Action in Plot and Performance of
Noh and Greek Tragedy: A Comparison

Lecture by Mae Smethurst
Professor of Classics, University of Pittsburgh
 
Noh and Greek Theatre
A category of the Japanese noh theater, called genzaino/"realistic noh", shares with Greek tragedies, written by Sophocles and Euripides, many of the elements of plot that Aristotle considered essential to the definition of good tragedy. These noh plays resemble Greek tragedies in presenting dramatic action in their plots that elicit pity and fear, the tragic emotions, as Aristotle prescribed. In performance, however, the actor's actions differ in the two dramatic forms at those junctures that are the most pitiable and fearful.

Dr. Mae Smethurst has written and lectured extensively on Japanese and Greek theater traditions, and has received several prestigious awards for her translations and analyses. In 1989 she published The Artistry of Aeschylus and Zeami: A Comparative Study of Greek Tragedy and Noh, which received the AAUP Arisawa Memorial Award. In 2000 she published Dramatic Representations of Filial Piety, and was awarded a Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize by Columbia University's Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture.  In 2003 she edited a book entitled The Noh Ominameshi: A Flower Viewed From Many Directions.
 

Sponsored by Scripps College.  Contact: (909) 607-3600 
When and Where:
 
 Thursday November 5, 2009 at 4:30 p.m.
 

Clark Humanities Museum, Scripps College
(981 N. Amherst Ave., Claremont)