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3. Egeus
& Lysander
The two young
couples, Helena and Demetrius, and Lysander and Hermia have
just run a three-legged race to stage centre. Such a race is
one of the most popular at school athletics meetings in
Japan. Here it helps evoke the "school atmosphere" of this
production and nostalgia for those "good old days". Note the
visual incongruity of university students playing school
children.
In this still,
Egeus addresses the kneeling Lysander while Theseus and
Hippolyta, Puck and Hermia look on. The primary school
chairs suggest a school setting, but the evident maturity of
the actors emphasises the gap between the worlds of children
and adults. A gap is also there, consciously or not, between
traditional and modern (or 'Westernised') Japan, and this
the teenagers also have to negotiate in choosing to sit on
chairs or on their heels.
As Deguchi notes in
interview, with reference to physical training, "I teach [my
actors] not to 'sit down'. I think sitting down betrays the
customs of an agricultural society". Elsewhere in the same
interview Deguchi considers both Shakespeare's England and
Post-War Japan as cultures poised between agricultural and
urban values.
Egeus' lines about
a "bewitch'd...child", spoken from inside the moon-like or
wrestling ring-like circle of sport and fantasy, seem
resonant with dramatic ironies. In this ambiguous
environment, whether Lysander and Puck kneel like
Elizabethan courtiers or samurai is a moot point. But both
are outmoded conventions in terms of a post World War II
present, and signify "play".
See also:
> School 15. Demure
lovers
> Bar 2.
Elizabethan posture
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