Immersia 2024: Behind the Scenes of Za Kabuki

The ANU School of Culture, History & Language is excited to collaborate with the renowned ANU Za Kabuki Club for this year’s Immersia festival. We are club is thrilled to invite you to an exclusive open rehearsal as part of our immersive program.

 Experience the captivating world of Kabuki, a traditional Japanese art form, known for its elaborate costumes, dynamic acting, and rich cultural heritage. This is a unique opportunity to witness our  the club’s performers in action, see behind the scenes, interact with and experience Kabuki for yourself. 

About ANU ZA KAKBUKI

The oldest Kabuki troupe in the Southern Hemisphere, ANU ZA KABUKI performs traditional Japanese theatre to an Australian audience. 

The club was formed in 1976 by teachers in the ANU Japan Centre, including Mr Shun Ikeda, who still plays a vital role in the club today. Starting out as a modern Japanese theatre group, the club’s aim was always to both introduce some unfamiliar aspects of Japanese culture to students, and to give students a medium through which they could practice and improve their Japanese outside of the classroom.

In 1999, the club had its first performances outside of Australia, visiting Japan and performing in Kobe and Nara. In 2016, the club once again ventured overseas to do three performances in the Tohoku region of Japan, including in areas heavily affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Their style of kabuki is very different from traditional kabuki found in Japanese theatres. Their long history has allowed us to develop their own unique style which includes cross-dressing, modern jokes, dancing, pop music and many other uniquely Australian features.

Although the club's performances contain many non-traditional aspects, we use traditional scripts, enabling students to explore the old Japanese language and traverse into unfamiliar areas of their language studies. They also make use of projection technology to provide English ‘subtitles’ so that the audience can better understand the dialogue.