People :Performing Kyogen with students from the University of Rome at the National Noh Theatre
Mr. Shunsuke Ishikawa

orn in Tokyo in 1982. Graduated from Tokyo Gakugei University High School. Fifth year of the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, majoring in expressive arts. Assistant to Prof. Masaru Sekine of the School of International Liberal Studies. Performed with the Rome Kyogen Company. Member of the Tomon Scriptwriting Workshop. Will work at a TV CM production company after graduation.

This summer, a group of Italian students from the University of Rome performed Kyogen at the National Noh Theatre and received critical acclaim. It was the second performance to be directed by Prof. Masaru Sekine, who comes of the celebrated Kanze Noh family. Shunsuke Ishikawa accompanied Prof. Sekine to Rome, helped him with the staging of the Kyogen, and himself appeared in plays performed in Rome and Tokyo.

Shunsuke's interest in Kyogen began with the Waseda Theme College. When he was a first year student, he attended Prof. Sekine's class and learned about both Shakespeare and Kyogen. At the end of the course the students performed Kyogen as a class presentation, and that would have been the end of it. But, in the following year, Prof. Sekine asked him to help out again and Shunsuke accepted, eventually becoming the only student to accompany Prof. Sekine to Rome.

“I couldn't turn down Prof. Sekine's request,” he said with a laugh. Clearly he and Prof. Sekine get on well together and it was only a matter of time before he became fascinated with Kyogen. Rather shy by nature, his first performance was something of an ordeal. “It was embarrassing for me, as an amateur, to perform on the stage of the Noh Theatre!” he said. He was nervous at first, but in the second year, he threw reserve to the wind and began to enjoy his performances.

The Italian students of the Rome Kyogen Company were well acquainted with anime and other examples of popular Japanese culture. They arranged an Italian “Comedia dell'arte” into a Kyogen play and, by trial and error, adapted it in the style of Prof. Sekine's “KYOGEN”.

In Kyogen, there are many rules governing on-stage performance and actors have to use lines and gestures that are completely different from those we're familiar with in our daily lives. “If you look at it from another point of view, however, Kyogen allows us to use unusual forms of expression, and gives us full freedom to perform within its own rules.”

As part of his club activities Shunsuke made several movies and found a number of common elements in Kyogen which could be readily adapted to the visual arts.

“I prefer to work from a set of given ideas, not to start from scratch,” he said. This is one reason why he chose to work for a CM production company. “I need to work on adapting techniques which I learned in Kyogen to the making of visual images,” he said with a smile. We look forward to seeing his creations one day!