Theater Tradition + Convention

     The theater tradition that I chose to do my research presentation on is Noh dance drama, which is the oldest theater tradition still in practice, originating from Japan. The convention that I am choosing to showcase is movement; I think I will particularly focus on foot movement and posture, and possibly the speed of movement. I chose Noh theater as my theater tradition because I realized while I was looking at the list of possible theater traditions that while I have some experience learning about traditional Western/European theater traditions, I know very little about Eastern culture, and therefor I know virtually nothing about theater traditions from that region. I chose to focus on a theater tradition from Japan because I knew that I wanted to focus on a tradition that uses movement and dance to communicate emotion.... while there were some theater traditions from Asian countries that used dance, many of the traditions on the list focused on puppetry or something similar to puppetry, which I know I am not interested in. Therefor, when I saw Noh dance theater on the traditions list and I did a little bit of research into the practice, I decided that this tradition was a very interesting combination of dance, movement, costumes, etc. that would give me a lot of material to work with, and would be something that I am genuinely interested in. Another thing that was enticing about Noh theater is that Noh is a theater tradition dating back to 14th century that often focuses on ancestral stories and characters, which I am also interested in learning about.