Bunraku | Japanese Puppet Theater)

is an art in which the musicians and the speakers roll is to express the text (as one might squeeze a fruit).

To one side, a dais reeeives the musiClans and the speakers; their role is to express the text (as one rnight squeeze a fruit); this text is half spoken, half sung, punctuated with loud plectrum strakes by the samisen players, so that it is both rneasured and impassioned, with violence and artifiee.

is an art in which the puppet has no strings. No more strings, hence no more metaphor, no more Fate.

In Bunraktt, the puppet has no strings. No more strings, hence no more metaphor, no more Fate; since the puppet no longer apes the creature, man is no longer a pup­pet In the divinity's hands, the inside no longer commands the outside.

is an art in which the sources of the theater are exposed in their emptiness. What is expelled from the stage is hysteria, i.e., theater itself; and what is put in its place is the action necessary to the production of the spactacle: work is substituted for inwardness.

With Bunrak1f., the sources of the rheater are exposed in their empriness. Whar is expclled from the srage is hysteria, i.e., theater itself; and what 15 put in its plaee is the action neeessary ro the produe­ tion of the speeracle: work is subsrirured for inwardness.

is an art that has a limited notion of the voice (that special substance of language and the real stake of our modernity). set aside as a very clearly defined, essentially trivial function of exaggerated declamations, tremolos, paroxysms of rage given in a code of excess.

The voice: real stake of our modernity, special substance of language, which we try tO make triumph everywhere. Quite the contrary, Bunraku has a limited notion of the voice; it does not suppress the voice, bur assigns it a very clearly defined, essentially trivial function. In the speaker's voice are gathered together: exaggerated declamation, tremolos, a falsetto tonality, broken intonations, tears, paroxysms of rage, of supplication, of astonishment, indecent pathos, the whole cuisine of emotion, openly elaborated on the level of that internal, visceraI body of which rhe larynx is the mediating muscle. Yet this excess is given only within the very code of excess: the voice moves only through several discontinuous signs of the tempestuous; expelIed from a motionless body, triangulated by the garment, connected tO the text which, from its desk, guides it, strictly punctuated by the slightly our-of-phase (and thereby even impertinent) strokes of the samisen player, the vocal substance remains written, discon­tinuous, coded, subject to an irony (if we may strip this word of any clustic meaning); hence, what the voin. llltimately externalizes is not what it carries (the "sentiments") bur itself, its own prc,stitution; the signifier cunningly does noth­ ing but turn itself inside out, like a glove.

is an art that practices three separate writings which it offers to be read simultaneously in three sites of the spectacle: the puppet (the effected gesture), the manipulator (the effected gesture), the vociferant (the vocal gesture).

Bunraku thus practices three separate writings, which it offers to be read simultaneously in three sites of the spectacle: the puppet, the manipulatOr, the vociferant: the cffected gesture, the effective gesture, and the vocal gesture.

is an art where a double gesture acts as the counterpoise of voice; emotive gesture on the level of the doll and transitive action on the level of the manipulators.

Bunraku gives rhe voice a counterpoise, or better still, a countermove: that of gesture. This gesture is double: emotive gesture on the level oE the doll (audiences weep at the mistress-doll's suicide), transitive action on the kvel oE the manipulatOrs. In out theatrical arr, the acwr pretends tu act, bur his actions are never anything hur gestures: on stage, nothing bur (heater, yet a theater ashamed oE itself. Whereas BlInraktt (this i:, its definitiun) separates action from gesture: it shows the gesture, lets the action bc seen, exhibits simul­ taneously the an and the labor, reserving for each its o\\'n writing.

is an art which — in contrast to Western theater in which the author ‘pretends’ to act and thus exemplifies a theater ashamed of itself — separates action from gesture and the art from the labor.

is not about animating an inanimate object, a simulation of the body, but rather seeks its sensuous abstraction.

Bunraku does not aim at "animating" an inanimate object so as to make a piece of the body, a scrap of a man, "alive," while remaining irs vocation as a "part"; it is not the simulation of the body that it seeks bur, so to speak, its sensuous abstraction.

bunraku japanese puppet theater), n.All

bunraku japanese puppet theater)