Juro Kara
| Jūrō Kara | |
|---|---|
| Born |
11 February 1940 Tokyo, Japan |
| Alma mater | Meiji University |
| Occupation | Theatre director, playwright, actor, author, songwriter |
| Years active | 2007–present |
Jūrō Kara (唐十郎 Kara Jūrō, born Ōtsuru Yoshihide (大靏 義英); 11 February 1940) is a Japanese playwright, theatre director, author, actor, and songwriter. He was "at the forefront of the underground theatre movement" in Japan.
Graduating from Meiji University, Kara formed his own theatre troupe, Jōkyō Gekijo (Situation Theatre), in 1963. They began performing in a red tent in Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku in 1967. According to the theatre historian, David G. Goodman, "Kara conceived his theatre in the premodern mold of kabuki—not the sanitized, aestheticized variety performed today, but the erotic, anarchic, plebeian sort performed during the Edo period (1600–1868) by itinerant troupes of actors who were rejected by bourgeois society as outcasts and 'riverbed beggars.' Emulating their itinerant forebears, Kara and his troupe performed throughout Japan in their mobile red tent." Kara won the Kishida Prize for Drama for Shojo kamen (The Virgin's Mask) in 1969, and the Akutagawa Prize for his novel Sagawa-kun kara no tegami in 1982. He later became a professor at Yokohama National University.
The movement sought to free itself of the mainstream social norms and fixated on fantasy and dream versus the realistic portrayal of daily life of other theatrical forms. It was widely popular with the public because the new forms were more entertaining than enlightening, and did not require a high level of education to be enjoyed.
The Little Theatre Movement in 1960s Japan didn't arise from nothing. It corresponded with many foreign influences such as the rise of the Off-Off-Broadway movement in New York, the productions of The Living Theatre, and Polish director Jerzy Grotowski's ideas of the importance of the body, who also had many of his writings translated into Japanese at the time. These and other experiments had a very real influence in Japan, but it would be wrong to conclude that it was foreign works that led to the birth of the Small Theatre Movement in Japan. The movement was very much a Japanese development which cultivated on Japanese soil even though it also received stimulation from the so-called international avant-garde. In Japan, this produced a few important things. First of all, it had created a bona fide and authentic Japanese contemporary theatre rooted in the Japanese character in lieu of being an imitation of the west. Second, these groups began creating their own works instead of depending on translated work often with the director of the company, usually a resident playwright, writing and staging a play on a subject of their choice. Third, the structure of dramatic literature in Japan transformed immensely. What was once mainly linear, realistic plays, became complex, multi-layered structures where time sequences were distorted and where the barriers that disconnected the ordinary from the extraordinary and reality from illusion were cast away. Fourth, there was a new attentiveness to the body of the actor, a movement away from the texts and oration. Kara's theory of the privileged body and Tadashi Suzuki's physical method arose from this range of work. This was a pursuit to absorb into contemporary theatre some of the characteristics of traditional Japanese theatre where the actor was primary over the text. Fifth, the theatre spaces were evolving. Formal theatres weren't the only places to venue performances anymore. Works were performed in small theatres, open spaces, tents, and even streets. And finally, there were numerous pursuits to bridge the gap between the traditional and contemporary. reinventing the practices and aesthetics of centuries of traditional theatre was a component in the creation a rooted theatre.
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