Part IV:

Practice and Performance

One salient characteristic of noh is that the training of the performers cannot be clearly separated from the preparations for the performance. There are no drills to prepare the voice or the body, no scales to run through or warming up exercises, no role playing or breathing exercises, no exercises to improve concentration or rhythm; there is only performance. Practicing is always performing bits of a play and is usually done without interruption. The teacher forces the student to struggle through the entire section, correcting him only after he has completed the piece. In this sense practice is performance...When an actor practices by himself, he performs for himself, with as much concentration and self-projection as if he were on stage before an audience, although he may skip over purely formulaic parts.

An actor rarely practices with all of the instrumentalists and chorus members accompanying him. Some of the simplified types of practice are also done as stage performances. The simplest is unaccompanied chant (suutai) in which one or more performers sing the text. Such performances can be heard on the radio and are published as records and audio cassettes. An actor may also perform a selected danced section of the text to vocal music (shimai), or he may perform a somewhat longer section to both vocal and instrumental accompaniment (maibayashi), or sing such a section without dance (banbayashi). These abbreviated performances, all done without costumes or masks, may occur as independent recitals, or they be done between fully performed noh plays in a day's program. Such events may be seen as either practice or performance; the distinction is largely irrelevant.

Because of this elaborate practice/performance system and because each individual performer knows most or all of the parts for each play in the repertory, it is possible for a professional group to get together and perform a play without any rehearsals. This was standard before the recent past. Nowadays before a full noh performance the participants normally only get together once to listen briefly to the main actor's comments about his interpretation and run through the parts of the play which are important, difficult or require unusual timing and co-ordination.

It is not only all-round training and continual practice that makes single rehearsals a possibility; the structure of noh itself does much to aid memorization and to allow for mutual adjustment in actual performance. A noh play is constructed of building blocks or performance modules which are combined in predictable ways. Each specific play is a modification of a basic, underlying model. Although the various schools of performers may use different musical or movement patterns in a given play, the well-trained performer is aware of these differences as variations on the model...

As a result, performers have different attitudes towards rehearsals. Young performers who do not have the breadth of experience to adjust almost automatically to unexpected situations and who still have to reassure themselves about how all the parts fit together can find repeated rehearsals very useful...On the other hand, when experienced performers are doing an often-performed piece, they prefer not to over-rehearse because it takes the surprise out of the actual performance.

A noh play is a "one-time event." That is to say a play is normally produced only once by the same ensemble. Although an actor may perform a popular play numerous times in his life (especially if he gives performances for the public schools), he will normally do it with a different group of performers each time. There is usually only one chance for any group to create their version of a given play. This is an important element in the aesthetics and psychology of performance...

At the opposite end of the scale, when performers get together to do "misordered" noh (ranno), a performance in which everyone takes a role other than his professional role (i.e. drummers dance, kyogen players sing noh, etc.), they capitalize on the unexpected adjustments required in order to create amusement. Such performances, sometimes done as end-of-the-year parties add considerably to the performers' store of experience.

The actor Izumi Yoshio explains the pitfalls of over-rehearsal using the following metaphor. Imagine a line with a circle moving back and forth on it in uneven rhythm. If your goal is to hit the centre of the circle and you can accomplish that each time you try, the "game" soon becomes boring. This is what happens when noh performers become too accustomed to the rhythm and nuances of the others on stage. However, if you hit within the circle, now to the upper right, now towards the middle left, now almost on the edge, the pattern remains intact and your interest in the act increases. In noh performance this "almost, but not quite" hitting dead centre increases the creative tension among the performers on stage. Each has to adjust slightly to the actions of another to keep the performance within the circle, for if the circle is missed altogether the beauty of the pattern is destroyed. The necessity for constant adjustment sparks the performers' interest, deepens their concentration, and thereby intensifies the expression of the entire play.