2017.06.01
New Theater Experience of "Nohgaku" with IT
- Navigation by Living National Treasure for Noh masterpiece -
Yokohama Noh Theater (Director: Masayuki Nakamura) starts a tablet-based theater experience, NOH-Tab (hereinafter, the Service) for Nohgaku facilities in Kanagawa Prefecture for the first time, in collaboration with Hinoki Shoten Co., Ltd. (President: Tsunemasa Hinoki, hereinafter "Hinoki Shoten"), NTT Comware Corporation (President: Shinobu Umino, hereinafter "NTT Comware"), and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation, Kanagawa Branch (Director/Kanagawa Branch: Kanae Takahashi, hereinafter "NTT East"). The service allows Noh beginners or non-Japanese speaking visitors to enjoy Nohgaku by using tablets to access apps to provide an introduction to the art of Noh through Wireless LAN (hereinafter, Wi-Fi) during the performance.
1. Background and Objective
Yokohama Noh Theater has been promoting Nohgaku, even for beginners to enjoy, although it is often thought of as "not easy", "difficult to understand", or "no clue how to start learning". As a new initiative, the theater has started an IT service for such audiences and foreigners to enjoy the acts in cooperation with Hinoki Shoten and NTT Comware. This is a multi-lingual service (name: NOH-Tab) to provide interpretational commentary by experts to the audience on a real-time basis, especially for popular acts that anybody can enjoy without special knowledge. The content also includes some pre-show information to introduce the act and its highlights.
The audience can enjoy the content such as introductions to the acts on tablets at Noh Theater's seats. The data is obtained from NTT Comwarefs cloud on the Internet via an NTT East WiFi access point (name of the service: GigaRaku WiFi).
Yokohama Noh Theater will further collaborate with various partners to promote Nohgaku and provide a new audience experience using such IT services.
2. Date of the Act using the Service
(1) Date : July 2, 2017 (Sun)
(2) Location : Yokohama Noh Theater
(3) Performance : Yokohama Noh Theater Special Act "Lecture by a Living National Treasure :
Masterpieces of Noh"
(Title) Kyogoen "Neongyoku" (Izumi style) Mansaku Nomura
Noh "Tsuchigumo (Spider) Kinnyu Sasagaki" (Kanze style) Gensho Umewaka
3. Features of the Service
The Service provides data including texts and graphics to introduce the unique expressions of Nohgaku so the audience can enjoy them on tablets.
As the operator of the system switches the channels depending on the scenes, the audience obtain explanations, including texts and graphics, which will change automatically for them on the tablets.
Texts in large fonts and graphics of the content allow the audience including beginners and foreigners to easily understand the meaning of the scenes. It is also accessible for the elderly and hearing-impaired audiences.
[Roles of the companies]
- Yokohama Noh Theater
Yokohama Noh Theater is an arts center of Japanese classical performing arts and is well known for its high-quality show planning/production.
The theater provides not only performances of Japanese classical arts including Noh, but also produces new arts through collaboration with other companies throughout the world. - Hinoki Shoten
Hinoki Shoten has had close long-term contacts with Nohgaku organizers and Yokohama Noh Theater as a special Nohgaku bookshop and supports the development of the content for NOH Tab based on experience gained from publishing a number of books about Nohgaku. - NTT Comware
NTT Comware provides a cloud service for various events such as Takiginoh and large-scale sports events to synchronize thousands or tens of thousands of IT devices including tablets and smartphones on a high-speed Internet connection, including the multi-lingual subtitles for Nohgaku. - NTT EAST
NTT EAST provides "GigaRaku WiFi", an easy office-use WiFi service, for Yokohama Noh Theater including technical support, which aims to promote ICT at Yokohama Noh Theater.
