For these actors, the answer is 'Noh'

For 600 years, Japanese Noh theater actors have taken their places on polished cypress stages to play out stories of gods, nobles, demons, ghosts, warriors, and beautiful women. The essence of Noh has changed very little. At the back of the stage, drummers pound and a flute shrieks. To the side, a chorus chants. Center stage, the main actor sings as he moves ceremoniously through a dance crafted generations before he was born.

Noh is a classical Japanese art form that fuses movement, music, drama, and poetry. Seeing a Noh play for the first time can be a very strange experience. "The drummers' calls are not what our ears are used to," says Jay Rubin, Harvard's Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities, "hooting and howling sounds, and groaning - not what you imagine as music!" Actors don't so much walk as glide. They wear magnificent costumes that have so many layers the performers need other people to dress them. Many roles call for masks, such as that of a beautiful woman, a young god, or a fearsome sharp-horned demon. On the Noh stage, horns mean anger.

"Almost every play has some easily recognizable human emotion," Professor Rubin explains. "The single secret to its [Noh's] longevity is that it's about fundamental human emotion. And storytelling. All Noh has storytelling. A beautiful kind of storytelling."

Developed in 14th-century Japan by an actor and playwright named Kannami and his son Zeami, Noh was originally supported by shoguns, or Japanese leaders. Whether indoors or outside, the stage always has a large, curved roof, a bridge-like passageway for entrances and exits, and a painted backdrop of a pine tree. (Noh was originally associated with shrines of Japan's Shinto religion, and an ancient Shinto belief held that gods lived in pine trees.)

Noh plays usually have about 20 performers, but each play tells the story of only one role, the shite (sh-tay, or "doer"). The shite does not speak, but sings, as in an opera. The role portrays a type, rather than a fully developed character. The main role might be "the woman who was once beautiful" or "the ghost who was jealous." Noh actors are mostly men, who pass their skills down to their sons.

"It's the longest consistently performed theatrical tradition in the world," says Jubilith Moore. She's joint artistic director of San Francisco's Theatre of Yugen, which creates and teaches performance based on traditional Japanese theater arts.

According to Ms. Moore, who studied Noh in Tokyo, each play can last from 45 minutes to three hours. A traditional performance includes five Noh plays with Kyogen - shorter, amusing pieces - in between. A full program can go from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. Some audience members stay the whole time!

Although the stories can be tragic, Noh theater strikes many people as beautiful and emotional. There are no unnecessary objects on stage, and audiences must use their imagination to conjure the evening dew or a vast ocean. A boat may be represented only by its outline, or a moonrise by the way an actor arcs his fan.

A Noh actor can be so skillful that even when he sits completely still, he can project an emotion that moves an audience to tears. Only the most experienced actors play "still" roles, such as those of old women, which are among the most dignified parts.

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