WESTERNER CARRYING ON JAPANESE ART OF KABUKI

Kabuki is a form of total theater, according to Leonard Pronko, who will demonstrate the style at 2:30 p.m. Monday at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

“Kabuki uses everything the theater has to offer,” Pronko said. “The actor projects a character as a Western actor does, but he also uses his voice through all its ranges as a singer would and his body as a dancer does.

“To have a great Kabuki actor, you would have to have a Nureyev, a Pavarotti and an Olivier all in one.”

Pronko, author of “Theatre East and West” and “Guide to Japanese Drama,” will demonstrate the style by donning different makeup and costumes to create characters ranging from a young woman to a heroic warrior. He will perform short scenes from Kabuki plays, including the battle dance, “Gojobashi,” in which he will be assisted by Takao Tomono.

Between scenes, Pronko will discuss the history and the aesthetics of the genre.

“Kabuki is a classical form of Japanese theater that developed in the early 17th Century and reached its first peak around 1800,” explained Pronko, who also is acting chairman of the theater department at Pomona College. “It has has been developing and adding all kinds of elements of music and dance ever since. It’s a wonderful amalgamation of these elements.

“It’s a very popular form in Japan, not an aristocratic or Zen-oriented form at all. Most people when they think of Japanese art think of quiet things like tea ceremonies and sand gardens. This is very different. It’s very flamboyant, theatrical and colorful.”

Kabuki actors begin their training at age 4, Pronko said. “They are not considered to have reached their peak until at least the age of 40.

“They continue to act until they die, virtually. You will see actors 60, 70 and 80 years old still performing. Of course, they don’t do the acrobatics and rapid change techniques that are featured in certain kinds of plays.”

Training in Kabuki was hereditary, Pronko said, and so arose great family dynasties of actors who passed important roles down from father to son or uncle to nephew (Kabuki traditionally is performed entirely by males).

This exclusionary heritage precipitated a crisis during the mid-1960s, Pronko said.

“They were losing people in the lower echelons of the Kabuki world because if an actor was not born into the right family, he never got the right roles. So the National Theatre of Japan started a training program in 1970. There had never been a formal training program for people outside the Kabuki world.”

“It’s a small program, with only 10 students in it. I was the first Westerner in the program.”

Thus Pronko began a regimen consisting of three classes a day, six days a week, learning different kinds of singing and chanting, musical instruments such as the drum and samisen (a banjo-like stringed instrument), different schools of dance, battle techniques--and, of course, the intricate art of putting on makeup and many-layered costumes.

“It was pretty intensive,” he said. “It was intended to teach young men in two years what they could learn in 10 by osmosis from their family and in the theater.

“Of course, two years isn’t enough. But I did study Japanese dance, which is the basis for Kabuki movement, for five years in America before going over there. And I’ve been studying ever since. So, in all I’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Pronko said that he had always been drawn to “non-realistic forms of theater” and first went to Japan on a sabbatical in 1963. “I knew I would find it the most lively theater country today. I loved Kabuki and found it so exciting. I had to show it to people back here. But I knew I would have to learn more about the performing aspects of it.”

Since his formal training, he has been presenting Kabuki student productions in English at Pomona College and found some pleasing results.

“Quite a few young Japanese see Kabuki in our performance and say that they’ve understood it for the first time,” he said. “Our English is contemporary, whereas the language of the original is older, can be very florid, with polite verb forms.”

And recently, Pronko was notified that the Japanese government had awarded him the cultural prize of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Degree.

“Apparently, there are seven degrees,” Pronko said. “The prize is to be made on the 13th of May, but it was announced on April 29, the emperor’s birthday.”

He does not know if there is any monetary value associated with the award.

“But it’s nice to be appreciated,” he said. “There are these conservative elements in the Kabuki world who don’t think I should be doing this. In fact, they’re not allowing any more Westerners into the training program I went through, even though a couple of others went over after I did. They don’t like the idea of a Westerner studying for two years, then coming back and putting on Kabuki plays.”