BOOK REVIEW ON "THE WAY OF ACTING by TADASHI SUZUKI"
Tadashi Suzuki, one of the foremost figures in contemporary theatre, has long been acclaimed, first in his native Japan, then in Europe and the United States, for the striking beauty, intensity, and communal energy of his theatrical productions. Those who have seen them will quickly surmise that behind the always powerful encounters that Suzuki engineers with his actors and his audience lie both a philosophy of performance and a rigorous discipline that are unique. Those few fortunate enough to have worked with Suzuki in his actor training classes either in Japan or in U.S. know his method firsthand. This collection of essays written between 1980 and 1983, the first to be made available in Western language, makes at least the outline of his ideas somewhat more portable---and a
Still, much about specifics of the arts in modern Japanese society can be learned from his critique, and in that regard, the book provides a unique glimpse into the workings of theatrical world in Tokyo and elsewhere during the past two decades. If you're going to read this book, you might be surprised to find that, despite Suzuki's fame as a teacher of acting, his training method is not described in the book in any precise detail. The book reveals the psychology of a thoroughly contemporary artist. The attitude he adopts, more often than not, is one of wry despair, and his doubt seem as pertinent to the quality of life in the United States as they do for Japan. Reference to nô and kabuki are sprinkled through the book, but Suzuki's homage to the classics is both stronger and more heterodox than of any other figure in the postwar Japanese theatre. As he makes clear, however, that method can merely be evoked from the outside; true understanding of it can come only as one lives through and experiences his discipline. Suzuki's teachings are thus one with the methodologies used to train Japanese actors all the way back to the 1400s, when the rigorous and poetical teachings of Zeami on the nô first flourished. ccessible, at long last, to a much wider audience. In none of the essays does the book provide the readers with much in the way of autobiographical detail, but the outlines of his development emerge clearly. He has absorbed, then articulated, techniques and attitudes that serve the goals---not merely the superficial traditions---of the whole spectrum of Japanese theatre. In this aspect of thinking, Suzuki stands in the great line of Japanese teachers; and like the best of them, he is utterly unique. His observations and comments reveal a sensibility all too well attuned to the dangers and ambiguities of the times in which we all live, whatever our nationality or cultural background. Suzuki is also a shrewd and demanding critic of the contemporary world, and of Japanese culture in particular. Perhaps it must even be lived through before it can be grasped intellectually.
Common topics in this essay:
Europe United,
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Tadashi Suzuki,
japanese theatre,
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