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Noh was traditionally performed outdoors, with Noh stages often being free-standing structures located at [[Shinto shrines]]; though often located indoors today, Noh stages retain the architectural form of those free-standing structures, and continue to bear their own roofs.
Noh was traditionally performed outdoors, with Noh stages often being free-standing structures located at [[Shinto shrines]]; though often located indoors today, Noh stages retain the architectural form of those free-standing structures, and continue to bear their own roofs.
==Costumes & Props==
While Noh is often performed in comparatively plain (but still traditional-style) clothing, in full performances, the ''shite'' performer (and sometimes others) is often dressed in oversized robes with intricate embroidered or otherwise decorative designs. Such robes, often incorporating bright colors and sometimes silver or gold thread, are lavish and expensive, and traditionally helped to not only convey the sense of a divine or otherwise larger-than-life character but also to make the actor visible from a distance in what was sometimes limited light.
Like other traditional Japanese garments ("kimono"), Noh robes are generally made to a single size; rather than different actors using different size costumes, the garments are simply folded and tucked to adjust the size. Removable collars (''eri'') are employed, so that a single costume might be adapted to serve multiple roles; while female roles typically wear a red collar, male roles employ a variety of colors. Aristocratic or otherwise elite characters often wear multiple collars, implying multiple layers of clothing.
Deities and spirits often wear collars in lighter colors. Supernatural characters such as deities, spirits, demons, and dragons also often wear oversized skirt-like pants known as ''ôkuchi''.
The Noh mask (''nômen'', 能面) is a particularly distinctive feature of Noh. While not all roles or performance styles call for masks, such masks are unique to Noh and are not used in kabuki or other theatrical forms. Though these masks, carved from wood, are immobile, obscuring the actor's facial expressions, many masks - particularly those meant to depict refined young men and women - are designed so as to convey a wide range of emotions depending, simply, on how they are tilted and thus how they catch the light. Such masks, when tilted slightly downwards, can be made to appear sad, or "darkened" (''kumoru''); when tilted slightly upwards, the same mask can appear to smile or to otherwise "brighten up" (''terasu'').
==Categories of Plays==
==Categories of Plays==
