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TRANSLATING SILENCE: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN BECKETT, CHEKHOV, AND HIRATA
of restricted movement called kata, shuffling with sliding feet called suriashi)
were utilized to reveal the beauty of silent modalities. For the android version
of The Three Sisters, Hirata unveiled new possibilities of converting the
verbal signs written by Chekhov into the scientifically programmed postures,
gestures, and voices. In the future, it is expected that the android will be able
to create more natural variations by responding and reacting in real time on
the stage, just like human beings. It is then that the original silence written
in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters becomes more realistic to twenty-first century
audiences, by maintaining both stagnation and hope for the future.!®
At the post-performance session of The Three Sisters, Hirata explained
about his performance as follows: “By including the android, the play becomes
neither dark nor bright. I represent that there are neither dream, hope, nor
despair. That also means both hope and despair are here.”!” The actress whose
voice and movements had been programmed and recorded for the android as
the youngest sister, described the android as her “twin sister,”? her alter ego,
and said that she “was able to see herself acting onstage from the audience.””!
Regarding the difference between acting with humans and with an android,
the actress who played the role of the oldest sister answered that “it was easier
than she thought because the android existed not only with voice but also
with movements of hands and head. There was an excitement in playing the
same musical notes from the same musical score together.”?? The actress who
performed as the second sister commented that she “consciously tried to look
at the android on purpose to have conversations with her in order to create
such natural atmosphere as for dialogues with humans.””* Thus, the presence
of the android adds to Chekhov’s and Hirata’s concept of silence the more
profound question of what it means to be human beyond the centuries.
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN BECKETT, CHEKHOV, AND HIRATA
As opposed to those characters delineated by Chekhov’s realism in the theatre,
Beckett does not provide any specific social background or history for his
characters on the stage. Nevertheless, Beckett inherits the strategy of silence
from his predecessor in order to question the raison d’étre of the characters.
18 This section is based on my Japanese paper: Yoshiko Takebe: Potentialities of Non-linguistic
Modalities in Adaptations of Western Drama, in Invitation to Translation Studies 14 (2015),
107-118.
1 Oriza Hirata: Post-Performance Talk 2, The Three Sisters, Dir. Oriza Hirata, Perf. Hiroko
Matsuda, Mizuho Nojima, Minako Inoue, DVD, Theatre Television, 2013.
20 Minako Inoue: Special Talk, The Three Sisters, Dir. Oriza Hirata, DVD, 2013.
2 Ibid.
2 Hiroko Matsuda: Cast Interview, The Three Sisters, Dir. Oriza Hirata, DVD, 2013.
8 Mizuho Nojima: Cast Interview, The Three Sisters, Dir. Oriza Hirata, DVD, 2013.
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