Elvis comes back as a ghost in a noh theater play

The king of rock ’n’ roll, Elvis Presley, has had many reimaginings in popular culture, but Japanese noh theater might be one of his most unexpected contexts yet. Nonetheless his ghost will be on stage in Tokyo on Oct. 10 and 11.

Theatre Nohgaku will bring its original noh play “Blue Moon Over Memphis” to the sophomore edition of Autumn Meteorite Tokyo, one of Japan’s largest performing arts festivals that takes place at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro. Although the play was previously performed at Waseda University’s Okuma Auditorium and Kyoto’s Kongo Noh Theatre in 2024 and at Tokyo’s Kita Noh Theatre in 2025, Autumn Meteorite contextualizes the work in the constellation of world theater and brings it to wider audiences. This time, the venue will be a contemporary theater stage instead of a traditional noh stage with four pillars and the show is just one of the festival’s international offerings.

“Blue Moon,” slated for the festival’s opening weekend, is a prime example of the artistic possibilities of cross-cultural exchange.

The work was written by American playwright and librettist Deborah Brevoort, while the music, which weaves in 20th century popular songs like “Blue Moon,” Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s classic from 1934, was composed by Richard Emmert, founder of Theatre Nohgaku. It is the result of years of collaboration between theater professionals to create a contemporary iteration of the noh form, a performing art dating back to the 14th century, in the English language.

Portraying Elvis as a ghost fits into noh's traditional tropes of telling stories with ghost and supernatural elements. | COURTESY OF THEATRE NOHGAKU

At Autumn Meteorite, Theatre Nohgaku will also present traditional noh in Japanese as one part of the performance. | COURTESY OF THEATER NOHGAKU

“Blue Moon” tells the story of Judy, an Elvis superfan, who is visited by the ghost of her idol during a journey to Graceland, the rock legend’s famed residence-turned-attraction, on the anniversary of his death.

“Celebrity culture is such a huge part of America, and Elvis was basically a god to so many people,” says John Oglevee, who performs the role of Elvis.

In centering Elvis as godlike — and ghostly — “Blue Moon” maintains the tropes of traditional noh, which often features supernatural elements. As Elvis, Oglevee is the masked shite, the lead actor who often portrays deities and spirits in noh, while Laura Sampson and Mika Oskarson-Kindstrand both share the role of the waki, Judy, who is a mortal religious follower or traveler.

In the noh tradition, a spirit is attached to a particular place — in this case, Graceland — and the waki is able to draw said spirit out, spurring it toward some state of healing.

“This is a meditation on loneliness and how all of the celebrity and fame that the world gave him could not fill that hole that was his life and his heart,” Oglevee says.

The shite’s mask, an essential element of noh, was designed by woodcarving artist Hideta Kitazawa. Designated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as a master craftsman, Kitazawa designs all the masks for Theatre Nohgaku. Over the course of a year, the theater worked with Kitazawa to create a mask that honored both the legendary artist and the hallowed artistic form. In the end, they landed on a combination of Elvis-like qualities inspired by various stages of his life.

“We took the eyes from the end of his life, we took the cheeks from his 30s. We took the lips from his youth,” says Oglevee, who consulted with Kitazawa during the mask creation process.

The Elvis mask was made by master craftsman Hideta Kitazawa. | PHOTO BY DAVID SURTASKY

Much of the Theatre Nohgaku’s repertoire centers historical subjects as restless spirits, such as the play “Oppenheimer,” about the ghost of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” The play was performed in Japan in 2025, also with Oglevee in the lead role.

In early October, at Tokyo’s Umewaka Noh Theatre, the ensemble performed “Bae Bong-Gi,” a work about “comfort women” set in Okinawa. After Autumn Meteorite, Theatre Nohgaku will travel to Oakton College in Illinois to share a work-in-progress performance of “Chiune: Visas for Life,” a noh play about Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who issued transit visas to Jewish refugees escaping Lithuania in 1940.

Theatre Nohgaku’s work is not just innovative, but also has a preservationist bent, as the troupe hosts summer intensives, workshops on mask-making and other educational programs that pass down noh’s legacy.

John Oglevee, who performs the role of Elvis, also performed the role of J. Robert Oppenheimer in another original noh play by Theatre Nohgaku. | COURTESY OF THEATRE NOHGAKU

Although noh theater is almost 700 years old and may seem daunting to a contemporary audience, it has vibrant storytelling power.

“A typical film or television or narrative story takes an epic tale and shrinks it down to a 90-minute consumable product,” Oglevee says. “Noh takes one second and expands it. It gives the audience the chance to think and feel.”

Oglevee encourages audiences to show up with an open mind.

“Noh tries to lay humanity bare on stage. The stage is empty when you arrive, and it’s empty when we leave. We just try to give the barest bones of humanity on stage for the audience to share at that time,” he says. “If you don’t try to understand it, just try to experience it. I think you’ll still get a lot out of it.”

”Blue Moon Over Memphis” has two performances, on Oct.10 and 11, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro, part of Autumn Meteorite Tokyo Festival’s program. For more information, visit autumnmeteorite.jp/en/2026/program/blue_moon_memphis.