covered by a heavy arched roof supported by stout pillars at each of the four corners. The entire structure projects out into the audience, almost as though a wooden shrine had been reconstructed in the middle of the auditorium. The actors approach the platform along a wide entry ramp that leads off stage right to a curtained entranceway at the rear of the auditorium. The ramp has three small pine trees spaced evenly along its length, while on the backdrop of the stage proper there is a painting of a massive gnarled pine. As though to suggest Shinto origins for the drama, the stage and entrance ramp are symbolically separated from the audience by an encircling expanse of white sand, spanned at the very front of the stage by a small symbolic wooden stair. The acting platform is square, approximately twenty feet by twenty, with an additional rear area to accommodate the musicians and another area at stage left where the chorus kneels. Underneath the stage, unseen by the audience, are a number of large clay pots, a traditional acoustic device to amplify the resonance of the actors' voices. The few properties used in the plays are introduced and removed through an auxiliary entrance at the rear of the stage. The beginning of the play is signaled offstage by the high- pitched wail of a bamboo flute. Two attendants with bamboo poles lift back the variegated brocade curtain covering the doorway to the ramp, and the musicians, either three or four in number, enter single file and position themselves in the prescribed order along the rear of the stage--the flautist sitting on the floor Japanese style, and the two major drummers on stools they carry with them. (If a bass drum is required, its player must join the flautist on the floor.) The No flute is not particularly unusual, except for an exceptionally strident tone, but the two primary No drums are unlike anything in the West. Although they are of different sizes, both resemble a large hourglass with an ox hide drawn over either end and held taut by heavy leather cords. The smaller drum, whose hide surface the players must periodically soften with his breath, is held on the player's right shoulder and struck with the right hand. Its sound is a muffled, funereal boom, lower in pitch than that of the other, larger drum, the larger drum is held on the player's left knee and struck with the fingers of the left hand, which may be protected by thimbles of leather or ivory. It produces a sharp, urgent click, used to punctuate the cadence of the performance. The bass drum used in certain dramas is played with drumsticks in the Western manner. The drummers also sometimes provide rhythm by interjecting monosyllabic shouts between drumbeats.