Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 2, August 2006
___________________________________________________________________
Coldiron,
Margaret, Trance and Transformation of the
Actor in Japanese Noh and Balinese Masked Dance-Drama. Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edward Mellen Press.
Studies in Theatre Arts, Volume 30, 2004,
pp. 350. ISBN 0-7734-6431-0 and 0-7734-9721-8.
Reviewed by
University of East Anglia
This
is a very useful book for anyone thinking about performance practice and
traditions, as well as investigating the processes and functions of masks in
ritual and performance. It is based on a great deal of detailed research; it
provides good and full accounts of the background, history and cultural context
of the traditions it examines; it is well-illustrated and clearly written.
The
book engages with previous work, and looks at the use of masks and masked drama
in Bali and in Noh; it deals with maskmaking and maskwork in performance; with
performer training and the aesthetics of performance; gives a series of relevant
and interesting case-studies; and is particularly interested in the
psychophysiological processes of masked performance and trance, which are
analysed in a clear and sensible way.
Early
on some of the distinctive characteristics of the two traditions are set out:
for Noh, restraint, the use of fixed form, links with Zen practice and a highly
poetic charge; for Topeng and Calonarang, absence of set text, basis in a mix of
history and mythology, and the use of improvisation. Where Noh masks are
refined, individualised and stylised, Balinese masks are mainly exaggerated
types not too different from those known to western Commedia – kings,
ministers, comics and demons. Underlying both kinds of practice is a strong
cultural matrix which supports the need for performers to inhabit or become the
masked ‘other’, which is not however perceived as radically separate from
the everyday world but rather contiguous with it.
Some
excellent summaries of the scope of the book are provided on pp. 19-20. The key
features of trance and transformation which are illustrated further in
subsequent chapters are:
dissociation
‘bringing
to life an exterior object, the mask’
the
performer’s function is to inhabit, not interpret
‘to
don a mask is…to lose one’s self’
‘a
kind of metaphorical death…to bring the mask to life’
practice
is ‘neither somnambulistic nor…frenzy…rather…a state in which the
actor both is and is not himself’
being
able to operate both subjectively and objectively
and
the book will cover:
a
literature review
an
account of masks/masked drama in Balinese and Japanese culture
maskmaking
performer
training
aesthetic
philosophies
case
studies – performers and performances
analysis
of psychophysiological processes
There
are 8 chapters and 49 colour illustrations of masks and performers/performances
– these are very good though sometimes a bit small; useful glossaries of
Balinese and Japanese terms are also appended There are also, within the text,
explanations of key terms (e.g. yûgen, kokoro for Noh) and major categories of
masks and plays.
The
diagram on Japanese history is helpful; that of Schechner’s ‘braid’ is
potentially useful in attempting to show how Noh and Topeng cross over
frequently between the two ends of the ‘entertainment-efficacy spectrum’.
However, this would have been a good deal clearer if different colours or
formats had been used for the lines tracing each form.
In
the Bibliography, the term ‘books’ is employed somewhat confusingly to
include articles and essays, as a contrast to ‘films’ (of which there are
not really enough cited to justify this aberration). It is perhaps surprising
that, although D. E. R. George’s work on Balinese forms is cited, there is no
reference to his 1999 volume Buddhism in/as Performance, which contains illuminating insights
on Noh.
Coldiron
is right to assert a fundamental difference in the underlying assumptions of
these forms from ‘western’ views of history, truth, time. The question here
is, does this radical difference mean that the whole reality/mimesis/imagination
‘braid’ is different? If so, is
the psychophysiological transformation process itself likely to be different in quality?
Or do the examples of Plato and Shakespeare, for example in the ‘Cave’
analogy and The Tempest
(Coldiron doesn’t mention either), indicate that this kind of
cultural/physiological interface is not ‘foreign’ at all but merely obscured
in the west? The plausible claim that these forms represent ‘fictions [which]
form the basis of cultural understanding’ (50) might be paralleled with
Raymond Sukenick’s postmodern view that ‘reality is a tissue of overlapping
fictions’, for instance. However, statements such as ‘the function of much
of Balinese masked drama is to help maintain [the] balance between the powerful
forces of the universe’ (59) and ‘the dichotomy between the sacred and the
profane has never been as well-defined in Japan as in the West, and aesthetic
values have as much force as moral ones’ (156/7) resonate effectively against
each other and help to establish fundamental parameters. So too, the indication
that ‘the mask belongs to the language of signs and the mask drama is a series
of signs that communicate, not through written or spoken language, but directly
via vision to thought’ (72, re. Topeng) makes it possible to situate the
western interest in these forms in terms of semiotics, theatre anthropology and
training for theatre practice, as Coldiron discusses in Chapters 1 and 2.
Later
chapters fill out the detail of the general evaluations in Chapters 1 and 2.
It’s difficult in a short review to avoid overemphasisisng the actual
and potential parallels between the forms, so it’s important to signal that
Coldiron does provide plenty of culture-specific contextualisation, particularly
with reference to underlying belief-structures and ritual practice. In the case
of Bali, she deals with:
The
social, political, economic and cultural environment
Distinctive
features of Topeng, Calonarang and Wayang Wong
Mask
making and ritual preparations
Dance
training
Taksu:
the state of ‘inspiration’.
All
these are broken down into further sections discussing e.g. the nature of
Balinese Hinduism, tenget (the sacred
power of trance) and pedagogy.
For
Japan the major divisions are:
Folk
mask traditions and the Shinto inheritance
The
development of Noh; Kanami and Zeami
Varieties
of court dance
Noh’s
status as ‘sacred performance art’
In
both cases there are comparisons, particularly with Indian practice, which could
usefully be made; but Coldiron seems wary of cross-referencing even virtually
identical claims about ‘origin’ or strongly similar teacher-pupil systems.
Perhaps because she’s aware of the danger of neo-colonialist homogenising, she
fails fully to pursue the implications of what is actually happening to
performers – and sometimes to other participants. She rightly signals both
Keith Johnstone’s somewhat confused veneration of the ‘Mask’ and the
western tendency to mystical interpretation as opposed to the pragmatism of
eastern practitioners, but rather closes off further avenues of discussion by
not cross-referencing Copeau’s and Lecoq’s identification of neutrality as
central to actor transformation, or assessing how far many of the processes used
by Balinese and Japanese actors, though clearly based in distinct aesthetic
assumptions, may generate the same kinds of psychophysiological state as methods
followed employed by performers elsewhere.
She
also accepts reports of ‘thousands’ of trancers in Barong processions
without exploring in what way the state they achieve may have arisen differently
and be of a different quality to that of the mask-wearing performers. What might
be the role of the ‘horizon of expectation’ here? In the case of Noh, she
again frequently refers to some special quality of masks which affects
performer, performance and reception, but does not really use the theoretical
models she has signalled to interrogate further the performers’ beliefs or
belief-structures: what about cultural politics or assumptions about gender
roles, for example? However, more direct comparisons are suggested in terms of
the physiological effects of wearing masks: severely limited vision and reduced
oxygen, plus the need to imagine the mask-self and hence suspend the everyday
variety.
There
are good accounts of training and performance aims and tasks in both traditions:
these are practical, not theoretical and physical, not verbal; both forms are
transmitted by means of a very strong teacher-pupil relationship. Both, like the
phenomena mentioned above, lead to an ability to ‘disassociate’ from
personal feelings and a tendency to operate rather like a puppet or a kind of
‘ego-less’ entity. The latter term would be more immediately applicable to
Noh, but Coldiron also notes that the weight and bulk of the costume in
Calonarang makes the character into a kind of ‘giant puppet’ (249)
manipulated by the performer.
Tasks
for Balinese performers are:
to
ensure the body is in tune with the music
to
animate the mask
to
respect the style of the mask
to
be open to possible hazards and possibilities of play.
The
first three aims apply equally to Noh, where training is also matter of
imitation and repetition; neither improvisation nor technical exercises figure,
Coldiron asserts; though some views of Suzuki’s work might qualify the latter
claim, and there is a sense in which technical mastery, as in Indian Kathakali,
may be the licence to a kind of virtuoso layer of extra subtlety. It is also the
case that for Zeami, ‘the flower only blooms once’, performers do not
rehearse together, and each performance is a one-off. So here too, whereas the
detail is accurate, the lack of lateral thinking sometimes compromises the
commentary. Other observations do however remedy this to an extent, for example
the statement that transformation in this kind of performance is a learned
skill, and central to it is the state or phase of mushin
(Chinese wu-hsin, cognate with
Sanskrit samadhi): emptiness is the
source of phenomenal change; also ‘the concentrated effort of imagination’
(40) of the masked performer leads to ‘physical, psychological and
neurophysiological alteration’. Coldiron quotes Kanze Hisao’s remark that
‘the Noh actor is something like a soul, always drifting between this world
and the other world’. The training for Noh enables physical and verbal
elements of performance to ‘exist at a level of subconscious automaticity’
where the body remembers and
performance is without ‘self-expression’ (157). Coldiron suggests that this
represents an altered state of consciousness (ASC) but doesn’t link it with
e.g. Winnicott’s and Cziksentimihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’, or with
Barba’s work on ‘pre-expressivity’, Lecoq’s explicit claim that ‘man
thinks with his body’ or even some aspects of the Proustian/Stanislavskian
investigation of ‘affective’ or ‘involuntary’ memory.
In
the account of the five key procedures of Noh (Jo-Ha-Kyû, Monomane, Hana, Yûgen,
Kokoro), there are good summary comments: for Monomane, in spite of its
translation as mimesis or role-playing, it is not imitation but transformation
which is required: the actor ‘obliterates his own identity and puts himself at
the service of the character defined by the mask’ (162); yûgen
indicates a minimalism producing a semiotic richness; kokoro a condition of ‘selfless concentration’ on which depends
the animating force required to bring the character to life. Here it might have
been useful to compare outcomes: in her account of a production of Tôru,
Coldiron signals the complete transformation achieved by the Noh performer from
a fragile old peasant to a virile and youthful aristocrat (275); Topeng Pajegan
requires the portrayal of a number of different characters by the same actor
(188). Both these would seem to link with what Keralan forms call pakarnattom
(multiple transformational acting) or Lecoq would characterise as disponibilité.
In other words it may be possible to use further degrees of comparison both
within and beyond Coldiron’s example to track the processes involved. It would
also have been helpful to draw on George’s (or Kiyoshi Tsuchiya's)
illuminating discussion of hana, and
the suggestion that through the key procedures of Noh, the spectator is drawn to
look at the stillness before or after the gesture or move, to listen to the
silence more than the note. The crucial factor in all these situations is the
foregrounding of the generative condition which performers can assist the
audience to enter and share.
p.
289 has a good summary of the elements which help to produce transformation, viz:
kinaesthetic
movement - muscular memory
ritual
preparations distance performer from ego
actor
unites with mask
body
distortion
mask
obscures identity, changes physiology
sacred
performance space
mythological
content
rhythmic
underlay
These
things affect the function of both the ergotropic and the trophotropic systems,
according to D'Aquili and Laughlin (for whom there is a sense in which myth and
ritual are neurobiologically necessary), and produce intense and unusual
affective states: Coldiron reports that her own experience confirms that
'relationship to self is fundamentally altered' by mask and costume. She
proposes a continuum of performance states, from imitation ('me') through to
trance possession ('not me'), passing through enactment, identification and
transformation ('not-not me'). Her discussion of the physiology of trance in
this section is quite extensive, though some questions remain and the
correlations sometimes seem odd (e.g. between 'dissociation' and samadhi).
But her claim that performance of this kind results in a 'holistic, intuitive
and imaginative mode of cognitive processing' (317) is largely substantiated by
both example and argument.