{"id":5503,"date":"2013-05-06T08:20:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T15:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=5503"},"modified":"2013-08-05T23:13:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T06:13:37","slug":"from-the-drawing-board-to-the-stage-princess-mononoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2013\/05\/06\/from-the-drawing-board-to-the-stage-princess-mononoke\/","title":{"rendered":"From the drawing board to the stage: Princess Mononoke"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After weeks of pent-up excitement, I had the pleasure of watching Whole Hog Theater, a London theater troupe, perform their stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s Shinto-inspired fantasy epic this afternoon:\u00a0Princess Mononoke<\/em>.<\/p>\n

True to the film, the play had a distinctively ethereal atmosphere throughout, as displayed by the stage alone.\u00a0However the acting was also top-notch, the costumes were delightfully accurate and the elaborate puppetry pushed the boundaries well beyond what I thought was possible in performance theater.<\/p>\n

The leads, Prince Ashitaka and Princess Mononoke, were particularly strong, mirroring both the personalities and even the inflections of the characters I had grown up admiring from\u00a0the English dubbed version of the film.<\/p>\n

According to a recent article published in\u00a0Japan Times<\/em>, they had apparently rehearsed for a very long time to reach this desired effect. Since they retained most of the original dialogue, it\u2019s easy to imagine the Prince and Princess mouthing along with the film repeatedly to match the voice actors\u2019 delivery.<\/p>\n

When Prince Ashitaka yelled \u201cSan!\u201d as he attempted to rescue her from the accursed jaws of Lord Okoto, I found his voice to be nearly indistinguishable from Billy Crudup\u2019s. Also the chemistry between Ashitaka and San was equally infectious, during both their transitional dance segments and their dialogue; I found myself bawling uncontrollably when San motioned to cut his throat for fully joining neither the the forest\u2019s nor Lady Eboshi\u2019s cause, to which he softly interjected, \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before coming to the show, I had wondered what the troupe\u2019s costume directors would choose to keep and what to ignore from the film in terms of clothing. I was pleased to notice that the majority of the costumes, like Ashitaka’s iconic hood and straw coat, were kept intact.<\/p>\n

San looked absolutely striking in her savage, tribal mask and ermine white fur coat, which appeared to be authentic. Considering the cast\u2019s humble size, I was also very impressed by the speed at which they were able to change from Emishi villager garb to samurai armor to Irontown worker tunics, etc.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I couldn\u2019t take pictures during the show, but you can take my word for it that the puppets were anything but underwhelming, as I had feared.<\/p>\n

They made me feel what it would be like to undergo a mix of awe and fear in the presence of enormous beasts like Moro, the mother of the wolf gods for example, who bellowed her hatred for humans while other puppeteers snarled beneath her to create a bone-chilling effect.<\/p>\n

All their\u00a0movements were so convincing that\u00a0I often forgot I was watching giant paper-machete puppets rather than living, breathing animals.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a show I will never forget and I feel tremendously lucky to have had the opportunity to see it. Since it\u2019s only playing in Tokyo and London this spring, it seems that I was meant to see my favorite\u00a0anime\u00a0<\/em>on-stage.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing to me that eleven years ago, I watched the film for the first time and also started eating sushi, which both spurred my growing interest in Japanese culture as a child, and now here I am seeing it performed live (in English too, no less) while I\u2019m studying abroad in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, life really is a funny thing.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s not \u201cfunny-sad\u201d though, as it tends to be in the midst of work and stress and school, but rather I guess you could say it\u2019s \u201cfunny-glad,\u201d for lack of better phrasing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After weeks of pent-up excitement, I had the pleasure of watching Whole Hog Theater, a London theater troupe, perform their stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s Shinto-inspired fantasy epic this afternoon:\u00a0Princess Mononoke. True to the film, the play had a distinctively … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":5506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[270,268,278,277,265],"class_list":["post-5503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tommy-stone-14-japan","tag-anime","tag-japan","tag-otaku","tag-theater","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5503"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5715,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5503\/revisions\/5715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}