Samuel L. Leiter

Unique in any Western language, this is an invaluable resource for the study of one of the world's great theatrical forms. It includes essays by established experts on Kabuki as well as younger scholars now entering the field, and provides a comprehensive survey of the history of Kabuki; how it is written, produced, staged, and performed; and its place in world theater. Compiled by the editor of the influential Asian Theater Journal, the book covers four essential areas - history, performance, theaters, and plays - and includes a translation of one Kabuki play as an illustration of Kabuki techniques.

History and Performance

A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance

James R. Brandon

Kabuki Plays On Stage represents a monumental achievement in Japanese theatre studies, being the first collection of kabuki play translations to be published in twenty-five years. Fifty-one plays, published in four volumes, vividly trace kabuki's changing relations to Japanese society during the premodern era. Volume 1 consists of thirteen plays that showcase early kabuki's scintillating and boisterous styles of performance and illustrates the contrasting dramatic techniques cultivated by actors in Edo (Tokyo) and Kamigata (Osaka and Kyoto). The twelve plays translated in Volume 2 cover a brief period, but one that saw important developments in kabuki architecture, acting, dance, and the manipulation of characters and themes. As the series title indicates, the plays were translated to capture the vivacity of performances on stage. The translations, each accompanied by a thorough introduction that contextualizes the play, are based not only on published texts, but performance scripts and the study of the plays as they are performed in theatres today. Each volume is lavishly illustrated with rare woodblock prints in full color of Tokugawa- and Meiji-period productions as well as color and black-and-white photographs of contemporary performances.

Villainy and Vengeance, 1773-1799

Kabuki Plays on Stage. Volume 2

Surveys traditional and contemporary Asian theatre through hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries written by more than 90 expert contributors.

Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre: O-Z

The careers and contributions of eight outstanding directors of the 20th-century English-speaking stage are explored in this study which also contains a wide-ranging introduction, separate brief chronologies of each director, and a select bibliography. Belasco, Granville-Barker, Abbott, Guthrie, Webster, Kazan, Littlewood, and Brook are discussed in terms of their choices of repertory, stylistic attitudes toward production, and varied rehearsal modes as well as their unique innovations that transformed 20th-century theatre experience. Influential theatre writings by these directors are also highlighted.

Representative Directors of the English-speaking Stage

From Belasco to Brook

This first volume in a series collecting kabuki play translations draws on new research in kabuki performance and history and presents translations of traditional plays by 22 scholars ranging from the eminent to emerging. Includes over two dozen playwrights and 51 plays representing a range of history or period plays (judaimono), domestic plays (sewamono), and dance pieces (shosagoto or buyo-geki). Plays were selected to show the widest array of kabuki dramaturgy from the Genroku era to the turn of the 20th century. Fine color and b&w illustrations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Brilliance and Bravado, 1697-1766

Kabuki Plays on Stage. Volume 1

University of Hawaii Press

Kabuki Plays on Stage: Darkness and desire, 1804-1864

Stanca Scholz-Cionca

This is the most internationally comprehensive collection on Japanese theatre ever published. A team of authors from ten nations contributes twenty-five wide-ranging essays, covering everything from kagura ritual forms to postmodern angura.

Japanese Theatre and the International Stage

The most reliable source for data on productions of the New York stage, both Broadway and Off Broadway, is now complete from 1920 through 1950 with the publication of a third volume devoted to the 1940s. Like its predecessors, this new volume provides factual data and anecdotal and analytical description of every legitimate play, musical, revue, or revival staged in the New York professional theatre and reviewed by the press during the decade: in this case, nearly 1150 productions. Ten appendixes (see contents) offer listings of plays chronologically and in categories as well as play sources, awards, information on theatres, institutional theatres, and foreign companies, reviewers, and various statistics. A selected bibliography and indexes of names and titles complete the work.

The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1940-1950

Jirō Yamamoto

Provides more than 1500 entries for performers, plays, and other topics related to kabuki.

A Revised Adaptation of Kabuki Jiten

New Kabuki Encyclopedia

Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864, is the third volume in a monumental new series-the first collection of kabuki play translations to be published in nearly a quarter of a century. Fifty-one plays, published in four volumes, vividly trace kabuki's changing relations to Japanese society during the premodern era. The fourteen plays translated in Volume 3, Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864, mark an extreme point in the development of kabuki dramaturgy. The plays are remarkable, even within kabuki, for their intense theatricality, gutsy individualism of character, cold-blooded and ferocious violence, realism pushed into fantasy and grotesquery, novelty for its own sake, sexual aggressiveness, and assertion of female will. The plays depict a society in extremis, the end of an era, a time often marked by unmitigated darkness and desire.

Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864

Kabuki Plays On Stage. Volume 3

Samuel L. Leiter's Kabuki at the Crossroads is a thorough account of Japan's most famous traditional theatre as it struggled to survive in the maelstrom of post-Occupation Japan's rapidly changing entertainment world.

Years of Crisis, 1952-1965

Kabuki at the Crossroads

Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre: A-N

Masterpieces of Kabuki contains eighteen outstanding dramas taken from the landmark four-volume series Kabuki Plays On Stage. Together they cover the entire spectrum of kabuki drama from 1697 to 1905, the period during which kabuki’s dramaturgy flourished prior to the onset of Western dramatic influence. Major playwrights, chronological periods of playwriting, and a variety of play types (history, domestic, and dance dramas) and performance styles are represented. All but one are in the current repertory and regularly staged. The volume includes introductions to each play and a new general introduction highlighting kabuki’s historical development and relating the plays to their performance context. As the subtitle implies, the plays are translated as if "on stage." Stage directions indicate major scenic effects, stage action, costuming, makeup, music, and sound effects. In some cases, complex stage actions such as stage fights are given in detail. The plays collected here are all marvelous examples of dramatic writing, intended to be acted on the stage before audiences. They reveal kabuki’s eras of brilliance and bravado, villainy and vengeance, darkness and desire, and restoration and reform. All continue to stir audiences to admiration and excitement.

Eighteen Plays on Stage

Masterpieces of Kabuki

This is the first book to describe the way in which the traditional and modern forms of Japanese theater responded to Japan's defeat in World War II. It includes sixteen essays by thirteen specialists demonstrating the triumphs and tribulations of Japanese theater during the Allied Occupation, 1945–1952.

The Rebirth of Theater in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952

Rising from the Flames

Complete texts of Benten Kozo, Pulling the Carriage Apart and The Village School, Shunkan, and Naozamurai. Commentary on each play by actors and critics. Nearly 100 photographs.

Five Famous Plays

The Art of Kabuki

The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre covers all four genres (nT, kyTgen, bunraku, and kabuki), providing information on nearly every aspect, including actors, theatres, companies, history, makeup, costumes, masks, biographies, theories, training, music, religion, criticism, and many more. This is done through hundreds of dictionary entries arranged alphabetically with abundant cross-references, a general introduction, a chronology, and a special glossary of all terms mentioned in the text but not provided with their own entries, all of which can be supplemented by consulting the most extensive bibliography of English-language Japanese theatre books, articles, and websites presently available.

Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre

This is the second volume in an unprecedented series devoted to the New York stage in the twentieth century. It provides a description of approximately 1,800 theatrical productions given in the New York professional theatre for the decade 1930-1940. Every legitimate theatre production--including plays, musicals, revues, and revivals--is chronicled in an easily referenced, alphabetical format. Not restricted to English-language productions, the collection includes every known foreign-language production visiting the city and reviewed in the English-language press. The volume also provides extensive entries for ethnic theatre offerings including plays produced in Italian, Yiddish, and French. A comprehensive listing for each entry includes (wherever possible) title, genre category, subject categories, author, translator, revisionist, music, lyricist, source book or other work, director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, lighting designer, producer, theatre, opening date, and length of run. The text following each entry offers, as comprehensive as possible, a view of the work described. It gives important historical background, a summary of the plot, amusing anecdotes, and an idea of the critical reaction to the performance. Representative quotes of critics are incorporated verbatim or in paraphrase, with source. The volume concludes with a selected bibliography. Ten appendixes provide the following quick-reference listings: a chronological calendar of productions, plays listed by category, major play awards, novels and plays providing sources for plays and musicals, institutional theatres and their offerings, foreign-performing troupes, long-run hits of the period, abbreviations of newspapers and periodicals cited in the text, the season-by-season breakdown of production totals, and all Broadway and Off Broadway theatres at which the plays described were produced. An introductory overview of issues and developments on the New York stage from 1930 to 1940 provides essential background information for understanding the context in which the chronicled works were first viewed. This important reference tool will be of special interest to students and historians of drama.

The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1930-1940

This updated edition adds well over 200 plot summaries representing each theatrical form in addition to: a chronology; introductory essay; appendixes; an extensive bibliography; over 1500 cross-referenced entries on important terms; brief biographies of the leading artists and writers; and plot summaries of significant plays.

Michael Mullin

Langdon Brown

Felicia Hardison Londre

Tice L. Miller

Daniel J. Watermeier

"An important resource for any scholar working on the production history of Shakespeare's plays. . . . Because each entry has a complete list of sources, the book can be used as a helpful bibliography for locating reviews of productions." Choice

Samuel L. Leiter

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