Music and Culture of Japan
- Traditional Japanese music – learning about some of the instruments (koto, shamisen, taiko, shakuhatchi) – musical construction (pentatonic scales, cyclic rhythm, heterophony)
- Noh theatre – comparison with commedia dell’arte – making and working with masks
- Creating a noh-like class composition – short play/scene with accompanimental/dramatic music
- Japanese Culture as seen through the eyes of Western theatre – Is this racist or ill informed? What stereotypes are created/destroyed/overcome by some of these works? (Would look at “Madama Butterfly”, “The Mikado”, and “Memoirs of a Geisha”)
