Japanese Noh Theatre, seven centuries old and going strong, is known for its masks, exotic costumes and stylised movement. But a double bill of Noh that comes to the O’Reilly Theatre on Monday has a contemporary twist and a fusion of cultures.

Both plays will be performed in Oxford (Paris, Dublin and London) by the Oshima Noh Theatre of Hiroshima and Theatre Nohgaku based in New York and Tokyo.

In Kiyotsune, by Zeami (the 14th-century actor-playwright could be Noh’s Shakespeare), General Kiyotsune commits suicide when facing defeat. The story seeks to reconcile his widow’s grief and anger with Kiyotsune’s spirit as it seeks redemption. Pagoda is new, written by a poet Jannette Cheong, inspired by her family history. The music is by Richard Emmert, founder of Theatre Nohgaku.

Jannette attended a writer’s workshop led by Emmert in Washington and found the perfect way to tell a story of how her Chinese grandmother sent her youngest son to sea in the 1920s to escape famine, a voyage from which he never returned. After his death in London, in the 1970s, Jannette went to China to find her father’s birthplace. Pagoda, the first Noh play in English by a British writer, has something to say something about migration and the wrenching apart of families.

Jannette says: “People of mixed race often wonder about their identity. The writing of Pagoda has enabled me to explore who I am and where I have come from.”

The Oxford connection is Dr Brian Powell, a leading UK expert on Japanese theatre. Other budding ‘experts’ in Oxfordshire today include students from Bartholomew School, Eynsham, and Cheney School, Oxford, who worked with Rick Emmert in Getting to Noh workshops.

An open seminar on the art of Noh will be held at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at 10am on December 7. Families can learn how Noh masks are made with a master, Hideta Kitazawa (Pitt Rivers Museum, 1pm-4pm Saturday and Sunday, December 5 and 6 and 10am- 4pm Monday, December 7).

Theatre tickets from the Oxford Playhouse – details of the other events at www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/ www.prm.ox.ac.uk/events.html