Play

劇

Play

by James Comins

Published on Smashwords

Copyright 2016 James Comins

Cover art by Leonie Veenstra from freeimages.com

This eBook may not be excerpted or used for commercial or noncommercial purposes without written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Other books by this author

Visit his Smashwords page

Lenna and the Last Dragon

Lenna's Fimbulsummer

Lenna at the All Thing

The Stone Shepherd's Son

Casey Jones is Still a Virgin (for older readers)

13 Stories to Scare You to Death

My Dad is a Secret Agent

Where the Cloud Meets the Mountain and the Mountain Disappears

The Dark Crystal: Plague of Light

A Note on the Divisions

Noh plays are divided into five acts, called dan: Beginning, Beginning of the Action, Action of the Action, Climax of the Action, and Climax. The Japanese names for these five acts are jo, jo no ha, ha no ha, kyū no ha, and kyū. Where they are further subdivided, I've marked them ichi, ni, and san for one, two, three.

Table of Contents

Jo Ichi

Jo Ni

Jo San

Jo no Ha Ichi

Jo no Ha Ni

Jo no Ha San

Ha no Ha Ichi

Ha no Ha Ni

Ha no Ha San

Kyū no Ha Ichi

Kyū no Ha Ni

Kyū no Ha San

Kyū

Acknowlogies and Apoledgements

About the Author

for Tavin, with love

Jo Ichi

Act I, Scene One

A still silence. The electricity of expectation.

Opening night.

Consider the staging: Below you, your feet. Under your feet, a shadowy narrow backstage area blocked off by paper screens. Ahead of you, beyond the screens, is a narrow covered bridge called the hashigakari. It's lit from below by eight electric footlights. At the end of the hashigakari, just out of sight, a square stage waits for you beneath a roof of thin arches.

Look out through the trestles of the bridge. The stage's backdrop is a tall wall of yellow hinoki wood. A giant tree is painted across it. Leafy green branches are drawn in the scratchy brushstrokes of a Japanese master. Noh theater tells stories of wonder, and in Japan, wonder takes place in the trees.

Above the stage is a large hook hanging from a beam. It won't be needed tonight. The hook is there to hold up a bell, but the bell is only used in Dōjōji, the play of the haunted temple bell. It is not your play. Not today.

To your left is grass. The theater is set up in an open field beneath a mountain. Nothing separates you from the outdoors. Smell the fragrance of the wild rushes. Feel the shifting wind. Above you, the full and fearless moon rests in her glory, spreading enchanted light across the open-air theater. Fireflies flicker. Crickets play.

To your right is an audience.

Don’t look too closely. They might see you, and your cue has not been called.

You peer beyond the edge of the backstage pillar anyways. It’s a crowd of thousands. Motionless Japanese men and women wear dark suits and expectant looks. Their faces seem blank, expressionless. They might be dead. Only they probably aren’t, because they cough at regular intervals.

They are waiting for you.

Each performance of the Noh is unique. The story will never happen exactly the same way again. The audience joins the telling of the story. They sit so close to the stage that they could reach out and touch you. The audience will be a part of your world tonight, and you will be a part of theirs.

You will tell them a story.

Here.

Now.

Someone is standing behind you, very close. You spin. A long zucchini-shaped orange nose jabs you right between the eyes, a woodpecker peck. Muffled laughter, right in your ear.

His name is Punchinoni. Mister Punch. The devil jester.

It’s really just your friend Quinn in a costume, of course. She'll be playing the monster jester tonight. Lifting her wooden devil mask above her nose, she winks at you. She’s wearing a black-and-white diamond jester’s motley. Silently she pulls the mask back down over her face and becomes a boy for the night. In one of her hands is a prop sword. In the other she holds a second mask.

Your mask.

You reach forward and your own hands close around it.

A simple smile cut into brown wood. Eyeholes. It could be a girl or a boy. Tonight it is you.

Slipping the headband over your ears, you pull the mask down your face. Darkness and heat swell around you. The sound of your breathing. It’s like immersing yourself in the ocean. The cutout smile passes your eyes, and you find the eyeholes in the mask’s darkness. It all seems larger from the inside. It fills up your whole face. The wood balances on your chin, and then it all disappears.

You disappear.

Close your eyes. Open them again.

The world has changed.

No it hasn’t.

The mask has changed you.

You are the mask, for tonight. For tonight, you’re a gullible smiling sap. A bumpkin. Your world is a world of haystacks. Horses. Shovels. Sawdust.

Tonight you are Shanne, the country fool, the main character. Be the best, the countriest, the most foolish Shanne you can be.

Turn around. See the backstage world through fresh, foolish bumpkin eyes. You're alone. A pitchfork leans against a pillar. Quinn left it there for you.

Pick it up.

Lightweight, plain and smooth. A prop. A toy. But through your new eyes, it has weight and realness. This is your pitchfork. Every autumn you use it to bale hay for your horses. Tonight is the start of haying season.

An electric light blinks twice, red.

That’s your cue. Showtime.

Go ahead. Steel yourself, breathe, and make an entrance.

A pillow of applause. Familiar, comforting. In Japan there are no whoops, no screaming voices, only polite clapping. You plod along the yellow hashigakari bridge toward the stage. It's open on both sides, with only a thin railing between you and the audience. A distant smell of pine blows in along the mountain wind. The outdoors is invading the stage. Your farm is in a field beneath a mountain. Yes.

Your walk is bow-legged, ungainly, clopping. A poor rancher’s waddle. The pitchfork wags in your hand. Give it weight. The audience watches to see what you will do.

What do they see?

They see Shanne, a Japanese peasant, bumbling into a farmyard that exists clearly in their imaginations. Each imagination is different. Each farmyard is different. Each farmyard is real. Like all of Noh theater, the farmyard lies beneath a spreading green tree at the foot of a mountain.

You’re funny as Shanne, waddling, poking at things with your pitchfork. The audience watches. Perhaps they smile. Don't look directly at them to find out, though. They cannot see beneath your mask.

For now, ignore these spectators. Here you are onstage, beneath the arches and the empty bell hook. Floodlights stream in from behind the audience, yellow-white like straw and almost blinding. Move through the lights as if they aren't there. Lift that hay. Bale it beneath the midday sun. Smell the sweet alfalfa. Hear the neighing of far-off horses. They are your horses. Be proud of them.

Oh, no! Don’t look now, you silly bumpkin, but here is Punchinoni, that wicked, wicked Punch, carrying a military saber on his shoulder and marching stiff-legged into your farmyard like a tin soldier. With a flick of his orange-painted hand he throws his sword into the air and balances it on the tip of his orange zucchini nose. The saber stays aloft with only the gentlest of nose adjustments.

"Where'd you find that saber?

It's too sharp for a dull Punch like you,"

you recite rudely in your simpleton voice.

Punch pretends he suddenly notices you and dances