Christopher Ellars (CAS’24, CAS’25), a dual Japanese and voice performance major. Photo by Cydney Scott

Theatre

CFA Senior’s Thesis Blends Traditional Japanese Noh Theater with Western Opera

Chris Ellars’ Here Where the River Forever Divides Them is a hybrid of the Noh play Sumida River and the 20th-century British opera Curlew River

It’s not every day you stumble across a traditional Japanese Noh performance on campus—especially one blended with a British opera.

But that’s precisely what one Boston University College of Fine Arts senior staged for his thesis project.

Here Where the River Forever Divides Them, conceptualized, directed, and starring Christopher Ellars (CAS’24, CFA’25), is a hybrid of the famous 15th-century Noh play Sumida River and the mid-20th-century British chamber opera Curlew River, with music by Benjamin Britten and libretto by William Plomer, which itself was inspired by Sumida River. Ellars, along with CFA classmates, performed Here Where the River Forever Divides Them for the first time in December at Marsh Chapel. (Watch the full video here.)

So what exactly is Noh? Originated in the 14th century, Noh theater is a traditional form of Japanese theater combining dance, drama, and music. It’s the official art form of Japan and is considered the oldest consecutively performed theater form in the world. Unlike the better known Kabuki, Noh is more reserved: performers wear wooden masks, sing in a chant-like monotone, and move across the stage in minute, symbolic movements. 

Ellars, who is double majoring in Japanese and voice performance, grew up in a family of musicians and fell in love with Japanese culture at a young age. When it came time for college, he knew he wanted to attend a school that had strong language and performing arts programs—thus ending up choosing BU. 

He’d heard of Noh prior to college, but didn’t know much about it until he started researching Japanese performing arts for one of his classes.

“Noh has this stereotype of being terribly boring, because it can look like nothing is happening on stage [since the performers move so slowly],” Ellars explains. The music can also seem inaccessible to non-Japanese audiences, because it’s largely chant- and drum-based, as opposed to being more symphonic, and initially, he acknowledges, he “wasn’t into Noh at all because it was so different.”

But the more he learned about the art form, the more he was drawn to it. 

“I realized how profound every single artistic choice is,” Ellars says. “The movements are so minimalist, because every single tiny movement has deep meaning.” The stillness, it’s said, allows the characters to manifest on stage: “There’s this belief that the actor gets possessed by the spirit of whatever or whoever they’re playing, and in that way, [the characters] can tell their own stories, rather than the actors interpreting it,” he says. “That was just something that really fascinated me as well.”

Scenes from both Sumida River and Curlew River

Both Sumida River and Curlew River tell the story of a woman driven mad with grief over the disappearance and subsequent death of her child, which she learns of from a ferryman who takes her across a river. Both feature small casts and sparse instrumentation. Here Where the River Forever Divides Them interpolates scenes from both, adding three supporting roles: real-life Curlew River composer Britten and librettist Plomer and tenor Peter Pears, who starred in the original production in 1964.

All three were intrigued by Noh theater, Ellars says—and by Sumida River, which served as Britten’s and Pears’ (who were romantic partners) introduction to Noh. While researching what in particular drew them to the art form, Ellars found that all three men were gay and were very interested in expressions of masculinity in the arts. Traditionally, Noh has been exclusively performed by men. And when Britten and Pears first saw Sumida River, in the 1950s, Ellars says, the story would have spoken to them: a main character ostracized over their profound emotions for a person they loved. 

Britten, Plomer, and Pears “seemed to be attracted to Noh on an aesthetic level, through their sensibilities as gay men,” Ellars says. His thesis production “is basically me, through performance, trying to highlight their connection to [Sumida River], and how the art form in general touched them in very deep, very personal ways.”

For the production, Ellars turned to CFA’s Opera Institute for help. He performed the role of the madwoman and enlisted Opera Institute students Noah Rogers (CFA’25) as the ferryman and Shuangxiang Shan (CFA’26) as Pears and fellow CFA students Avery Davidson (CFA’26) as Britten and Louisa Gundeck (CAS’25, CFA’25) as the spirit of the deceased boy. Plomer was played by Kyle Kashiwabara, a longtime friend of Ellars’. Other CFA students sang as members of the Noh chorus (very similar in fashion to a Greek chorus, Ellars says) and played the accompanying scores.

Ellars spent last summer in Kyoto, where he studied Noh with a grant from BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). There, he learned about the form’s traditional movements, dress, music, and more from master actors, and he says the experience allowed him to make his production that much more authentic. 

Ellars is currently working on developing his thesis into a master’s and PhD project. (He’s had a handful of acceptances from schools so far, he says.) He was also recently invited to present a summary of his thesis as a New Scholar at the International Federation for Theatre Research in Cologne, Germany, this June. 

As for intent, he hopes anyone who interacts with his work gains an appreciation for art’s ability to communicate what unites us. 

“I would like them to come away with this sense of the importance of the arts in expressing the human condition,” he says. “People may be different, cultures may be different, but the arts are universal, and the human condition is the same. We just express it differently.”