PSU Magazine Fall 2005

which provides programming to further studem and community under– standing of Japan. Ask Kominz to list his most recent accomplishments, and it'.s the annual final exam for his PSU summer "Kabuki in English" workshop-the test is a live stage performance-that brings out the deepest ring of pride in his voice. He dwells on it. "The students-their buy-in is so tota l-they're able to give me more energy and expertise than l could ever dream of," Kominz says. "Costume designers, wigmakers, movement, makeup-every year people come out of the woodwork to share these abilities. " K ominz was born in Washington, D.C., to an artistic homemaker and a biochemist in the U.S. Public Health ly, kabuki students of Larry Kominz gave nglish-language premiere of The Medicine er (Uiro Uri), which Kominz translated directed. Service. The family moved repeatedly due to his fathers job, including two stints in Japan during Kominzs ele– mentary and middle school years. His time in Japan proved unforgettable. "My mother had been a jazz dance and yoga fan, and she took a classical dance class in Japan," Kominz says. She also studied traditional Japanese archery, "with a longbow between her fingers, with this ritualistic pulling of the string over her head," he recalls as he mimes the movements. "She threw herself into Japanese culture." Although Kominz studied no Japan– ese as a child, he remained interested. Unfortunately, as a teenager, he studied French. "My American school guidance counselor told me Japanese was a minor language," he says ruefully. That changed at Colby College in Maine, where Kominz started studying Japanese in his freshman year. "I really loved it in spite of the fact that it was agonizingly hard," he says. A turning point came in his junior year, which he spent at Doshisha Uni– versity in Kyoto, Japan. His fellow stu– dents studied zen, the bamboo flute, business, and economics; Kominz studied theater and started carving Noh masks. "I wanted a different kind of person to be with than my American friends," he says; the Noh actors were practicing Buddhists. "I got the sense that petty egoism was not part of the Japanese art scene-I really thought of it as more of a spiritual experience. " Eventually, Kominz realized that, petty egoism or not, there were perma– nent obstacles to his ever becoming a professional Kyogen artist in japan. "l was an amateur disciple ," he says. "The teachers knew l couldn't stick with it for the decades it takes Lo become a professional. "And as a gaijin l would always stand out, even when playing the hundreds of minor pans required FALL 2005 PSU MAGAZINE 7