The theatre of the confused: Tokyo

Abstract

This article focuses on a production in July 2021 entitled Waiting for Will, written and directed by Shoichiro Kawai. This play, in Japanese, is presented in the spirit of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and features two aging Shakespearean actors trying to recover their memory of Shakespearean lines and scenes they once acted, while they wait for ‘Will’, a pun on William Shakespeare as well as on one's last will and testament. Waiting for Will is part of a genealogy of alternative theatre in Japan. Though the production echoes Western forms, it is still distinctly Japanese in nature.