Cycles of Violence Noh Beauty Can Tame — CANE FIELDS BURNING at KKT

* Demon and Spirit

The stage is a square platform in a soft wood hue surrounded on all sides by audience seats, behind which naked trees grow out of the walls. Sparse, entrapped openness. The only vibrancy comes from brightly colored strips of cloth curtaining the main entrance. The only clutter, from moving boxes littered about the stage. The boxes seem out of place, especially once the show begins and in through those curtains flow a chorus of ghostly women dressed in old-style field garb with cane knives and a single masked female wearing an ethereal Japanese Kimono. The chorus chants, poses, hums, flutes, saws, and screeches. The masked woman makes slow, deliberate movements in the style of Japanese Noh theatre and speaks in evocative poetic language. The effect is haunting. I’m no Noh expert, but I recognize performance that is stylized, heightened, beautiful.

Then, a man and a younger man enter. They start talking while going through the boxes. Their conversation is stilted, modern, realistic. I definitely recognize this. But the masked woman lies crumpled on the stage, immobilized, and the chorus members surround the stage, ever audible. Two worlds exist at once—the past and the present, the physical and the spiritual, the living and the dead—simultaneous and connected, yet different if not always distinct. This is the setting of Cane Fields Burning.

* Demon

The story takes place in the present, but the present vibrates with the ghosts of the past, represented in multiple ways. Three generations of the men in a local Japanese family suffer from the same “curse.” It has to do with the women they love or marry. All three men appear in the play, but only two of them are living. While the father and son’s history comes out through dialogue as they meet to clear out the deceased’s home, which has been sold, the grandfather’s story takes shape mostly through the spiritual Noh conventions, though the worlds eventually begin to blur. The script, a world premiere by Kemuel DeMoville, won the Kumu Kahua/UH Mānoa Playwriting Contest. Its combination of Asian and Western styles and local setting incorporating history into the present should resonate with Kumu audiences on multiple levels. On the other hand, if my mom showed up from Massachusetts tomorrow and watched the show, I think she’d love it, because the power of the art translates beyond localized or specialized knowledge.

The chorus (Jaime Bradner, Elexis Draine, Lisa Ann Katagiri Bright, and Danielle Zalopany), the Spirit (Evelyn Leung), and the Demon (Shiro Kawai/Justin Fragiao) comprise the Noh part of the cast. Leung makes physical the spiritual with elegant beauty and power. The chorus women create emotional dimension, filling the open space of the theatre with the voices, cries, and music of the feminine spirit. The demon takes shape in more than one body and both actors inhabit a powerful darkness disturbing to behold. Abel Coelho’s choreography mesmerized and startled me.

Fragiao plays the Young Man who’s come at his father’s request to help empty the house of his grandfather. The father is played by Stu Hirayama. As they talk, revealing a broken relationship and a dark past, the Old Man (or grandfather, Kawai) enters, obviously a ghost, invoking them to “remember,” something Fragiao’s character would rather not do, though his father is eager to recall the past and mend old hurts. Fragiao and Hirayama have a long scene together, with mostly fragmentary dialogue, leaving the majority of what needs to be told to what’s left unsaid. Unlike the Noh sections, where the language is formal, flowing and poetic, these actors must find the natural rhythms in very realistic language, allowing their characters to change emotionally from moment to moment like people do in real life when confronted with the most difficult of relationships in a stressful situation. It’s a subtle dance with swoops and abrupt turns that Fragiao and Hirayama seemed to get more comfortable with as the show progressed.

* mask

Will Kahele enters in the second act as the Old Man’s neighbor. His energy changes the tone dramatically from the first act. His loud voice and actions begin the build to the revelation of violence that has been boiling under the surface since the beginning of the show. Fragiao’s character acts as a portal or link between the two worlds, with the effective aid of a photograph, masks, and the costume of the Demon. The second act is not long—a half an hour at most—but the intensity of what unfolds measures voluminous.

The square box stage—designed by Uluwehi Mills—is not very large, maybe 12x12 feet (just a guess). The actors often appear trapped, roaming the perimeter like caged-in lions, though there aren’t any walls. The inside and outside flow through one another, like the past and the present, the living and the dead… The unseen cane fields, so often evoked by the spirit and the chorus, are everywhere and nowhere. The show’s overall design works on a sparse yet powerful level—form and content in a symbiotic relationship. With minimal distraction, one element—a gnarly tree, a photograph, chorus women with cane knives and covered heads and bodies, red lights from under the stage, a mask—becomes large and symbolic.

Director Harry Wong III and his team have brought to life a new play that is beautiful and disturbing, and, ultimately, filled with meaning. It is a show that reminds me of what a very special and important theatre Kumu Kahua is for our community. DeMoville writes in the Playwright’s Note: “Venues like Kumu Kahua Theatre help contribute to Hawai`i’s artistic ‘voice’ all over the world.” So do playwrights like DeMoville, and the dedicated designers and actors who give the plays color, shape, and volume. The rest of the world may not get to see Cane Fields Burning, but everyone here in Hawai`i can. All they have to do is go to the theatre and buy a ticket.

the set (my photo)

For more information, see the Facebook Event Page or the Kumu Kahua Website.

* Photo stolen from Will Kahele's Facebook album Cane Fields Burning.