“I have been lucky enough to see and do a great deal in my forty-two years of life, but I have not discovered a greater treasure than a good teacher.”
Offerman enrolled in a Kabuki theatre class with Shozo Sato, an internationally celebrated artist best known for his Kabuki productions of classic western plays. Sato, a University of Illinois Professor Emeritus and the founder of Japan House, served as artist-in-residence at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts from 1969 to 1992. [8] In a paper for Sato’s class, Offerman wrote, “More than any other form of theatre I have attempted, Kabuki is a celebration. On stage, we sing of life with our bodies, voices and hearts. In many ways, Kabuki is a celebration of life, both good and bad.” [9] Offerman’s full paper for Sato’s class is available here.
Offerman was cast in Achilles: A Kabuki Play which was performed at KCPA before going on tour in Japan. “I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when Shozo needed some dumb, strapping donkeys to play soldiers,” Offerman said in 2013. [10] When Sato redeveloped the play with The People’s Light & Theatre Company, a professional theatre group in Pennsylvania, Offerman and some of his Illinois classmates remained in the cast. “Foust, Flanigan, and I were never the leads in his shows, as there were more beautiful actors who were better dancers, but we were dependable, so he kept us around the most. We would be called upon for comic relief. In between long, elegiac sequences of shifting light and undulating, colorful dances in museum-quality traditional costumes of Shozo’s design, we would run onto the stage, fall down, then run off. There’s room for everyone.” [11]
This version of the production performed in an ancient Roman theatre at Kourion, a Soviet tractor exhibition hall turned discotheque in Budapest, an 18th century theatre in Debrecen, and as part of the Festival Mythos in Philadelphia. Peter Carnahan, Director of Theatre and Literature Programs for the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, joined the cast as “a reporter from the outside, looking in.” [12] He recorded the details of the tour in a journal that is now a part of the Shozo Sato Papers at the University of Illinois Archives Research Center.
In his journal, Carnahan refers to Offerman and the other Illinois cast members as “the Illinois guys” and describes some of their backstage antics. “I was startled the first time I turned and saw lanky Joe Foust standing on solid Nick Offerman’s shoulders. How did he get up there?” he asks.
Carnahan goes into some detail about young Nick Offerman’s sartorial choices elsewhere in the journal. Sato, who was also accomplished in the art of Ikebana or traditional Japanese flower arrangement, was teaching a class in this technique for a group of ladies from the local garden club when Offerman entered the room. “Into the middle of these ladies, beating away at their fronds, strolls a blond motorcycle type, tie-dyed shirt, cut-off jeans, combat boots, earring, tattoo on the bulging upper arm, headphones, headband and shades. I’m the only one to react to this creature from another culture- the ladies are too busy mangling their plants,” Carnahan writes, “Until I realize it is Nick Offerman, from the Illinois group, in his street dress… Shozo, the garden club, Ikebana, Nick in his biker get-up… such disparate worlds under a striped tent on a summer morning as if they were the most accustomed of neighbors.” [13]