A Kabuki musician from Tokyo gives an interactive talk at El Sawy on 5 November
Tokiwazu narrator Gyo Shigefuji, who performs at Tokyo's Kabuki-za, explains Japan's 400-year-old theatre at El Sawy Culturewheel in Zamalek on 5 November, with the audience joining in.
El Sawy Culturewheel in Zamalek is hosting an interactive lecture on Kabuki, Japan's 400-year-old popular theatre, on Thursday 5 November. The venue bills it as the first event of its kind in Egypt: a 90-minute session in which the audience is asked to sing along and take part, rather than just listen.
The speaker is Gyo Shigefuji, who performs under the stage name Sachitayuu Tokiwazu. Born in Tokyo in 1991, he is a researcher and performer of Tokiwazu, a style of narrative singing accompanied by the shamisen, the three-stringed Japanese lute that drives much of Kabuki's music. He narrates Tokiwazu at the Kabuki-za, Tokyo's best-known Kabuki theatre, is a visiting researcher at Edogawa University and teaches hands-on classes in schools and universities.
The talk is titled "Japanese Traditional Arts (Kabuki) are Fun! The Allure of the 400-Year Japanese Entertainment." Kabuki began in Japan around 400 years ago and mixes music, dance, storytelling and costume, and it is still changing: recent productions have even turned the manga ONE PIECE into a Kabuki play. The session starts with the older stage arts, Noh and Kyogen, looks at how Kabuki took from them, and then turns to sound and shamisen music, with live examples performed in the hall.
It is a rare chance in Cairo. Japanese culture has a large following among young Egyptians through anime and manga, but the stage traditions behind them are hardly ever shown here, and almost never by someone who performs them in Tokyo.
The lecture runs from 6pm to 8pm in the Word hall at El Sawy Culturewheel, at the end of 26th of July Street in Zamalek, under the 15th of May Bridge. The Culturewheel programme lists it at no charge, with seats reserved through the "book now" button on the event's page on culturewheel.com. As with other events at the venue, photography and recording are not allowed in the hall, and outside food and drink are not permitted. Arrive a little early: free talks there tend to fill up.