When Anna and Ursula attend the performance of ‘Ikuta’, Anna buys a programme from the box office which includes a brief introduction to the art of Noh.  Read the extract from the programme below and put the section headings in the correct order of the paragraphs A-F.

The Noh Experience

A   Noh is one of the world’s oldest, and yet most enduringly beautiful forms of theatre.  It has its roots in the early performing arts of ordinary peasants, but in the fourteenth century it grew into the refined form of dramatic art known today, largely thanks to the performer Kanami and his twelve year old son Zeami.  When the most powerful man in all Japan – the 17 year old shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu – saw them perform, he fell in love with Noh and for the following two hundred years it became the dramatic art of the aristocracy.

B   Like most aspects of Noh, the stage that you see today hasn’t changed since Zeami’s time.  The central part juts out into the audience, who sit around its three sides.  It is covered with something like a temple roof, supported on pillars.  The walkway leading from the actors’ entrance to the main part of the stage is lined with small pine trees.  More pine trees – painted ones this time - decorate the backdrop at the back of the stage.  On this simple platform, the thousand or so stories of Noh have been played out for hundreds of years.

C   The overall structure of every Noh play is the same.  There is always a traveller (the ‘waki’), usually a priest, who begins the play by telling the audience where he’s going and why.  On arriving there, he meets a ghost or spirit, played by the leading actor (the ‘shi-te’).  The spirit is desperate to tell the traveller about his sufferings, and the rest of the play tells the ghost’s tragic story in dialogue, verse and music.

D   But Noh is more than just drama, it is a whole performance experience incorporating music, dance and poetry.  In this sense it has more in common with modern, abstract forms of theatre than it does with the ‘realistic’ tradition that people in the West are used to.  To create the illusion of reality is not the aim of Noh.

E   Actors, who by tradition are nearly always male, perform in a highly stylized way, sometimes singing their lines, sometimes bursting into dance.  When playing women or ‘spirits’, the ‘shi-te’ wears beautifully crafted masks, often changing these onstage.  Very few props are used, other than the Chukei – a folding fan used to represent any number of different objects.  In their gestures and speech – in fact in their whole performance – actors follow strict rules laid down over six centuries ago by Zeami.

F   Apart from the pine trees, Noh plays have almost no scenery.  But this doesn’t mean that Noh lacks atmosphere.  Eerie music from flutes and drums helps create the mood, but it is the eight-member chorus sitting at the edge of the action that in fact brings the world of the Noh play alive.  Through their poetry the audience see not only the places that the characters pass through; but also their thoughts and emotions– their inner world.  All of this is part of what makes Noh an unforgettable experience.

Now read the text again and check how well you have understood it.

Finally, complete this summary based on the programme notes by using one of the words in the list for each gap.