Are the old kabuki scripts never updated?

It is natural to assume that a classic is played from the Edo script exactly as written, but that is not the case. Edo-period scripts were written for performances that ran from morning to night. They contain far more scenes than a modern running time allows. And they carry customs and turns of phrase that were self-evident to their first audiences and are not to ours.

This is where hotei comes in — the editorial preparation of a performing script. Which scenes to keep, which to set aside; where the dialogue needs tightening for the story to hold; what must be supplied so that it lands on a present-day audience. The judgments accumulate into a script, prepared by literary specialists working with the actors. That the same play can be built from different scenes in different stagings is a consequence of this work being done afresh each time.

It should not be mistaken for rewriting at will. Hotei is an ordering that presupposes the preservation of the original plot and kata, and is distinguished from arbitrary alteration. If anything, the classics have gone on being performed because they have gone on being tended. Preserved entirely untouched, a play becomes a museum object. That kabuki remains a living art is held to follow from asking, at every staging, whether it still reaches the people in the seats.