PSU Magazine Fall 2005

of a professional apprentice. It would change the meaning of the plays I was in." Kominz decided to become an aca– demic. He won a prestigious Watson Fellowship after graduation, then shipped off to graduate school at Columbia University to study Japanese literature. "From the time I was in Japan my junior year of college, I've felt that you can't understand the literature of drama, which is what I got my Ph.D. in, unless you've performed it your– self," he says. "I've never entirely left performance behind." In Portland's Imago Theatre, a shim– mering panel of light blue silk hangs suspended from the center of a large stage. Suddenly the silk shimmers to the ground, revealing more than a dozen actors in elaborate Japanese cos– tumes, posed in a tableau. This is the final exam for Kominz's summer Kabuki in English workshop, and it is trial by fire. Hovering over a video of the play on a large-screen television, Kominz talks just like a director, pointing out minute details of makeup, costume, movement. This particular play is a comedy, but nevertheless, rigidly con– trolled movement as well as subtlety are important. "In Japan, all Kabuki actors are men, and the hardest thing for me to do onstage, personally, is to play a woman-any woman," Kominz says, pointing at the screen. "Look at the way she sways, very soft-it's really important, for a courtesan. " Triis is a significant departure from what a Japanese audience would expect to see in a production of this play, Uiro Uri , (in English, The Medicine Peddler). In addition to women, the cast includes multiracial actors. However, the amazing kimonos worn for the production give the play authenticity. Kominz points out their variety-from rich brocade to plain brown cotton. Putting on a kimono is a ritual all by itself, he says; the kimonos they wear are a key part of the actors' ability to psychologically meld ·with their characters. 8 PSU MAGAZINE FALL 2005 "I couldn't even begin to present Japanese theater without the help of my wife, Toshimi," Kominz says. "She's a professional kimono dresser and it's thanks to her that we can achieve a sumptuous and authentic look onstage." K abuki is very stylized and strictly choreographed, right down to the movements of a character's toes, but the structure is somehow deceiving. At first it all seems quite staid and slow– moving; the dialogue sounds weird, like random, intense vocalizations. Slowly it dawns on the casual West– ern observer that the characters are speaking English. Now, below the exotic trappings, they're moving into what is unmistakably an Abbott and Costello sketch, the one where Lou Costello-the short, funny one-is try– ing to flirt with a gaggle of pretty cour– tesans. Wait-courtesans in an Abbott and Costello skit? Uiro Uri predates Abbott and Costello by about 400 years, but the giggling audience doesn't seem concerned with that. "I have done scholarship on Japan– ese humor onstage , and my research shows that the impetus to humor is universal, not particular," Kominz says. "If it's verbal humor it may need a lot of explanation; if it's physical humor– that's humor anyone can understand. " And when the acrobatic fight scenes begins, Kominz says, "Portland audiences gasp just like Japanese audi– ences do. " It's this moment where it's possible to appreciate Kominz's, true talent– the combination of dusty-desk scholar– ship and the ability to bring Japanese culture alive on the other side of the world. "This production was a dream come true," he says. "My translation of a Kabuki play l published in 2002 , from a corpus of plays I've studied since 1980, presented to a public that knows nothing of my scholarship," Kominz says. "It was standing room only-and they loved it. " D (Lisa Loving, a Portland freelan ce writer, is a frequent contributor lo PSU Magazine.)