Instead of using Bon Odori in one of the story , I decided to change it to Kabuki dance as it helps comes out with more interesting ideas and introduce some of the culture in Japan.
In this post, I will be trace back only some Kabuki theatre history , what is the fact of the Kabuki dance and from that I found some interesting points and the inspiration of building story in one of the scenes in this project.
From the research article of the overview about Kabuki in web-japan.org ,Kabuki is one of the three major classical theatre in Japan. Kabuki is designed for entertainment, often spectacular, effects. This classical theatre has started few centuries ago since the year of 1603. While I glance through the history of Kabuki research in Wikipedia, Kabuki had quite complicated transform from male and female actor.
In the traditional Kabuki, female performers played both men and women role, however it gone viral and got banned due to the augmented of prostitution performance. Therefore, after women got banned in dancing Kabuki, male performers were played the both men and women role. In this era, male performers were called yaro-kabuki. However , in this decades, young (adolescent) men were preferred for women's roles due to their less masculine appearance and the higher pitch of their voices compared to adult men. Due to the erotic context and performance were so ribald, these Kabuki performers were got banned too. After all the transformation of era and the world war II, the Kabuki performers today is both equal for both female and male and avoid of prostitution.
Here is the video that I found that introduce of Kabuki dance. I really get shocked when I found out the history of Kabuki performance, as male can be play the women role and acting the elegance gesture or body movement just same as women.
Other than that, I found more interesting information about Kabuki in unesco.org.
"Kabuki plays are about historical events and moral conflict in relationships of the heart. The actors speak in a monotone voice and are accompanied by traditional instruments. The Kabuki stage is equipped with several gadgets, such as revolving stages and trapdoors through which the actors can appear and disappear. Another speciality of the Kabuki stage is a footbridge (hanamichi) that extends into the audience. Important characteristics of Kabuki theatre include its particular music, costumes, stage devices and props as well as specific plays, language and acting styles, such as the mie, in which the actor holds a characteristic pose to establish his character. Keshÿ, the particular make-up, provides an element of style easily recognizable even by those unfamiliar with the art form.
After 1868, when Japan opened to Western influence, actors strove to heighten the reputation of Kabuki among the upper classes and to adapt the traditional styles to modern tastes. Today, Kabuki is the most popular of the traditional styles of Japanese drama."
Therefore, after research about Kabuki and found that interesting point of male playing the women role in Kabuki, I want to implement this to the story when the dream eater "Baku" this character sabotage human's dream. This idea will appear in the second dream that Baku sabotage, I want to make a twist about this Kabuki dance in the story.
In the story of this project , in one of the dreams, there are Kabuki stage and one performer were dancing in the stage just like the video showed in above. This performer will be cover by the fan, all the audience will not know this performer real identity is a male playing the role of women Kabuki. However, this performer were depicted in very pretty and elegance appearance, while all the audience are male. Until there are some interaction that Baku needs to sabotage this dream , at the end of the story user might get to know the real identity of that Kabuki dancer or either they will led to another outcome which is the
Noppera-bō(the faceless ghost).
The twist is, the dreamer actually thought that he has entered to a women Kabuki as from the research the history of women Kabuki that plays erotic themes/prostitutions. Therefore, audiences included the dreamer were very excited about it. Baku as the dream destroyer were tried to unfulfilled this dreamer's dream, he was tried to sabotage the dreams as brought out the real identity of this Kabuki performers is actually a male that playing the women role.
As came to the end of the scene, there will be some sharing knowledge to introduce this Kabuki for the user.
References
Angelparfait, (2008). tamasaburo kabuki dance. [Online Video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABV86sCZ0FQ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2014].
Section, U. (2014). UNESCO Culture Sector - Intangible Heritage - 2003 Convention :. [Online] Unesco.org. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/RL/00163 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2014].
Web-japan.org, (n.d.). About Kabuki. [Online] Available at: http://web-japan.org/museum/kabuki/about_ka.html [Accessed 1 Oct. 2014].
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