different methods of approaching ultimate goal of theatre

To me, the biggest virtue of art is creativity and since theatre is a form of art, I thought creative work was always necessary for plays and performing arts. I believed that this creativity came from the untamed spirits and free movements because it parallels with free soul; if people were so trained in the certain form, they would not be capable of thinking creatively and set the limit to themselves in expressing their art. Therefore, I was a little bit surprised when Professor Aguas showed us the film on Bunraku that discusses the training of Japanese theatre performers and foreign performers learning in Australia from Master Suzuki. The Japanese theatre seemed to be very strict on training the performers and stress rigidity and control of every movement compared to Western theatre. Also, Japanese theatre requires a great amount of life-long dedication. It was designed to be difficult for normal people to just jump in to theatre and perform. This had never fit into my imagination of theatre before.

As I continued watching the video and observing the performers obtaining a learning of higher quality performance skills, my conception of theatre changed.  Even though creativity is important, if there weren’t necessary basic skills, it would be impossible to build more sophisticated and advanced dance movements. The same can be applied to the art of the famous Picasso. When people first see his drawings, they tend to say "what is that? I can even draw that!". However, we all consider Picasso as one of the greatest painters in the history because he developed his skills to draw something extraordinary and unique after he already mastered the basic skills, such as drawing reality as it is.

Also, the Noh stresses the cognition of performers because it is believed that basic skills are driven with their mind sets. When the performers were assured that they could do well with the strong and effective training, they managed to perform the task better.  I also could apply this theory into my personal life, which convinced me to believe Noh's theory, which is to improve the skills of the performers and the theatre itself.

Both Western and Asian theatre stress the importance of communicating with the audience, but they just have different means of approaching the ultimate goal. After the lecture, I realized that Western theatre focuses more on facial expression and freedom of movements, whereas the Japanese theatre concentrates on mindsets  and connectedness with nature.