Noh Theater

I forgot to post about the traditional Japanese Noh play I went to see a week ago. My Portuguese friend, Daniel, had an extra ticket for a Noh play that he got from his Japanese teacher at his university, so I got to come along. I didn't know much about Noh before I went, and now that I have seen it once, I probably don't ever want to go again. The music is really repetitive and boring, with lots of loud clacks and drum smacks to try to keep the audience from falling asleep. The actors speak an old fashioned Japanese with very punctuated and hard to understand rhythms (funny at first, but then just annoying). The pace is slow and the stage movement is unimaginative. AND, it goes on for 3 hours. The one bright spot was a humorous skit that was performed between the 2 acts (that seemed to have no connection to the main story). All that said, it was an interesting cultural experience, and a free one at that! The video I have included was not taken by me, but the stage paintings look exactly like the theater where I went. Notice the calls of the drummer: "iiiii yoooo". Fun at first, then just strange.