More than 40 people of all ages gathered at the Japanese Garden on campus for the Noh mask-making event Sunday as part of the garden’s Family Day.
The event, which was a collaboration between the University Art Museum and the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden, featured lessons on Noh theatre and offered a chance for attendees to create their own Noh mask out of paper and colored pencils.
Noh is the oldest known form of stage performance in the world and was originally performed in gardens, according to the Cal State Long Beach website. Noh uses both slow and frenetic body movements coupled with slight shifts of the masked head to convey subtle expressions and emotions.
“When you look at the traditional stage, it always has the big pine tree in it,” said Jeanette Schelin, senior director for the Japanese Garden. “If you Google Noh theatre you’ll see a pine … It is always in the background, and that’s homage to the fact that the first Noh performances were performed in the gardens.”
Noh theatre combines dance, poetry, music and acting, where the expressions of the masks are supposed to be only a subtle part of the expression, Japanese Garden Director Alison Redfoot said.
“The faces lack expression because [the artists] want the movement, the music and the story to express the emotion,” Redfoot said.
The event also featured a Noh movement demonstration by Matt Sagisi, a sophomore dance major and Japanese Garden employee. Attendees were encouraged to roleplay with the masks they made and act out gestures and movements of Noh theatre among the Japanese black pines.
“The dance has been called ‘The Art of Walking,’” Sagisi said. “Once they made a mask, they have the opportunity to try out some of the movements that would go on in a typical performance.”
Noh theatre and masks were a new experience for sophomore music performance major Eugine Hossain, who said she had never seen Noh theatre before.
“I’ve never heard about it,” Hossain said. “But I was interested in just learning how different Noh was from Western theatre.”
The Noh mask exhibit is on display at the UAM through April 14.