1. art and entertainment
2. theatre

DAMINE KABUKI
Thursday, November 20, 2014, at 7pm
Colwell Playhouse
At Krannert Center, our mission is a living
force: an inspiration and a framework
for each decision we make, as individual
staff members and as an organization.
The deeply held values inherent in our
mission are made manifest in these cornerstones of our work:
The presentation of UNSURPASSED
WORLD-CLASS ARTISTRY—spanning
TO KR ANNERT CENTER
generations, cultures, and genres—presented in hundreds of performances annually, ensuring inclusive and accessible
excellence in programming;
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stories. At times for pleasure, at times to mourn. At times to celebrate, and
at times to rally collective strength to surmount the challenges of a complex
and uncertain world.
Art is not simply a product of the human imagination. It is a product of the
human impulse to reflect on life and nature, to create joy and hope, to play,
and to generate greater depths of empathy and compassion.
Artists give us reason to gather—to collectively engage in a beautiful form
of ritual.
That ritual lies at the core of the Krannert Center mission, and our doors are
open wide—as classroom, laboratory, public square, sanctuary, and touchstone—to you and to all fellow seekers of life-affirming experience. Now and
for generations to come.
With every best wish for a fulfilling season,
An unwavering dedication to NOURISHING
TOMORROW’S LEADERS —preparing our
young for a rapidly changing and global
society while fostering the education of
students engaged in professional arts
training, young people impacted by
ongoing engagement programs and
the Center’s Youth Series performances,
and thousands of college students and
youth who enjoy accessible programming through subsidized ticket prices;
A core belief in the creative process and
the incubation of NEW WORK created by
students, faculty, and visiting artists of
national and international significance;
and
The preservation, revitalization, and
enhancement of the CENTER’S PHYSICAL
FACILITIES so that it can continue to serve
as the benchmark for the performing
arts complex of the 21st century.
MIK E ROSS, DIREC TOR
THE ACT OF GIVING
THANK YOU TO THE SPONSORS OF THIS PERFORMANCE
Krannert Center honors the spirited generosity of these committed sponsors whose support
of this performance continues to strengthen the impact of the arts in our community.
PROGRAM
DAMINE KABUKI
Shozo Sato, narrator
Introduction
Shozo Sato and special guests
Sanbasô
Okina
Senzai
Sanba
Sanba
Kokoro Kumagai, fifth grade
Hina Takeshita, fifth grade
Tsukumo Kumagai, sixth grade
Toki Ogawa, sixth grade
20-minute intermission
SUSAN & MICHAEL HANEY*
THREE PREVIOUS SPONSORSHIPS
FOUR CURRENT SPONSORSHIPS
MASAKO TAKAYASU IN LOVING MEMORY OF
WAKO TAKAYASU
TWENTY-FOUR PREVIOUS SPONSORSHIPS
TWO CURRENT SPONSORSHIPS
Tsuchigumo (The Monstrous Spider)
Chichu
Itsuki Nanahara
Yorimitsu
Katsuhiko Kumagai
Sasumasa
Hirokazu Kumagai
Sitenou
Kenta Muramatsul
Sitenou
Naoyuki Sugimoto
Sitenou
Saburou Takahasi
Sitenou
Masato Takeshita
Bansotsu
Takeshita Haruaki
Bansotsu
Hiroki Ogawa
Bansotsu
Hiroya Takeshita
Bansotsu
Hidetosihi Goto
Kocho
Seiko Goto
Tachimochi
Hozumi Kumagai, fourth grade
Kouken
Akio Kumagai
Kouken
Akitoshi Takeshita
Geza
Toshikazu Harada
Tsukeuchi
Akira Nanahara
Make-up/costumes
Akemi Ito
Masako Kawakami
Satiko Nakata
*PHOTO CREDIT: ILLINI STUDIO
Join these inspiring donors by contacting our development team today:
KrannertCenter.com/Invest • [email protected] • 217/333-1629
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PROGRAM NOTES
HISTORY OF DAMINE KABUKI
In a little mountain hamlet near Nagoya City, the
villagers have been performing kabuki at their
Damine Kwanyin Shrine for some 300 years. This
tradition began with an unusual event: the original
shrine had burned down some 300 years earlier,
and the villagers went into the forest to cut down
trees to rebuild the shrine. Word came that the
shogun, who technically owned all of the forest,
would be sending inspectors to see that all of
the forest could be accounted for. The villagers
prayed to Kwanyin—the goddess of mercy—for
assistance, promising that they would hold a
kabuki program in her honor every year if she
helped them. Miraculously, that summer before
the inspectors arrived, there was a very unusual
snowstorm, and the snow was so deep that
the inspectors could not tell whether any trees
had been removed. Every year since that time,
the whole village—children and adults alike—
perform kabuki plays and dances in February. The
shrine and the old theatre stage still stand, but
a temporary auditorium is built for this special
performance, and people come from miles around
to see the productions.
The village was also the site of another
extraordinary event: in the early 1970s, a custodian
for the Damine Elementary School moved an old
cupboard and discovered a doll hidden behind it
along with some special papers. The documents
noted that this was a friendship doll that had been
sent from Dayton, Ohio, in 1926 in the hope of
developing better relations between the United
States and Japan. At the same time, Japanese
children had collected money to send a large
doll to each state in the United States. The doll
found at Damine Elementary School was one of
the few remaining dolls that had been sent from
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the United States and was called Grace A. Greene
after a teacher in Dayton. In the early 1990s, the
first group of children from Damine Elementary
School to travel to the United States performed in
Dayton in honor of this doll. Since that time, the
Damine children have performed in such places as
Arlington, Illinois; the Art Institute of Chicago; and
Fort Bragg, California. The group travels abroad
once every three years so that every child has an
opportunity to visit the United States once during
their elementary school days. Their visits always
include a home stay with American families, and
students raise their own travel funds. In 2011, the
group received the prestigious Minister of Culture
Award for promoting Japanese culture abroad.
Since Krannert Center’s grand opening in1969,
UI students for many years performed kabuki
productions almost annually. These productions
came to be known as Illini Kabuki. In 1991, the
Illini Kabuki production of Achilles: A Kabuki Play
was invited to tour Japan, including a performance
at the annual Kwanyin Kabuki Festival in the
mountain village of Damine. This was the first time
any outside group was invited to perform in the
annual festival, which was dedicated as an offering
to Kwanyin, the Bodhisattva or goddess of mercy,
venerated in their shrine continuously for some
300 years.
to Damine and, in 2013, I went to the village
to guide and assist in the disassembling and
restitching of the costumes. Under my direction,
the costumes were completely taken apart, linings
were replaced, and the costumes were made
smaller in size to fit the Japanese build. It took
some 40 days of intense labor to reconstruct the
costumes. In February 2013, the costumes were
used for the first time during their annual festival.
The production was very well received by the
audience. This year’s Damine Kabuki production
of The Monstrous Spider is a homecoming for the
costumes at Krannert Center.
Being a small mountain village, there were no
hotels or inns so the Illinois visitors were hosted
in villagers’ homes. This group included student
performers, the chancellor of the university, the
director of Krannert Center, and faculty and staff
members. (Nick Offerman, who recently returned
to Krannert Center for a one-man-show was a
member of the cast in that production.) Since
1991, every third year, children and adults from
Damine come to the United States to perform at
selected cities and towns, and at Krannert Center.
—Shozo Sato
As always, we are pleased to host our friends
from Damine again, but the production of The
Monstrous Spider that they will perform has
a special connection to Krannert Center this
year. When the kabuki curriculum closed upon
my retirement from the university in 1992 the
costumes were placed in storage. Among them
were the 40-year-old costumes for the production
of The Monstrous Spider (Tsuchigumo). It
had been a very popular production, hence
the costumes were very worn and in need of
considerable repair. It was decided to donate the
entire set of costumes for The Monstrous Spider
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PROFILE
Shozo Sato, narrator
Shozo Sato is a theatre director and a master
of Zen arts. Sato was officially adopted into the
Kabuki family of Nakamura and is a master of the
highest order of the Japanese Tea Ceremony,
ikebana (flower arrangement), and sumi-e (black
ink painting). He has published extensively on
these subjects. Sato was the founding director of
Japan House at the University of Illinois, where he
is a professor emeritus. He received a PhD from
Towson University in 1997 and a DFA from the
University of Illinois in 1998. In 2004, Sato was
awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure from
the emperor of Japan, and in 1992, the minister of
foreign affairs of Japan awarded him a Certificate
of Commendation for his promotion of Japanese
culture throughout the world. In 2003, he received
the first Cultural Achievement Award from the
Japan America Society of Chicago. Sato has
received national and international recognition for
creating a new form of kabuki through adaptations
of the plots of well-known Western classics. He
has conceived, designed, and directed awardwinning productions of Lady Macbeth: A Kabuki
Play (2005, Chicago Shakespeare Theater), Iago’s
Plot (1996), Achilles: A Kabuki Play (1991), Kabuki
Othello (1988), Kabuki Faust (1986), Kabuki
Medea (1983), and Kabuki Macbeth (1978). These
works have been seen in Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, Japan, and the United States. Shozo
Sato retired from teaching in 1992 and moved
to northern California, where he established a
center for Japanese art. He continued to freelance
as a director and a visiting professor in theatre
and Japanese arts. This fall, Sato returned to
Champaign and is teaching Japanese arts at the
School of Art and Design at the U of I.
SEPTEMBER
12
13
14
23
25
26
26
27
30
Opening Night Party with
Tempo Libre, Mariachi Sol
de México® de José
Hernández, and Samba Soul
Sa 7:30pm | Rosanne Cash: The
River & The Thread
Su 7:30pm | St. Louis Symphony
Tu 7:30pm | Susan Marshall &
Company: Play/Pause
Th 10pm | The Pygmalion
Festival: Real Estate and
Elsinore
Fr 7:30pm | The Pygmalion
Festival: Panda Bear and Sun
Kil Moon
Fr 10pm | The Pygmalion
Literary Festival: Jamaal May,
Tarfia Faizullah, and Ted
Sanders
Sa 7:30pm | Jazz at Lincoln
Center Orchestra with Wynton
Marsalis
Tu 5:30pm | Sinfonia da
Camera: Rush Hour
—Youthful Impressions
OCTOBER
2-3
2-4
3
7
7-11
10
10
11
12
14
16-18
Th-Fr 7:30pm | ISANGO
Ensemble: The Magic Flute
(Impempe yomlingo)
Th-Sa 7:30pm | Polaroid Stories
Fr About 9:30pm | Afterglow:
Bailalai
Tu 7:30pm | Sphinx Virtuosi
with Catalyst Quartet
Tu-Sa 7:30pm | Polaroid Stories
Fr Noon | Interval
Fr 5pm | Traffic Jam: The Delta
Kings
Sa 7:30pm | Chicago Symphony
Orchestra
Su 3pm | Polaroid Stories
Tu 7:30pm | Beethoven,
Thomas Mann, and Utopia:
The Mystery of Opus 111
Th-Sa 7:30pm | The Skin of Our
Teeth
17
18
18
18
22
22-24
23-25
25
25
26
26
27
29
30
6-8
7
8
8
9
9
9
11-15
16
20
NOVEMBER
4
6-8
Tu 7:30pm | Apollo’s Fire
Baroque Orchestra: The
Monteverdi Vespers of 1610
Th-Sa 7:30pm | The Elixir
of Love
Th-Sa 7:30pm | November
Dance
Th-Sa 7:30pm | Oh What
a Lovely War
Fr 6:30pm | Dessert and
Conversation: November
Dance
Sa 6:30pm | Dessert and
Conversation: The Elixir
of Love
Sa 7:30pm | Sinfonia da
Camera: Menahem
and Mozart
Su 2pm | Dessert and
Conversation: The Elixir
of Love
Su 3pm | Concert Artists Guild
Winner: Lysander Piano Trio
Su 3pm | The Elixir of Love
Tu-Sa 7:30pm | Oh What
a Lovely War
Su 3pm | Oh What a
Lovely War
Th 7pm | Damine Kabuki
DECEMBER
2
4-5
5
6
6-8
8
Fr 7:30pm | Sinfonia da
Camera: A Richard Strauss
Celebration
Sa 6:30pm | Dessert and
Conversation: The Skin of Our
Teeth
Sa 7:30pm | Broadway Smash
featuring Todd Ellison and
Friends
Sa About 9:30pm | Global
Transfer Afterglow: Otaak
Band
We 7pm | National Acrobats of
the People’s Republic of China:
Cirque Peking
We-Fr 7:30pm | Blind Summit
Theatre: The Table
Th-Sa 7:30pm | The Skin of Our
Teeth
Sa 3pm & 7:30pm | Blind
Summit Theatre: The Table
Sa 7:30pm | ChampaignUrbana Symphony
Orchestra: Voyages
Su 2pm | Dessert and
Conversation: The Skin of
Our Teeth
Su 3pm | The Skin of Our Teeth
Mo 6pm | Corporate
Circuit Night
We 7:30pm | The Senegal St.
Joseph Gospel Choir
Th 7:30pm | Jupiter String
Quartet with James Dunham,
viola
7
11
Tu 7:30pm | Cantus: All Is
Calm: The Christmas Truce of
1914 | By Peter Rothstein | With
musical arrangements by Erick
Lichte and Timothy C. Takach
Th-Fr 7:30pm | The
Nutcracker
Fr 7:30pm | Sinfonia da
Camera: Messiah and
Mendelssohn
Sa 2pm & 7:30pm | The
Nutcracker
Su 2pm & 6pm | The Nutcracker
Th 7:30pm | ChampaignUrbana Symphony
Orchestra: Holiday Splendor