Physically precise and expressive pantomime and carefully controlled blocking codes make exquisite use of space and rhythm among performers. Short songs (kouta) include drinking ditties, love ballads, and lyric appreciations of the fleetingness of human existence. Puns, onomatopoeia, and spirited banter enliven the dialogue, propelled on a charming, wavelike rhythm that ensures a dynamic relationship among actors and helps draw in spectators. Kyōgen is instead a tour-de-force of acting bravado. Employing the same minimal mise-en-scène as the nō, kyōgen actors normally do not rely on elaborate properties or accompanying musicians masks, spectacle, and chorus rarely appear in the ten- to thirty-minute dramas.
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Interludes (ai kyōgen) between acts of nō plays inform spectators of the backstory in colloquial language and allow the lead nō actor (shite) to change his costume while full kyōgen plays, interspersed with the nō, provide a colloquial chuckle between solemn or tragic dramas.
Since the Muromachi period (1333–1573), kyōgen has been connected with nō theatre. Fads, foibles, and folly of the Japanese medieval era are captured in its expressive form. Yet the 250 plays in the current kyōgen repertoire display a wit, sparkle, and verve that have the power to entertain today, spanning slapstick farce, gentle satire, comedy of manners, and sci-fi fantasy. Derived from sangaku "variety show" performances imported in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from China, kyōgen's sharp satire, realistic portrayals of living targets, and obscene skits gradually became smoothed and codified into a gentle formal comedy during the Edo period (1603–1867), when nō and kyōgen were designated the "ceremonial performance" (shikigaku) of the shogunate.
Kyōgen, meaning "wild, specious words," are often denigrated as "comic interludes" to the more serious nō, with which they've been coupled for more than six hundred years.