About TN

RICHARD EMMERT is an American who has studied, taught and performed classical noh drama in Japan since 1973. Emmert is a certified Kita school noh instructor, and has studied all aspects of noh performance but with a special concentration in movement and music. In Japan, he is a professor at Musashino Women’s University in Tokyo where he teaches about Asian theatre and music. In Tokyo, he also directs a semi-intensive, on-going Noh Training Project for English speakers. In the summer, he leads the intensive three-week Noh Training Project in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania sponsored by the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. Emmert frequently writes and speaks about noh both in Japanese and English, in and out of Japan, and co-authors with Monica Bethe a series of noh performance guides which are published once a year from the National Noh Theatre in Tokyo. Emmert has led extended noh performance projects outside of Japan directing student noh productions at the Theatre Training and Research Programme (TTRP) in Singapore (2002), Emory University in Atlanta (1999), the University of California, Berkeley (1997), the University of Sydney (1984, 1989,1990), the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (1991), Earlham College in Indiana (1988), the National School of Drama in New Delhi (1987), and the University of Hong Kong (1995). He has conducted numerous other short-term workshops. Emmert has composed, directed, and performed in several English noh performances including William Butler Yeats’ At the Hawk’s Well, Janine Beichman’s Drifting Fires, Arthur Little’s St.Francis, and Allan Marett’s Eliza. Selections of these have been released by the Japanese Teichiku Records in a CD entitled noh in English. He also is the founder and director of Theatre Nohgaku, a troupe made up of English speakers proficient in noh and he led the troupe in their first performance tour of At the Hawk’s Well in the US (Fall, 2002) in collaboration with Theatre of Yugen of San Francisco. Emmert was the artistic director of and a performer in a multi-cultural performance called Dragon Bond Rite with performers from Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, and Tuva. Conceived and composed by Jin Hi Kim, Dragon Bond Rite was performed in June at the Japan Society in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 1997 and at the Hong Kong Festival of Asian Arts in 1998. He also composed the score and played the nohkan flute in Erik Ehn's Crazy Horse with Theatre of Yugen in September 2001.