By Jeremiah Onyango
One of the most famous performance centers is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. that was founded in 1971. There, they believe that “working with others is an essential skill to learn, collaboration has been identified as a 21st-century workplace ability as well as a component of the Common Core State Standards. Given that the performing arts are primarily group experiences, the arts become a prime tool for building skills in collaboration” (Kennedy Center). With fairy tales being a source of knowledge and lessons in everyone’s childhood, it is important to highlight relevant themes in these tales including collaboration. A fairy tale that has seemed to cross over between Japanese culture to American culture is the story of the Peach Boy or Momotaro. In the story, a boy is born out of a peach and tasks himself with slaying the ogres that are harming his village, and along the way, he meets friends that are willing to help him. With all that being said, how does the telling of Momotaro inform us of kinship structures and building community? Through the oral tradition of storytelling and the narrative structure, I argue that the telling of Momotaro informs us that kinship structures and coalitions within a theatre production rely on shared goals, faith, and payoff. These elements are important as they all are what fairy tales are meant to be, moral educating stories to make a better theatre community and society.
Momotaro teaches the audience the foundations of friendship, commonality, which is quintessential to the theatre. A key to a great friendship is similarity. In a study by University of Pennsylvania professors, they had college students who had never met each other in a room for an entire year. At the end of the year, it was found that “friendship attraction was closely related to the agreement between what the students thought of themselves and how their roommates perceived them” (Roberts-Griffin 3). The commonality they all shared was that they had agreements among their opinions. Their agreements led them to become closer and establish a more meaningful friendship as “people tend to like other people that are similar to themselves.” (Roberts-Griffin 3). In Peach Boy, Momotaro is on his way to slay ogres but is stopped by three different strangers. Each stranger along the way asked if they could have a dumpling and in return, help him kill the ogres Southeast of his village. The commonality that they all share that initially kicks off their friendship, is their love for dumplings. When Momotaro was written, children’s literature in Japan was used as an allegory for Japanese imperialistic views and propaganda (Henry 218). With that in mind, dumplings were the food of choice before Momotaro went off to battle ogres which is an allegory for leaving home to fight in the war. Any soldier is aware that they may not return home after putting their life on the line and for Momotaro to choose dumplings as his snack on the journey and to willingly share them with strangers is an expression of his kindness, a fundamental point to a healthy friendship. Continuing with the allegory, his friends along the way are soldiers joining him with the same goal. In Momotaro’s journey, they are slaying ogres instead of fighting other countries, but the shared objective continues to bring their friendships to fruition. Momotaro’s common goal of destroying ogres and love for dumplings among the strangers creates a bond and kinship between them.
Faith in theatre/acting is essential to great storytelling and in the plot of Momotaro. Momotaro gives up his dumplings in exchange for the help of strangers, but he has no way of knowing whether they will live up to their word. The entire exchange is based on whether they will help him slay the ogres with which they do help him with. Any good friendship has trust on both ends. Professors at Iqra University and the University of Punjab found a positive correlation between friendship and trust (Warris 80). In Momotaro, one of the reasons he gave his friends dumplings was so they could join him on his quest to slay ogres (Tatar 303). If their shared love for dumplings did not ignite their friendship it was the fact that they all did as they said and helped Momotaro with the ogres. In an ensemble, it is important to have everyone work as one unit. The production’s cast should be comfortable with each other which is why trust-based acting exercises are used at the beginning of the rehearsal in productions. To give an outstanding performance, actors need to believe in their castmates and feed off their energy. Being timid and distrustful of another actor will only prohibit the chemistry on stage and create poor performances. “Trust is a major theme in organizational studies” (Lupton 1) such as theatre. Actors get comfortable with each other and trust in each other but also must trust the director’s vision of the production and trust the process. Trust in theatre is essential to great productions and an important moral in Momotaro.
Both Momotaro and theatre teach us about how rewarding it can be when friends work together. At the end of Peach Boy, Momotaro and his new friends collect as much treasure as they can hold and return home to share their newfound riches. By working together, they get to go home successfully. While acting may be an after-school activity for some, it is a real occupation for many with it being as rewarding as treasure. With that being said, having a workplace with friendships between co-workers boosts productivity in the workplace and community (Xiao 9). With Momotaro being a children’s fairy tale, a collaborative effort from the main characters yields them treasure but a collaborative effort from children in an educational setting develops teamwork and stimulates creativity (Burke 88). As Momotaro is a children’s story, having the theme of collaboration in the end with the characters coming together and getting treasure emphasizes the importance of cooperation. That same cooperation is perfect for any workplace, including the theatre.
In theatre, there are multiple positions intertwined within a production like an actor, director, set designer, lighting technician, usher, concessions, costume design, etc. Each one is required for a show and plays a valuable role but with even one of them missing, the show can collapse into ruins. In an interview with StageBuddy, the producers of ‘Project Broadway’ elaborate on the importance of collaboration saying “one of the things we love about musical theatre is that it requires collaboration. You need the composer, book writer, choreographer, and set designer, among others to collaborate. We wanted to celebrate that sense of collaboration because it’s what we share” (StageBuddy). That shared love over theatre is what created the collaboration and not only does theatre display the importance of collaboration but Momotaro also expresses the need for teamwork. As all performances are guided by a script and bond the cast and crew, the dumplings bind Momotaro and his friends as the script is what brought everyone together to work together, dumplings brought the strangers together and created a collaborative atmosphere. The success they achieve by slaying the ogres resembles the success that can be achieved from a coherent show, the applause, cheers, and pride. Through Momotaro’s themes of collaboration, friendship, and community, we can see how those same themes parallel the reality of the theatre and any workplace environment.
Work Cited
Burke, Alison. “Group Work: How to Use Groups Effectively.” The Journal of Effective Teaching, 2011, pp. 87–95.
David Henry. “Japanese Children’s Literature as Allegory of Empire in Iwaya Sazanami’s Momotarō (The Peach Boy).” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, 2009, pp. 218–228., doi:10.1353/chq.0.1916.
“Interview: The Producers Behind ‘Project Broadway’ on the Importance of Collaboration.” StageBuddy.com, 24 Apr. 2017, stagebuddy.com/theater/theater-feature/interview-producers-behind-project-broadway-importance-collaboration.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard. “Trust in Theater.” The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism, 2017, pp. 155–181., doi:10.1007/978-3-319-63303-9_5.
Roberts-Griffin, Christopher P. “What Is a Good Friend: A Qualitative Analysis of Desired Friendship Qualities.” Penn McNair Research Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, ser. 5, 2011. 5.
Tatar, Maria. The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism. W.W. Norton Et Company, 2017.
Warris, Ayesha, and Rafia Rafique. “Trust in Friendship: A Comparative Analysis of Male and Female University Students.” Bulletin of Education and Research, vol. 31, no. 2, Dec. 2009, pp. 75–84.
Working Together: Teaching Collaboration in the Arts,
www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/articles-and-how-tos/articles/educators/working-together-teaching-collaboration-in-the-arts/.
Xiao, Jincen, et al. “Relationally Charged: How and When Workplace Friendship Facilitates Employee Interpersonal Citizenship.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 11, 2020, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00190.
