This dissertation examines ways that Japanese noh theatre is living in migration as it is translated and transformed by contemporary theatre artists in San Francisco and Vancouver. To the growing body of English scholarship on noh, this work contributes a vocabulary of the traditional practice of noh from a performative perspective and a vocabulary of the creative processes in new employments of noh. In addition to the translation of the spoken language of noh, I explore the translation of aspects of the practice of noh in terms of aesthetics and the language of production. This includes the practice of the philosophy of traditional noh and its formal qualities such as movement, acting, vocal technique, and compositional structure.

The current traditional practice of noh theatre in Tokyo and the writings of Zeami Motokiyo are points of reference for the cultural translation of noh. The first chapter introduces the traditional practice through analyzing key concepts of noh's production language. The second chapter explores June Watanabe's creative process of being in the moment that allows for a practice based on noh to become responsive to social issues in the United States. The third chapter investigates processes of transmission and cultivation in actor training of Yuriko Doi's Theatre of Yugen. I argue for actors reaching a state of mastery called luminosity through a synergy of internal cultivation and the influences of individual cultural location. The final chapter builds on translations studies scholarship to discuss the writing and performance of Daphne Marlatt's noh play The Gull. Marlatt employs a finding voice method of translation in which the writer/translator creates a new text in dialog with her knowledge and background. These case studies investigate new noh in creative process, production, and social context to illuminate the possibilities of noh in migration.