Rehearsal as Research: “Japanese Tea Ceremony” in Practice and in Performance
In contemporary Japanese Tea (chanoyu, chado, or “Japanese tea ceremony”), practitioners learn to distinguish between “practice” in the sense of rehearsal, as carried out in weekly recurring sessions with an instructor versus what is often called “real tea,” corresponding to the sense of performance, the public culmination of rehearsal. Despite the seeming primacy of the “real” Performance, most practitioners end up spending the vast majority of the time they spent doing tea in rehearsal, not in performance. Of course, such a divide is also fundamental to theater practice as well, and paying more attention to what is learned in each format and where scholars derive their knowledge of the whole practice may open new insights into where and how performative norms like “identity” and “culture” are maintained, perpetuated, and evolve.

Michelle Liu Carriger, PhD has been studying the Urasenke tradition of chado (“tea ceremony”) since 1999, in various locations including Los Angeles, Colorado, Kansas, Boston, London, and in Kyoto during a yearlong Midorikai fellowship at the Urasenke Gakuen Professional College of Chado. She holds a second degree Urasenke teaching license and chamei (tea name) “Somi.” Additionally, she researches and writes academically on tea practice and theory and spent two years in rural Ehime prefecture, Japan, studying in the Omotesenke lineage.