David is born to his widowed mother (his aunt Betsy Trotwood visits), David's term at a bad school (Ian McKellan plays the foul-tempered teacher), and his visit from Barkis (who will later marry David's nurse Peggotty) and Peggotty's nephew Ham.  At this bad school, David nevertheless meets Steerforth, a spoiled young man who becomes the boy's protector.

Which of these films would you include in a film and literature course?

Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, and Other Movies Based on 19th Century Novels

As we finish up our unit on novels and life writing, I thought that I'd show some movies based on canonical 19th century novels.  These movies will make for an interesting bridge between Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter.

The picture above is from the 1944 Jane Eyre starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles.  The link below is to a review of the DVD of this movie.  I like that it focuses on both the book and the movie, putting both in context.  By the way, one of the screenwriters for this movie was Aldous Huxley, an important novelist in his own right.

http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/jane-eyre/4599

Here is the IMDB page for this movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036969/

Here British journalist Tanya Gold explains the appeal of Jane Eyre:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=407404&in_page_id=1879
 The picture below is from the most recent version of Jane Eyre:

In 1996, Franco Zeffirelli directed a theatrically-released version of Jane Eyre starring Charlotte Gainsborough and William Hurt.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116684/

Below is a poster from the 1999 version of David Copperfield that we will see in class.

Although this poster dates from the 1970s (it is colorized), it is a great picture of the 1935 version of David Copperfield with W.C. Fields as Mr. Micawber.
For more information about the novel David Copperfield, see this page by David A. Perdue:

http://charlesdickenspage.com/copperfield.html

PBS' site for the 1999 David Copperfield is here. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/programs/davidcopperfield/index.html

Interviews with the director and the screenwriter respectively are below:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/programs/davidcopperfield/ei_curtis.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/programs/davidcopperfield/ei_hodges.html

If you are more visually oriented, you may enjoy this article:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/archive/programs/davidcopperfield/notes.html

Bleak House is my favorite novel by Dickens:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/bleakhouse/index.html

However, I mustn't neglect Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (who hated each other):

Or the recent remake of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

But, as I've said in class, one often neglects the fact that people other than the British were writing novels and that movies were made of these novels.

See this link for Roger Ebert's review of Cousin Bette, a 1998 film based on one of Balzac's novels:  http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980612/REVIEWS/806120303/1023

You may find Cousin Bette to be more interesting as it details a forty-something woman's revenge on her family and the man who refused to marry her:

This year Jacques Rivette directed an adaptation of Balzac's novella, The Duchess of Langaise.  However, it was not well-received, and it left the E Street Cinema pretty quickly.

http://www.observer.com/2008/balzac-book-goes-bust-big-screen-atrocities-africa

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08102/872313-42.stm

In 1993, French director Claude Berri made a movie based on Emile Zola's novel Germinal:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107002/



I am surprised that I did *not* see this movie as one of my friends back in the day had liked Zola's novel.  The picture above is a scene from that movie. 

Every so often someone does a film version of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther

http://www.the-sorrows-of-young-werther.com/index2.html

And then there is Tolstoy's War and Peace:

http://www.artdish.com/ubbcgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=39&t=000327

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid53137.aspx

Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda starred in a Hollywood version of War and Peace.

Mother Courage and Her Children

After reading an article like this, how could I not add Ibsen & Brecht's plays to our reading list for EN 202?

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34341

But why are these theater critics so concerned about DC theaters' restricting themselves to English-language playwrights and their works?  Why do they want local theaters to produce works by playwrights like Ibsen, Brecht, or, more importantly, those active in Eastern Europe, Latin America, or the Middle East?

Let's start with this biography of Brecht with its overview of his career and his approach to theater.  Note that he was reacting against an emotional, realistic theater and striving for one that was more politically and intellectually engaged.  Note as well that Mother Courage and Her Children comes out of the period of time leading up to WWII.  At that point, Brecht had already escaped from Nazi Germany.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brecht.htm

Brandeis University has reprinted this article on Brecht's epic theater, which explains his approach in more detail:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

For more information about Brechtian theater, see this set of pages from the University of Southern Australia.  In fact, the link will go to a table of contents, making for a more efficient blog entry. 

http://www.usq.edu.au/performancecentre/education/goodwomanofszechwan/brechtandtheatre.htm

This site from Cambridge's American Repertory Theater includes a brief summary of the play as well as a cast list and photographs:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage.html

More importantly, here is a link to Gideon Lester's history of the play's successful (and unsuccessful) performances:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage2.html

ART's production is reviewed here:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/00630946.htm

Here is a review of the Steppenwolf Theater's production from about the same time:

http://www.artscope.net/PAREVIEWS/mothercourage101801.shtml

Recently, the playwright Tony Kushner translated Brecht's play into English for the production pictured at the top of this entry:

http://www.hotreview.org/articles/tonykushneronmc.htm

Peter Marks reviewed this production (in NYC) for the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201436.html

The theater company that Brecht himself founded, The Berliner Ensemble, performed Mother Courage at a festival in Iran:

http://iranfacts.blogspot.com/2008/02/mother-courage-and-her-children-brecht.html

Ah, here are some posts about Mother Courage in Charlottesville!

http://cvillemuse.com/2008/04/02/mother-courage-and-her-children/

http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/entertainment/theatre_arts/article/mother_putting_cart_before_her_heart/7717/

The URL below links to a podcast interview with the production's director:

http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2008/03/27/mother-courage-and-her-children/

And here is a picture from the production in Charlottesville.

Japanese Film & Theater

I'm glad that we've gotten a chance to watch Kurosawa's Ran, and I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say about this amazing film on Monday. However, I realized that an entry on Japanese film and theater and therefore acting styles might be useful. Mainstream American acting styles tend to be more realistic, so some of the performances in Ran (especially Tatsuya Nakadai's portrayal of the warlord Hidetora and Mieko Harada's portrayal of the evil Lady Kaede) might have seemed unusual to you, especially since the director Akiro Kurosawa probably was not playing on cultural stereotypes the way that Peter Brook may have been in the Mahabharata. And Kurosawa was clearly operating in a different tradition from the one that Al Pacino was in Looking for Richard.

Here is an American writer's article that puts Kurosawa's work into the context of Japanese film and mainstream film. (The questions are these: did Kurosawa "sell out"? Are his films more Westernized than Japanese?).

http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/kurosawa.html

These two sites discuss Nakadai's performance in a little more detail.
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/kurosawa-akira/ran.html
http://www.criterion.com/asp/in_focus.asp?id=15

Dr. Patrick Crogan's "Translating Kurosawa" examines the director's career overall but does not discuss Ran. Nevertheless, he makes useful points:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/kurosawa.html

For more information about contemporary Japanese film, see these sites:

http://www.csuohio.edu/history/japan/japan15.html

http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Reviews.html

http://www2.shizuokanet.ne.jp/usr/onitsuka/English%20page.html

http://www.midnighteye.com/
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/japanese.html

Here are sites on the history of Japanese film:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reruns/rr0499/PUerr6.htm
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/japan-60-1.jsp

More importantly, here are sites on Kabuki, a popular type of Japanese theater that may have influenced Ran. I hope that the video works! Ironically, samurai were forbidden from watching these types of plays.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/02/bresn/bresn.htm

http://www.us-japan.org/edomatsu/tsukiji/frame.html

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/spotkabuki.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6580589105119878240&q=kabuki

Other types of theater are Noh, Kyogen, and Bunraku. Noh is more tragic whereas Kyogen is comic. Bunraku is a type of puppet theater.

http://www.iijnet.or.jp/NOH-KYOGEN/english/english.html
http://www.artelino.com/articles/noh_theater.asp
http://www.hirohurl.net/kyogen.html
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2002/Articles1202/NohThea...
http://www.bunraku.or.jp/
http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html