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Year 12: IB Theatre - Research Presentation

Rakugo Theatre

Rakugo-sanmafestival

A Rakugo performance at the Sanma Festival, Meguro.

Although many stories have been adapted from written sources, Rakugo can be considered a genuine form of oral art because its principal route of transmission down to us has been through the lips of the performers. To this day there are no written manuals or librettos containing the full text of a performance or of the way a story has to be presented. There is mainly oral transmission from master to pupil.

References

vera46. (2008, September 14). rakugo [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rakugo-sanmafestival.jpg. CC BY 2.0.

Miyoko, S., & Heinz, M. (1981). Rakugo: Popular Narrative Art of The Grotesque. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 41(2), 417–459. 

Other Online Resources

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Video: Performance Demonstration

Summary: Watch Katsura Kaishi, a renowned RAKUGO performer, give a Rakugo performance in English.

Reference

watch. (2009, September 25). KATSURA KAISHI English RAKUGO [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhkYNpwTKIQ

Summary: Sunshine performs the famous old story of the boy with the long name at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto in 2013.

Mr. Sunshine, dressed in a kimono and bearing the two traditional props of the form — a fan (sensu) and a hand towel (tenugui) — was born in Toronto and is of Slovenian descent. One may enter fearing the twin terrors of cultural insensitivity and appropriation, just to find them unfounded. Because Mr. Sunshine, whose given name is Gregory Robic, is no drive-by enthusiast. Early in the show, as if anticipating the question of authenticity, he speaks of spending two decades in Japan and of his three-year apprenticeship under the rakugo master Katsura Bunshi VI. Now, Mr. Sunshine is only the second Westerner to become a rakugo master in Japan’s history.

References

Philips,  M. (2019). Review: ‘Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo’ Offers Stand-Up Comedy Without the Standing. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/theater/review-katsura-sunshines-rakugo.html 

Robic, G. [Katsura Sunshine]. (2014, January 20). RAKUGO IN ENGLISH - JUGEMU [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ8Tq5EotaE