The Silk Drum

From and with Kaori Ito and Yoshi Oïda – 2020 Creation
A modern Noh – Executive production by Maison de la Culture d’Amiens

Inspired by the Noh play Aya no Tsuzumi 綾鼓 and its adaptation by Yukio Mishima, The Silk Drum tells the story of an old man who is cleaning the stage of a theatre when he falls in love with a dancer who is rehearsing her part on stage. This younger woman seems inaccessible to him. The young woman holds a Japanese drum out to him and tells him that if he can get a sound out of it, she will be his. She is preparing to rehearse a traditional Japanese dance, the dance of madness, to the sound of the drum. But the old man tries to get a sound out of the drum without success. The surface of the drum is made from silk and it makes no noise. This results in a terrible outcome for the desperate old man. He reappears covered in blood and comes back to haunt the young woman like a living ghost.