This is a sacred dance in celebration of fertility and of good harvest, performed at New Year, theater openings and other ceremonies; it is a noble piece, solemn and elegant, yet somewhat humorous. Sambaso, an old man, along with a young man Senzai, will come up to the stage, to the accompaniment of fue (flute), otsuzumi (knee drum) and kotsuzumi (shoulder drum), to show the dance consisting of two parts: “Momi-no-Dan,” a lively heroic dance, in the style of plowing the fields, to unique voices calling in time to the rhythms created by the instruments; and the solemn yet dryly humorous “Suzu-no-Dan,” danced by a suntanned old farmer wearing a black mask and shaking bells, a symbol of happiness and harmony.

Photograph by Fumio Fukuda

On his way back to the Dewa Mountains from ascetic training in Katsuragi, a hungry mountain priest stops to eat a persimmon from a tree by the road. He climbs the tree to get the fruit. The farmer who owns the tree sees him and becomes angry, but pretends not to notice the priest. Teasingly, the farmer shouts things like, “That must be a bird,” or “It’s a monkey, no doubt.” Not wanting to be discovered, the priest responds by making sounds of the animals referred to by the farmer. Finally, the farmer says, “I’m sure it’s a kite. But then again, a kite would spread its wings to fly. If it does not spread its wings, the figure must be that of a man.” The priest falls for it, jumps out of the tree, making the sounds of a kite, and then...
Through the simplicity of Kyogen, anything can be imagined as actually being on stage. This play allows the full expression of the imagination, delighting the audience with a world of possibilities on a simple stage.

A man has big mushrooms growing in his house. He picks them and picks them, but they still keep growing. Not knowing what else to do, he asks the mountain priest to perform a prayer so that the mushrooms will go away.
The priest begins his prayer, but the mushrooms continue to grow at an even faster pace, troubling the priest and the homeowner. The harder the priest prays, the more the mushrooms grow…
This Kyogen resembles science fiction, with the unusual behavior of mushrooms popping up here and there, half bent over. For today’s performance the mushrooms will be played by students and children in Chicago/Washington, DC, showing what they accomplished during the workshops they attended.