Foreign theatrical tradition.

When producing a play based on a well-known and highly acclaimed theatrical tradition, following its conventions and trying to make the performance as close as possible to the selected tradition, as a group we must first understand what the tradition is about and then realize and always have present that we are not professional actors and that in our case it is, after all, a school play. When producing the kabuki play and consulting Mr. Leonard Pronko, a kabuki expert, we understood the complex process in which we were involved, even though we had it present,we finally understood we wouldn´t achieve the level of a kabuki play form Japan, tis impossible, kabuki performers train since they are 3 or 4 years old to become actors and become professionals at the age of thirty or forty.

Mr. Pronko adviced us to keep the essence of kabuki showing a lot of restrained energy which was about to burst full of passion. We were reminded of the main objective behind the whole school play is to learn about the tradition and how is it like to take a play from that tradition and perform it following the conventions , in this case, from Kabuki.

After the advice we received from Mr. Pronko i have come to ask myself a question thats always been in my mind. If we were to present another performance from Andean Theatre were we performed following every convention, using the same costumes and dancing exactly, would that be considered Andean theatre? I doubt it will, since its not performed in or from the Andes, however if someone cooks spaghetti and he/she is from Peru, that would still be considered Spaghetti.

There´s this problem with the performing arts, you can call yourself a surrealist painter and come form Peru having no contact with European teachers but still you can´t call yourself a Kabuki or Andean performer if you haven´t been trained there, or if the performance wasnt created in Japan or the Andes.

To answer this question, I must ask myself a question thats been asked million of times, What is theatre? what is the exact definition of this art form, answering this question would lead me to finding an answer to my previous doubt, however since this definition has yet to be precised my previous inquiry will remain a topic of discussion with different points of view.