Author’s Note:
(The following notes on Noh are adapted or quoted from The Flowering Spirit: Classic Teachings on the Art of Noh, by Zeami [from the Introduction by the translator, William Scott Wilson]).
Japanese Noh drama is a ritualized form involving mime, chanting, and music. The stage is bare; there might be a pine tree backdrop. It is a theatre of reduction and simplicity, focused not on movement but sound. What we see on the stage is empty space and time. In terms of the characters, what is portrayed is essence, the mind emptied of ego. Characters will often refer to themselves in the third person. The rhythm of speech is poetry, in Japanese the syllabic form of five and seven syllables, much like what we know as Haiku. The spoken words have spiritual power as well as practical consequences. The music that accompanies the play—musicians are seated on stage—is percussive and austere. The actors chant their lines, punctuated by the instruments. The emphasis is not on melody but rhythm; spaces between sounds, ma in Japanese, are as important as the sounds themselves.
In traditional Noh theatre, there are four types of characters: the waki or “the one aside,” the first to appear who introduces the general direction of the play; the shite, the main character, who is the central figure, the one the waki comes to inquire about; the attendants, or tsure, function as a chorus usually or as less important instruments in moving the play forward; the kyogen, literally “crazy words,” performs a comic role during the interlude between the first and second parts of the play. The characters wear masks.
The word Noh means “performance.”
In this adaptation of the Noh style, I have based the drama on a Christian story rather than a Zen tale or Japanese folklore. The characters are given Western names in the stage notes but are referred to in the text with traditional Japanese titles, Waki and Shite. The musical instruments suggested are not those ordinarily used with Noh. There are several kinds of Japanese hand-held drum; the drum referred to here might be any one or several of them. I mention the shamisen and shakuhachi as the other instruments, one a kind of Japanese banjo and the other a bamboo flute, because I like the sounds of those instruments and know more about them than I do those traditionally used in Noh.
What is presented here is a text and, as you will now understand, the text is not the only or even most important aspect of Noh. I have written the text in a verse form adapted from the Japanese syllabic style but have used the more flexible line that supports natural English rhythms.
Imagine, if you can, that the lines are chanted not spoken; that the phrases are often accompanied or punctuated by percussive musical notes; that the characters seldom move very much and when they do move in a stylized, ritual manner (even the Shite's dance at the end is sylized although obviously more energetic than previous movements); that the whole feels and sounds more like an opera than a play; and that the didactic nature of the drama, unlike that of our western theatre, is an expected part of Noh. The effect, in the end, is more primitive, more elemental, than western theatre. It is probably more like ancient Greek dramatic presentations than anything else in western experience. The spiritual takes form in Noh, reflecting its roots in Shinto and Buddhism. The early form of theatre in the west, as it emerged from the Catholic Mass, may have been somewhat like Noh in its ritualized, stylistic story telling that emphasized the entry of the divine into human affairs.
This is an experiment. I hope to write more of these adaptations in the near future. This piece has not been staged. Staging would be the next and far more important part of this venture.
Act 1
[Music: drum, shamisen, shakuhachi. Musicians are on stage. The chorus is in its position stage right. Enter the waki, the Christian monk Benedict.]
Waki
The end of life is serenity,
finding oneness in God.
The end of life is serenity.
Here is a monk who has lived by these waters many lifetimes, who renounced the world before it was made. This place is holy. Up the hill is the monastery, now inhabited by only a few. Monks come and go. But this place is holy even when it is empty. People come here to pray and what happens to them changes their lives. Some think they want to be monks, but it is too hard for most. Oneness with God is hard. They don’t know it has already happened.
Chorus
This river is the Hudson
flowing north and south.
This river is the Hudson
flowing north and south.
The tide is high this morning
sixty miles from the city
and ocean, the powerful tide.
The sun just rising
over Hyde Park wakes the fish.
You can hear them
as they break the surface feeding.
The sun just rising,
first a rim of light along the hill
across the river spreading,
the river still in shadow in the east
but here the warming
of the stones along the shore
has already begun.
But now something strange:
the fish are gone,
they’ve stopped feeding suddenly.
Waki
Something happened here, and I have traveled back to see it, passing through twenty-five years to this same shore that looked no different then. It is a favorite place for seekers, this small beach of stones flanked by huge boulders down the hill from the monastery and through the woods. In summer you cannot see the monastery from here, nor the deer in the field. The birds are awake and singing as they have been since the first hint of dawn. Now, the one we are expecting comes through the woods, following the path to the beach. He carries a book. He has that look of one who has come expecting to be changed.
[The Shite, Ken, now enters, walking slowly.)
Shite
Walking through the dim hall
of the monastery
woken by a dream forgotten
instantly, I saw
a figure dressed in white
running through the dark
toward me and his eyes
were wide and burning.
One of the monks I’d seen before.
Not seeing me or
anything on earth he ran by,
leaving behind a scent
of incense. A burning man.
(He sits in the center of the stage, folding his legs in a half lotus, and closes his eyes.]
Chorus
This man too is burning
for the love of God.
It is the first week after Easter,
Friday. He has come
for Morning Prayer by the river,
looking for something.
It is a perfect morning
for discovery.
Here a boat is tacking up
the Hudson toward us
bearing three fishermen.
I’ve never seen
such a boat on this river.
[Tsure, three fishermen, arrive and sit nearby.]
Tsure
He does not see us in our boat
pushed by wind up river.
He does not see our red sail.
Waki
He is praying. He sees nothing
but himself trying
to get away from himself.
He calls that God.
Tsure
He does not see our boat
fallen from heaven.
He does not see our boat
fallen from heaven.
Shite
[Opening his eyes, looking down at the open book in his lap]
Ah, how perfect. The reading for Morning Prayer is from Chapter 21 of John, when the disciples are on the lake after fishing all night and catching nothing and Jesus appears on the shore. A shore like this one.
[He looks up]
And a boat perhaps like that.
How can it be?
I see a boat with red sails
unlike any I’ve seen
on this river, like a boat
from Egypt.
Tsure
He has seen us.
Waki
Sometimes a river is not
a river, sometimes
the shore is the river, a boat
full of fishermen,
the continuum of what
is around you
but you cannot see, oneness
like the river flowing.
Shite
You are a monk
from the monastery
but I haven’t met you.
This is my first time.
Waki
The boat approaches.
Hello, have you caught
anything? Your boat is high
on the water.
Tsure
Nothing all night, not normal
this time of year.
Shite
Am I seeing things?
Am I hearing things?
Who are these men?
Waki
They are fishermen. Their nets
slung out behind,
you see, are floating empty.
Shite
This is still the dream
that woke me.
Tsure
All night we’ve fished
the river. All night
we’ve sailed against the tides,
first one way
then the other chasing
schools of striped bass,
now the river’s empty,
no life left,
the water like the world
before creation.
Now our boat is on this shore
and here are two
who do not look like anglers.
Good morning, friends.
Shite
Good morning. You have come,
I think, from elsewhere,
as if the story in this book
appeared before me.
Tsure
Why are you here so early?
Shite
I want to know what God
wants me to do.
I thought I’d learn if I came
here and prayed.
I thought I’d be alone.
Waki
Come, let us join the men
in their boat.
Tsure
It’s small but you are welcome.
We were turning south.
There isn’t much up here past
Hyde Park. The fish
turn back and race the tide
to the ocean,
when there are fish. But today
we’ll cruise for pleasure.
It’s time to go home.
Shite
The boat looks small but
seems so roomy.
There’s room for all of us.
Waki
You are not afraid?
Shite
Of what should I be afraid?
Waki
Of demons, beings who
are not as they seem,
of thieves, of murderers.
These men are strangers.
Shite
Suddenly, I am afraid.
And now this boat
of strangers like a plane
is soaring through air
above the river, skimming
the placid surface.
Suddenly, I am afraid.
[Waki, Shite, and Tsure cluster facing the audience, turn one way, then another]
Chorus
I am also afraid for him,
this young man seeking.
It is a dangerous thing
to seek God, trusting men.
I come to the monastery
to pray the church’s prayers.
Seeking truth is the work of monks
or priests, the ones ordained
to take the consequences
of finding it.
Waki
Perhaps this boat, these men,
were sent to you
by God to tell you what to do.
A vision.
Tsure
We are not demons. Strangers,
but not evil men.
Nor are we visions. We are real.
We fish to live.
Waki
They’ve come to fish for you.
Shite
For me? This is a dream
and I can wake now.
Am I a fish who’ll fall
for any trick or lure,
a prettily assembled imitation
of desire—with hooks?
I know the way that leads too well.
Chorus
Like me he’s captured by desire,
by wanting more, attached
to what will last no longer than his life,
if that. We each are anglers,
each the silent hungry fish obsessed
with nameless needs.
Each of us awaits
the other, hidden.
Waki
We are sailing now, or flying, over the Hudson, heading south toward New York City. The sun has risen. We are warmed by its rays even though the morning is a chilly one and there’s a wind. The fishermen are resting after their long night. They’ve seen New York and Jersey, which we pass as effortlessly as thought. The ferry boats are chasing back and forth, the helicopters buzzing. Everyone’s awake except those who have worked all night, like these fishermen. And now the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and all the tankers waiting in the harbor. Then the ocean, vast as time, that seems to breathe, the rise and fall of swells like lungs. And here we stop, just out of sight of New York City, in a place where there is nothing else. And here we stop.
[The Tsure throw the Shite overboard: in dance they gather around him, turning with him, then push him. He sprawls on the stage toward the audience and lies quietly there]
Chorus
What’s this? They’ve thrown him
in the sea. The fishermen
we thought were harmless strangers
have thrown him overboard.
They are demons after all, the evil
all around us all the time.
I wish that I could help him.
And now the fishermen deploy
their empty nets but I see no feeding fish.
Waki
I’m late for morning prayers
at the monastery.
Good fishing, men. Your luck
will return, I’m sure.
[The Waki stands in his place. The Tsure stand in theirs. Music plays before the Interlude]
Interlude
[The Kyogen enters, wearing a fish head. He circles the stage, spiraling in on the Shite who is lying still on the stage. He stops and gazes at him]
Kyogen
What is this? Not a fish, at least no fish like any I have seen in my years as a fish. I should know. I’ve been around the ocean, seen a lot, but this is new to me. [He sees the Waki] Do you know what this is, this creature on the floor of my ocean? You look somewhat strange yourself. I can tell this won’t be a normal day. Someone’s been messing with the natural order of things, that’s my opinion. I’ve said it before. Used to be this part of the sea would be filled with fish, teeming is the word I’d use, teeming, but now you can swim around for hours and maybe seen a couple dozen, maybe none. It isn’t natural and as a fish I’m into natural. But back to you—sorry to run on like this. When you haven’t seen anyone in days, like I haven’t, there’s a lot that gets backed up and needs to come out, if you know what I mean.
Waki
I’m a monk. I spend a lot of time in solitude myself. I understand.
Kyogen
A monk. That’s a new one on me. So you don’t live in a school.
Waki
Well, yes, in a way. We call it a monastery. I’ve devoted my life to God and prayer. And I live with others who’ve done the same.
Kyogen
God? I’ve heard of cod.
Waki
God is the one who made everything, including you and me. We worship him. And this man here is seeking God.
[The Fishermen surround the Shite, lift him up, and carry him off stage]
Well, they’ve caught him.
Kyogen
Should I be worshiping this God?
Waki
No, you’re just a fish. You don’t have the intellect to understand or worship. It’s a human thing. We were made in God’s image. God made you to serve us, in your case as food. So I wouldn’t worry about it.
Kyogen
Doesn’t sound like something worth worshiping if you ask me.
Waki
It’s not like you don’t count. You and all creatures are part of God’s great plan for salvation. It’s just that you aren’t a sinner. All creation is redeemed in Jesus Christ, of course, but that’s because we humans fell and brought the rest of it down with us. It’s really too complicated.
Kyogen
Not smart enough. You might ask yourself if it just doesn’t make sense. But I’m concerned about this creature here or who was here. He was caught by fishermen, right? Now I know something about that. Not good news for him. He’s food, as you put it.
Waki
Not him, no. He’s a human and humans aren’t food. He’s been caught to serve God.
Kyogen
Ah, God again. God’s a fisherman? A less and less likely object of worship. So what happens to this human if he’s not food?
Waki
He becomes a priest, one who leads others to God and to the worship of God. You see, he’s had an experience of God’s presence, as he understands it, on the shore of the river, where he went to pray and, during his prayers, saw a vision of a boat filled with fishermen. He was reading a story about a boat filled with fishermen who had caught nothing all night. They see Jesus, who had been killed, on the shore. So this man understood that in this vision of the boat he was being called to be a priest of God.
Kyogen
Weird.
Waki
Not really. God does not speak directly to us—not as a rule anyway—but through others, through visions. Indirectly. We have to pay close attention to hear him, to understand what he wants of us.
Kyogen
So this guy becomes a priest and that makes him happy.
Waki
Not really. Being a priest is difficult work. You have no time to yourself. People are always after you, wanting something. Even as you serve them they will do their best to beat you down. Some people can’t take it. God’s work is terribly hard. But because people are sinners they cannot help themselves. They destroy those they love and who love them.
Kyogen
Are you a priest?
Waki
Yes, and a monk, which is different because I live with other monks and we spend most of our lives together in solitude and silence, which helps keep us under control.
Kyogen
And this man who becomes a priest, if he isn’t happy, what happens to him?
Waki
Ah, yes. Well, it’s a sad story. God has called him, as you’ve seen.
Kyogen
Fished him.
Waki
Same thing. And he answers the call. He goes through a lot of trouble to become a priest: committees, a bishop, psychological testing, you know, the works. His wife leaves him because she can’t stand the way the church beats him up every day. And then he goes to a church in Wyoming where there are only twenty-five people on Sunday and they can’t afford to pay him. Well, anyway, there’s more to tell, but basically he’s miserable. His life glorifies God.
Kyogen
I’m glad I’m too stupid to understand any of this. I’ve got things to do. It’s a big ocean, a lot of water to cover every day. Never any time off. Kind of like your priest, maybe. God made me?
Waki
That’s right. He made everything to glorify him.
Kyogen
Uh oh, the fishermen are coming back. They’ll be looking for me this time.
[The Kyogen exits. The Tsure return and stand in their place]
Act 2
[The musicians play as the Kyogen exits and everyone takes their places]
Chorus
Broad and deep the Hudson
always here, its rise
and fall like blood in the body
bearing nourishment.
Daybreak and sunset seize me
with long shadows,
subtlety of light in changing
moods upon the water,
the mystical moments when
I see what isn’t there.
Here comes a priest, no doubt
to pray by the river.
[Enter the Shite Ken now dressed as a priest to celebrate the Mass. His vestments are especially fine, colorful and flowing as he slowly walks. He stops at center and faces the audience, raises his arms.]
Waki
The celebrant is here.
Shite
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
[Long pause. The Shite stands in silence. His arms drop to his sides]
Waki
Priests come here sometimes
to recover what
inspired them to be priests
and here is one whose life
has not turned out as he wished.
He cannot celebrate.
Shite
Or pray or care for others
in their need. My pain
is all I feel, all I need,
the emptiness of loss.
Chorus
It is sad to see him so.
I remember when
he first came here and God
took him away to serve.
Now this. His wounds pain me
as much as him.
Shite
I don’t believe in God,
at least not God
as we’ve been taught—as I
have taught and preached,
the God out there, detached
from all of this, watching.
My wife is gone. She hated Church
and all the bitterness
that people brought in with them.
And I was Church.
She hated me as well for giving in
to all the rancor,
to the power struggles, games
and trickery for Jesus.
The theology wars, old
as the Church itself,
rekindling bloodshed—and for what?
Waki
What God do you believe then?
Shite
Don’t call it God, but nothing,
emptiness, the void,
the open circle of the cosmos
holding space and us
in equal balance, not a God
but equanimity.
Waki
Big word. Most people won’t
get it. God is real
and walks in Jesus. Comfort’s
what they want not
abstractions like the void,
or emptiness or pain.
Shite
We suffer. That’s what I’ve learned.
We suffer, not as Jesus
suffered but ourselves, uniquely,
wanting this and that,
the endless effort to fill up
the emptiness inside not
realizing that the emptiness is what
we need to enter.
Chorus
This baffles me, this talk,
so gloomy, intellectual.
I want to sing a hymn, praise God,
feel excitement in me
flowing like the river wild.
Shite
I’ve given up the Church, and all
it represents. I’ve had it.
I want myself again before
I was ordained and
changed into this other being
who makes blood from wine
and flesh from bread but knows
it’s bread and wine
and nothing more and nothing less.
Chorus
This is heresy. We all know
Christ is present
in the breaking of the bread.
Waki
Tell me, father, how this happened.
When you were here,
how many years now—twenty?—
you were raptured,
so it seemed, as if by God himself
out of yourself, snatched
into another way of being, changed
as in your ordination
you became a new creation.
It is sad to see you so.
Shite
The church itself has beaten me,
the pettiness, denial,
caring first for property, propriety,
before the poor, the sick,
before the holocausts around us.
What comes first is us,
or trinity, or how the bread is held
or who can touch the holy.
All of our concerns are focused
on minutiae, on purity.
I felt in time that I was serving
not the people but
an institution greedy at its core,
mean-spirited, absorbed
in its own image and its wealth.
It wasn’t far from there
to realizing that the God
we worshiped was in fact
a mirror of ourselves. I looked
behind the mirror
and there was nothing, just the wall
it hung on. Despondent,
I sought therapeutic help,
some medications, rest.
The bishop called me in and asked
why I was hiding out.
He ordered me to work, dismissed
my crisis as a normal part
of what I do. We all go through it,
he said glibly.
You’re ordained so get to work
and stop complaining.
I’ve come here to connect with who
I was back then before
I fell into the black hole
of illusion.
Waki
Is God illusion? Nothing more?
And all of this, the river,
sun, the woods, these people come
to pray for your return—
all that illusion too, no substance,
no reality?
It’s all just you and your small ego.
Shite
I too am an illusion, like the river
flowing, never once
the same. Scoop up its water
and your hand is filled
not with river but just water.
You cannot capture it.
It isn’t there except in naming
it the Hudson or
perhaps the Miramachi,
any name at all will do.
It is the flowing, simply, of all things,
like you, like me and them.
And that’s the god we get,
the endless flow from which
it all emerges and to which
it all returns.
Waki
This is desperation talking,
your despair. In time,
I’m sure the medication, therapy
will bring you back
to the reality we know as God.
[The Shite begins to dance while the musicians play. His movements are stately, slow, angular. As he dances he removes, one by one, the vestments he is wearing, regarding every piece with care and even what might look like longing. Then he throws each one away until he is reduced to a simple white cotton undershirt that reaches to his middle thighs.]
Chorus
[Speaking while the Shite dances and musicians play]
What’s this dance. He’s seized,
it seems by evil
or disease, perhaps like epilepsy,
bipolarity, a madness,
stripping from his back the sign
of his authority and grace
and flinging them as dirty laundry
to the river, which today
is low and flowing to Manahattan
and the sea where first
he was ecstatic in the Lord.
But now his feet
on sharp rocks dancing, his bare
arms in rising wind,
look like demented dreaming,
how he moves so slowly
but with such intent, almost a joy
emerging as each garment
is removed and carried down the river
to the sea like garbage.
That’s expensive stuff he’s tossing.
Gold brocade, fine silk,
a woven stole, the whitest cotton.
These are signs of his
authority in God for our uplifting,
they are not his
to throw away, no more than Church
is his to call illusion.
Notice how much smaller he becomes
as each sacred layer
is removed and all that’s left
is just a scrawny man
with too much hair, a tee shirt
out of some De Niro movie,
his skinny calves, toenails
need some attention,
hair in need of cutting, teeth
not white enough.
What once was holiness, the very
presence of our God,
is now another man like you and me,
distinguished only
by our individual sins, but like him
deeply sinful and unworthy.
Now you see it: man before
redeeming, what the Christ
came to the world to save.
And he has turned away
from God’s great gift—for what?
The river flowing to the sea.
Why does he laugh?
Shite
For joy.
[Laughing, the Shite stands immobile at the end of his dance. The Waki and Chorus watch him. The musicians continue to play, accompanying his laughter.]
END
This work may not be produced, staged, or read in public without the consent and involvement of the author. You may contact Ken Arnold at ken@ken-arnold.com if you wish to discuss a production of Crossing Waters.