Kyogen & Karaoke

After our trip to Asakusa, we had the opportunity to view a form of traditional Japanese theater, Kyogen. It was presented by Don Kenny who has modified the art for English speaking audiences. The performance is always a comedy, but with few props and much voice inflection. If you are able to find a Don Kenny performance online (maybe YouTube?) let me know. The only props used are a small fan and sometimes a mask to create a character that is non-human or ugly. Really. I couldn't make that up. The five masks he brought for display were a demon, a god, an ugly young girl (I know it's wrong but I am just sharing what I learned), an angry old woman (I know, I know), and an animal. The mask I am showing is the animal mask. It was a very unique performance that requires great physical control of both body movements and voice. Maybe we could put something similar together for the Freshman Teams? Just a thought.


As promised, here is my karaoke experience. First let me say I just learned how to spell karaoke and if there are misspellings on previous pages, I am sorry. After shopping around, we found a karaoke place called the Big Echo not far from Tokyo Tower. They charged roughly $10 per hour per person. I think I need to open one in Tucson because -- wow -- you could make a pretty decent profit with a microphone and some background music. Anyway. Karaoke in Japan is different than in the US as you go into a small room with your group and sing with or for them. Not in front of strangers as we usually do in the United States. After searching through a huge book that was almost entirely in Japanese, we found some Madonna, Mr. Big, Crash Test Dumbies, Bon Jovi, and Billy Joel. Even better than my singing (I love early Madonna) were the videos that they played behind the words on the screen. During Michael Jackson's "Beat It" was a young Japanese girl dancing. Why is that funny? Because for several minutes we thought it was Michael. Sorry Michael.