Our first show in 1991 was Roshamon, a play based in
part on a 1950 Japanesse movie directed by the famous director Akira Kurosawa
and staring the well known actor Toshirô Mifune.
The story of the play was the retelling of a murder and rape
by several witnesses who each have a different story.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon
Traditional Japanese theatre includes several styles
including Kabuki, Noh (and Kyōgen) and Bunraku.
Our guest director wanted to incorporate parts of each style
in our production.
Most traditional Japanese productions would not use a blend
of styles but we had them all in our show.
We had hired a temporary costume designer that year and she
was chosen in part because she had experience in Japanese costume design and
she did created very beautiful costumes for the show.
We also had to make Bunraku
puppets, a life-size horse costume and a very stylized set which included a Hanamichi, a ramp that ran out into the
audience.
Although a mixture of styles the play looked nice and came
off well.
The biggest problem during the production came on the Sunday
night of the first weekend of the show with the start of the Ice Storm of 1991.
The storm caused major powered outages and closed the school
for several days and delayed the second weekend of the show.
http://www.progrocher.com/pix/icestorm/ice1.htm
Many branches and whole trees fell that night and a tree
fell across the front of my car.
As luck would have it, the tree did no damage to my car it
except bending my radio antenna.
