Yattekita Godot (Godot Has Come)
Born in former Manchuria (northeastern China), Betsuyaku dropped out of Waseda University’s School of Political Science and Economics. He was influenced by Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd and founded the Waseda Shogekijo company together with Suzuki Tadashi. His plays Zo (The Elephant, 1962) and Macchi uri no shojo (The Little Match Girl, 1966) were highly acclaimed and he won the 13th Kishida Drama Award for Akai tori no iru fukei (A Scene With a Red Bird, 1967). In 1971 he won the Kinokuniya Theater Award for Machi to hikosen (A Town and an Airship) and Fushigi no kuni no Arisu (Alice in Wonderland). The following year he won the “New Artist” award of the Ministry of Education’s Selected Artists Encouragement Awards for Soyosoyo-zoku no Hanran (revolt of a gentle family), and in 1987 he won the Yomiuri Literature Award for his collection of plays titled Shokoku wo Henreki Suru Futari no Kishi no Monogatari (tale of the foreign travels of two knights). In 1988, his play Giovanni no Chichi e no Tabi (Giovanni’s journey to his father) won the Minister of Education Award for the Arts. As of 2013, he has completed 138 works, including plays, children’s stories, and humorous essays. His nonsense “—zukushi” series, including titles such as Mushi-zukushi (A World Full of Bugs), which turns conventional biology on its head, Mononoke-zukushi (A World Full of Ghosts) about the true nature of ghosts in ancient and modern Japan, and others on animals, birds, and fish, was a big hit. Other works such as his criminology essay Hanzai shokogun (Criminal Syndrome), an astute analysis of the darker mechanisms at work behind sensational crimes, reveal the full breadth of Betsuyaku’s creative and intellectual interests.
“Kiyama Theater Productions” production
Yattekita Godot
(Godot Has Come)
Written by Minoru BetsuyakuDirected by Toshifumi Sueki
(Mar. 24-31, 2007 at Haiyuza Theater) Photo: Teruo Tsuruta
Data
:
Premiere: 2007
Length: 1 hr. 40 min.
Acts, scenes: One act, 2 scenes
Cast: 10 (6 man, 4 woman)
The set for this play consists of no more than a single telephone pole towards the front of the stage and a bench and bus stop sign toward the back. The setting is at dusk.
The characters Vladimir and Estragon are still passing their time with meaningless little exchanges as they wait for Godot.
Of course the pair of Lucky, with the rope round his neck, and Pozzo holding its other end make their appearance and converse in exchanges that have little meaning other than to reinforce the master-servant relationship—although their presentation is considerably more comic than in the Original
Godot
.
Woman 1 appears on stage with her hands engaged in her knitting, and it appears that she is the mother of Estragon parted with some 30 years earlier. She has come in search of her son guided only by a letter she received from him.
Next Woman 4 makes her appearance pushing a baby buggy in search of her baby’s father, Vladimir.
Amidst this confusion, Godot appears on stage carrying a trunk and an umbrella.
He says, “I am Godot. ” But everyone is too absorbed in their own affairs to pay him any heed.
Both Estragon and Vladimir are too busy being terribly perplexed, the former by the fact that this woman who has suddenly appeared may be his mother, and the latter by the fact that this child may be his son.
In the course numerous entrances and exits for various unclear reasons and repeated failures to meet in the right place at the right time, Woman 1 and Woman 4 and Estragon and Vladimir are never able to verify their mutual relationships.
And, in the three times that Godot encounters Estragon and Vladimir during the course of the play, pronouncing each time that “I am Godot, ” they are unable to internalize and “experience” the fact that Godot has indeed finally come, even though they are aware of the arrival on the surface. They only repeat hastily, “Yes, we know that you are Godot, and that you have come. ”
It is as if to say that fifty years after the original
Waiting for Godot
exposed the inherent emptiness of the act of “waiting, ” we are in a time when the conditions of our lives shut even “waiting” away in the realm of the meaningless.
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