Every Culture Has Its Stage and Costumes

Truth be told: I almost didn’t write this blog. At OEF!, we like to keep a broad view of interculturality so what could possibly sound more predictable - and stuffy! - than talking about costumes in theatre, opera or cinema?

Please bear with me, though.

Because today, a phenomenally beautiful Japanese movie is finally opening in Dutch theatres: Kokuhô, or “National Treasure”.

Kokuhô follows two generations of actors in the world of Kabuki, the centuries-old form of Japanese theatre famous for its elaborate costumes, make-up and highly stylised acting. Traditionally, all roles are performed by men, including the female roles, for which some actors specialise throughout their careers. Becoming a great Kabuki actor requires years of extraordinarily disciplined training.

Impression of Kabuki actors in male and female roles. AI generated in the absence of legally available movie stills.

At about three hours long, a film exploring such a specific cultural theme hardly announced itself as a blockbuster. Yet Kokuhô became a sensation in Japan. And when I was lucky enough to watch it a couple of months ago while travelling, I was completely mesmerised by it, too: a deeply moving story centred on the conflict between age-old conventions and modernity through breathtaking acting in superbly colourful costumes.

If you have the chance, do go and see it.

Another place boasting fantastic costumes is the Centre national du costume et de la scène (CNCS) in Moulins in Central France. I visited only last week. The CNCS preserves countless costumes from French theatre, ballet, opera and tv. Walking through its galleries is a feast of colour, imagination and impressive craftsmanship.

And suddenly, you may come face to face here with an old acquaintance when you recognise, with a pleasant sort of shock, a costume from a memorable performance in the past. Whether your cultural icon was French literary hero Cyrano de Bergerac, Cairo-born Italian-French singer and performer Dalida or American opera legends like Maria Callas and Jessye Norman, you will bump into their emblematic costumes here.

Costumes worn by Maria Callas in the role of Norma by Bellini (left, 1964) and by Jessye Norman in the role of Dido by Purcell (right, 1982). Both productions by Opéra national de Paris. Pictures taken by author at CNCS, Moulins, France.

Walking around the CNCS, my experience there and the one of watching Kokuhô unexpectedly came together.

Kokuhô demonstrates how its two main characters transform on stage into onnagata, Kabuki actors specialising in female roles. Their transformation involves much more than putting on a wig, make-up and a beautiful kimono. The smallest movement, the position of the body, the way a hand is held: everything is part of an artistic language that needs to be learned.

But for theatre to work, performer and audience must understand each other.

A gesture has meaning

because we have learned

how to interpret it.

And that isn't so different outside the theatre. A bow. A handshake. Looking someone straight in the eye - or not. Interrupting someone because you are enthusiastic. Or waiting politely until they have finished. Speaking loudly, speaking softly. Calling your boss by their first name. Or waiting for your boss to allow you to speak at all.

We perform hundreds of such little rituals every day without thinking about them.

That’s how cultures work. We inherit an enormous amount without giving it much thought: ideas about politeness, authority, hospitality, punctuality, family, emotion, privacy or respect. But we also spend our lives learning, adapting and adding to what we inherited.

Eventually, we become so fluent in many of our conventions that we stop recognising that they are conventions in the first place.

When we encounter another culture, its cultural "stage and costumes" are often immediately visible to us. They bow. They talk with their hands. They are very formal. They don't say what they mean. They maintain physical distance. They interrupt.

We recognise their performance as cultural.

We experience ours as normal.

And that is where ethnocentrism quietly enters the theatre. We assess other people's behaviour against cultural rules that have become so natural to us that we no longer realise we are applying them.

The CNCS preserves the costumes and, sometimes wonderfully, brings their performances back to us. Kokuhô shows what happens when performers bring an intricate cultural language to life. Together, they left me with one straightforward thought:

Every culture has its own stage and costumes.

We inherit and learn our costumes, gestures, words and roles so well that eventually we stop noticing the performance. That’s where our ethnocentrism reveals itself.

At OEF!, we consider curiosity an essential intercultural competence to overcome ethnocentrism. One way to develop curiosity is to look across the stage and realise that we ourselves are standing on one, too.

ON EQUAL FOOTING takeaway:

“Every culture provides both a stage and costumes. Curiosity helps us recognise the cultural codes behind them — theirs as well as our own.”

Many stages and costumes. Always equal footing.

slogan of the day