Ennosuke III: Kabuki Actor (1984)

This 35-minute documentary film is about Ennosuke Ichikawa, aka Ennosuke III, the third in a line of great Kabuki actors in Japan. I’m posting this on December 9, 2013, Ennosuke’s 74th birthday. We see him in the course of preparing for two major theatrical productions. The first is the 1979 revival of “Date no Juyaku,“ a five-hour play in which Ennosuke plays ten roles, both male and female, and has to switch back and forth, often in the middle of a scene! We also see him prepare a rarely performed classic