The Sum of Interior Angles

The At the behest of such luminaries as Jean-Louis Barrault and Jerzy Grotowski, Suzuki Tadashi and the Waseda Little Theatre have performed in numerous theatre festivals across Europe. In recent years, Suzuki, in cooperation with the Kanze family of Nō actors, has been exploring the potential of Nō acting technique in the presentation of Greek as well as modern tragedy. Among their productions have been Euripides’ The Trojan Women and The Bacchae, the Nō play Tsunemasa, and original works written by Suzuki. The following article (translated from Suzuki’s 1973 volume, The Sum of Interior Angles: Collected Theatre Essays) brings together many of Suzuki’s views on contemporary Japanese acting which he feels has lost touch with its own roots and is now simply mimicking either traditional or foreign patterns. Rather, he argues, the modern actor must use these elements as his own reference points in an attempt to find and objectify himself.