The Turn Before the Lowering — Skinjo and Lacuna After Noh

Outside the theatre, the evening light had almost left the steps. Skinjo held the programme open without looking at it. Lacuna stood beside the rail, leaving room for the last people coming out.

“That felt more honest than watching someone act as if we weren't watching,” Skinjo said.

“The mask?”

“The whole arrangement. The measured steps. No one trying to pass a rehearsed feeling off as an accident.”

Lacuna moved aside for a departing couple before answering. “A declared method isn't necessarily an honest one.”

“No. But at least it declares itself. Naturalistic acting sometimes works very hard to make me forget there's a painting and admire the window.”

“And you prefer a frame you can see.”

“I prefer not being told there isn't one.”

Lacuna glanced back at the doors. “You said honest, though. Not visible.”

Skinjo closed the programme. “Fair.”

For a moment they listened to someone inside gathering loose objects into a box.

“The head lowering,” Skinjo said. “That was what did it. The face didn't change, and suddenly I couldn't bear to look at it.”

“The head turned before it lowered.”

“Did it?”

“Toward the side of the stage. Then there was a pause. Then it lowered.” Lacuna traced the sequence with one finger against the rail, three small movements. “You may have felt the pause more than the angle.”

“I remember a shadow under the eyes.”

“That too.”

Skinjo tipped the programme toward the streetlamp. Its white edge brightened while the printed face disappeared into shade.

“Same paper,” Skinjo said.

“Not the same light.”

“Exactly.”

“Not exactly. Where does that leave the performer? If the angle and the light do it, is the feeling in the person, or in the arrangement?”

Skinjo kept the programme tilted, then let it fall flat. “Someone has to arrive at the angle.”

“A hinge could arrive at an angle.”

“A very well-reviewed hinge.”

Lacuna almost smiled. “I'm asking seriously. Does the performer have to feel what we think we see?”

“I don't know. A painter needn't be lonely to paint an empty chair.”

“Then honesty can't mean an accurate report from inside.”

“No,” Skinjo said, more slowly. “Perhaps I meant that the feeling wasn't being presented as evidence. There was room to encounter it without agreeing that a person onstage really suffered.”

“There was room for us to put suffering there.”

“Yes.”

“That isn't a small difference.”

A door shut behind them. Skinjo looked down at the programme, resisting the convenient answer.

“What about the sleeve?”

“The hand lifted it,” Lacuna said. “It stayed there through the next sound.”

“I thought it trembled.”

“I didn't see that.”

“Neither did I, perhaps.” Skinjo rubbed a thumb along the fold. “I may have supplied it.”

Lacuna lifted a hand a little way from the rail and held it still. There was nothing ceremonial about the gesture; a coat cuff slipped back. After a few seconds, Skinjo looked from the hand to Lacuna's face.

“What?” Lacuna asked.

“I was waiting for you to finish.”

“So was I.”

The hand came down.

They stood quietly, considering how quickly a held movement had become a question between them.

“That doesn't make us understand Noh,” Lacuna said.

“No. It does make me less certain I was only looking at a beautiful shape.”

“And it doesn't tell us what the performer felt.”

“I shouldn't need that private information.” Skinjo tucked the programme into a pocket. “But I don't want to erase the work by calling it all an effect of the mask.”

Lacuna nodded. “Then keep the person in the account. The timing was chosen, or learned, or practised until it could be kept. We saw something done, not merely something displayed.”

They began down the steps. At the bottom, Skinjo stopped to let someone pass. Lacuna waited, then continued alongside.

“The turn before the lowering,” Skinjo said. “I'd like to watch for that again.”