Western and Asian theater meet in staging of ‘Rashomon.’

The story will be familiar to film buffs who’ve seen Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon.”

The revered Japanese director made an indelible mark on film history with his story of murder told from multiple points of view.

But unless one saw the film during the era in which it was made, it’s hard to imagine the powerful impact Kurosawa’s innovative, nonlinear approach to storytelling had on mid-twentieth century audiences.

“Many people remember that film because it was 1950, and it was pretty amazing for that time,” said director Bonnie Showers, whose stage production of the story opens at Bainbridge Performing Arts April 15. “And it was one of the first Japanese films to come to this country. It was quite an amazing thing.”

The BPA version is based on the script from Michael and Fay Kanin’s 1959 play “Rashomon,” derived from Kurosawa’s film, but Showers splices traditional Japanese theater forms with naturalistic Western acting. The juxtapositions help approximate the dreamlike, otherworldly mood of the film.

In Showers’ production, actors glide back and forth across the stage in the stylized movements of Noh and chant in unearthly tones that make a trio – Laurence Cole as the priest, Tel Schreiber as the woodcutter and Valerie Mosley as the wigmaker – sound like a full chorus.

When Mosley moves seamlessly into a biting, cynical discourse on the advantages of stealing hair from the dead to make her wigs – a narrative that segues into the morally ambiguous story of betrayal and murder – the viewer is caught off-guard, ambushed by the theatrical ploy.

It’s a risky venture, grafting forms that each have a distinct history and use – although the fusion is in the tradition of the works that inspired Kurosawa: two short stories by Akutagawa (1892-1927) that borrowed from both Asian and Western sources.

“My big question has been: How will people respond to the stylization?” Showers said. “But, in fact, this is for people who go to the theater and want to think.”

It may also be for those who enjoy spectacle, because the production features sword and knife fighting, comic Kyogen interludes, shamisen music and traditional Japanese costumes created by Margaret McKea, designer for the Asian fusion company, Panagea Arts in Vancouver.

Local history has a walk-on part as well, in the form of Kay Sakai Nakao’s kimono, a robe that survived during the family’s WWII internment.

A guest faculty member at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, and former artistic director of Theaterwerk San Francisco-Berlin and Theater im Pumpenhaus in Muenster, Germany, Showers began training prospective actors in January, with a 13-hour workshop at the Playhouse introducing the Japanese forms Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki. Showers called on longtime friends and associates, Tokyo and Seattle-based Ietomi Yukie and David Crandall and San Francisco Theater of Yugen co-director Jubilith Moore, to help introduce the theater techniques.

Rehearsals for Rashomon have been an extension of the workshop, Showers says, with training in chanting and the gliding movements of Noh continued throughout.

For Mosley to drop her mezzo voice to bass and for Schreiber to twist a lanky frame into the smooth 180-degree pivots Showers has demanded has meant not only learning lines and blocking, but a whole new way of being onstage.

“The actors have found a new sense of internal energy which is opening up new horizons for them,” Showers said.

“Not something pseudo-Japanese but an intensity and, I think, a poetic way of seeing life.”