Toshiki Okada
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is a Japanese
playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...
,
theater director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...
,
novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...
, and founder of the theatrical company chelfitsch. He is known for "his use of hyper-
colloquial Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation amo ...
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
and his unique
choreography Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...
."Program for ''Five Days in March'',
On the Boards On the Boards (OtB) is a non-profit contemporary performing arts organization in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1978. Originally located at Washington Hall in the Central District, the organization moved in 1998 to their current location in U ...
(Seattle), January 28–February 1, 2009.


Life and career


Personal life

Born in
Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...
in 1973, Okada attended Nagatadai Elementary and Nagata Secondary School there. In 1992, he started attending
Keio University , abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university located in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It was originally established as a school for Rangaku, Western studies in 1858 in Edo. It was granted university status in 1920, becomi ...
under the Faculty of Business and Commerce.Interview by Performing Arts in 2005
Retrieved on 5 December 2011.
Being a fan of
Jim Jarmusch James Robert Jarmusch ( ; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director, screenwriter and musician. He has been a major proponent of independent film, independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as ''Stranger Than Paradise'' ...
and
Wim Wenders Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker and photographer, who is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, Venice International Film ...
, Okada aspired to be a movie director when he was in middle school, which led him to join a theater club in Keio University. During this process, he gained experience in writing scenarios and scripts, which piqued his interest in stage directing as well. In his first year at Keio, he learned of Hideki Noda through Noda's troupe, , who had their final performance in 1992. Noda's modern and "unexpected" style influenced Okada's earlier works.


Career

In 1997, Okada formed the theatrical company chelfitsch in collaboration with dancer, Natsuko Tezuka. The name is a play on the English word "selfish," and is always written with a
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
''c''. After the
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011, at 14:46:24 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46:24 UTC), a  9.0–9.1 Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region. It lasted approx ...
, chelfitsch relocated from
Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...
to
Kumamoto is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 738,907 and a population density of 1,893 people per km2. The total area is 390.32 km2. had a populat ...
to avoid the threats of the earthquake and nuclear contamination. Okada has written all the scripts and directed all of the company's productions. Okada first started writing in a hyperrealistic style with in 2001, and he started choreographing his plays with in 2005.Japanese Cultural Envoy
Retrieved on May 12, 2014.
He received his first award, Yokohama Cultural Award / Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement in 2005. In the same year, ''Five Days in March'', a play that juxtaposes a couple spending five days in a
love hotel A love hotel is a type of short-stay hotel found around the world operated primarily for the purpose of allowing guests privacy for sex. The name originates from "Hotel Love" in Osaka, Japan. Although love hotels exist all over the world, the ...
against the beginning of the
Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...
, won the 49th Kishida Prize for Drama. was a finalist at the 2005 Toyota Choreography Awards. In 2006, Okada participated as the representative for Japan in the Stuecke '06/International Literature Project in
Mülheim Mülheim, officially Mülheim an der Ruhr (, ; ; ) and also described as ''"City on the River"'', is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen. It is ho ...
, Germany during the
2006 FIFA World Cup The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international Association football, football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which had won the right to FIFA World Cup hosts ...
. In December 2006, was presented at the
New National Theatre Tokyo The is Japan's first and foremost national centre for the performing arts, including opera, ballet, contemporary dance and drama. It is located in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. Since 1997 more than 650 productions were staged. There are about 300 p ...
. In contrast to his international acclaim, ''Enjoy'' was not well received by Japanese theater critics, who voted the play as the year's worst play. Between 2006 and 2007, he was appointed the director of the Performing Arts Festival "Summit" at the Komaba Agora Theater, where one of his role models, Oriza Hirata served as the artistic director. His book, , was published in February 2007 and consisted of two novels. One is a reworking of his play ''Five Days in March''; the other, an earlier piece, is called . The book received the 2008
Ōe Kenzaburō Prize The Kenzaburō Ōe Prize (大江健三郎賞) was a Japanese literary award sponsored by Kodansha (講談社) and established in 2006 to commemorate both the 100th anniversary of Kodansha's establishment and 50th anniversary of the writing life of ...
. In 2015, Okada was nominated for the 28th Mishima Yukio Prize for his novel adaptation of his play, , which was first staged at the Kanagawa Arts Theatre on April 20, 2012. Besides directing his own plays, he has also directed
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
's '' Cascando'' for the Tokyo International Arts Festival and Beckett Centennial Memorial Festival, and
Kōbō Abe , known by his pen name , was a Japanese writer, playwright and director. His 1962 novel ''The Woman in the Dunes'' was made into an Woman in the Dunes, award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kaf ...
's ''Friends'' at the Setagaya Public Theater. Since 2012, he has been a judge for Kishida Prize for Drama. He also leads workshop programs with theater students in Japanese universities during his free time.


Style

Okada's works represent the "lost generation," the generation that is most affected by the Japanese
recession In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a period of broad decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be tr ...
in the 1990s. Faced with economic and political challenges that were set by the bubble burst, young Japanese people are forced to have part-time work for which they are overqualified. One of his plays, , explores this issue of unemployment and temporary employment. The story follows the stories of struggling ''
freeter In Japan, a is a person aged 18 to 34 who is unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise lacks full-time paid employment. The term excludes housewives and students. Freeters do not start a career after high school or university, but instead e ...
s'' in their 20s and 30s who work in a
manga café A is a type of Coffeehouse, café, originating from Japan, where people can read manga. People pay for the amount of time they stay in the café. Most manga cafés also offer internet access like and vice versa, making the two terms mostly in ...
. Okada’s works deal with everyday life, pertaining to work, love, and personal life. Rather than directly addressing recent social issues in Japan like Ai Nagai and Yōji Sakate, Okada focuses on connecting to his audience's sense of alienation by separating speech and movement in his plays. Okada's hyperrealistic style is often referred to as "super real Japanese," which draws influence from Oriza Hirata's "quiet theater" movement from the 1980s. His works are distinguished by the use of fragmented and abbreviated
idiosyncratic An idiosyncrasy is a unique feature of something. The term is often used to express peculiarity. Etymology The term "idiosyncrasy" originates from Greek ', "a peculiar temperament, habit of body" (from ', "one's own", ', "with" and ', "blend ...
language in the vernacular of Japanese in their twenties, which is deliberately inarticulate, drawn out, and circular. Exaggerating the natural rhythms in human speech, his works comically integrate "natural" Japanese speech that is filled with passive verb forms and chains of
dependent clause A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the claus ...
s, with no periods. A typical example is from the opening of ''Enjoy'', translated by Aya Ogawa:
''ACTOR 1: We'll begin with Act One... This guy named Kato was riding the subway the other day, he was riding the Keio line and, he had an encounter then, when he sat next to... There were these two women who were talking, but... Kato had no intention of eavesdropping at all, of course but, while he was listening, to be honest, he... in the end, from the middle of the conversation, it did turn completely into eavesdropping but... you know how for text messaging they have those screen stickers that you put on your phone to keep your screen hidden from the person standing next to you, well there aren't such things for voices, so in a way, it's a little like too bad, you know, which may be like totally an excuse but.... but with that conversation, it was a little like no matter how you look at it, their voices were, clearly above and beyond what is a standard volume, I mean come on, was the way it seemed and that was because... on top of that the content of the conversation itself also like, would have piqued anyone's interest in this...''
Accompanying the broken phrases is the physical body language of the performers, made up of disjointed and abstract movements that combine isolated pedestrian gestures. The choreography he uses in his play is very different from highly coordinated dancing, as it focuses on "junk body" or "child’s body" choreography that rejects adult sexuality and Western dance techniques. Okada was inspired by Hirata's quote, "It is strange for the actors to tap into their self-consciousness when speaking their lines." Okada believes that his actors should be able to manipulate their consciousness and balance their attention on both their words and movement. The gap between language and the body is the lived experiences each performer gathers from their environment to bring to their performances, and they use the external body to reflect those lived experiences or "images."Uchino, Tadashi (2006) "Globality's Children: Thinking through the "Child's" Body As a Strategy of Flatness in Performance". ''The Drama Review'' 50 (1): 57–66. Okada advises his actors to not be overly attached with the language or the physicality of the performance so that the audience can interpret the "image," themselves. Actors are one single entity to the image; in addition, Okada uses "the performance's disjointed elements of language, movement, design, music, and more" to signify the "image" in his plays. His works are heavily influenced by
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
's '' Verfremdungseffekt'' technique that detaches the audience from the action in the play. Okada refers to the theater as a place for performers to interact with the audience. Therefore, his performers usually use indirect, third-person speech in their monologues and narrate directly to the audience in his plays, which breaks the
fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance dramatic convention, convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. ...
. His characters are often labelled only "Actor One," with the same "character" played by more than one performer. Okada constantly implements contemporary issues and speech styles into his text. Following the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, he wrote ''Current Location'', a play that reintroduces the concept of "haisha no tachiba" which literally translates to "from the standpoint of the afflicted people." He confronts the reality that post-earthquake victims in Fukushima faced by juxtaposing distinct voices using the particle, ''wa'', which allows the victims to speak harmoniously while in discord.


International production and reception

Okada's first overseas activity was his re-staging of ''Five Days in March'' at the Kunsten Festival des Arts in
Brussels, Belgium Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...
in 2007. Since then, he has been invited to other festivals such as the Vienna Art Week in
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
and Festival d'Automne à Paris in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. Those collaborations led to the creation of in March 2008.Interview by Performing Arts in 2010
Retrieved May 19, 2015.
In October 2009, , which was co-produced by
Hebbel am Ufer The Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) is a German theater company and international performance center in Berlin. It has three physical locations (HAU1, HAU2, and HAU3), and a digital theatre (HAU4). History HAU was founded in 2003, before the 2003/04 season, ...
, premiered in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. In 2013, Okada collaborated with Hebbel am Ufer again to produce ''Ground and Floor,'' which had its premiere in Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels along with an eight-country European tour. In 2014, Okada was invited to present at the Theater der Welt festival in
Mannheim, Germany Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...
. The play explores Japan's
consumerism Consumerism is a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon that is typical of industrialized societies. It is characterized by the continuous acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing quantities. In contemporary consumer society, the ...
culture by introducing characters who have different perspectives pertaining to ''
konbini A convenience store, convenience shop, bakkal, bodega, corner store, corner shop, superette or mini-mart is a small retail store that stocks a range of everyday items such as convenience food, groceries, beverages, tobacco products, lottery t ...
'' or Japanese convenient stores, whose numbers have increased since the 1970s. His newest work, ''God Bless Baseball'' is set to premiere in
Gwangju Gwangju (; ), formerly romanized as Kwangju, is South Korea's list of cities in South Korea, sixth-largest metropolis. It is a designated Special cities of South Korea, metropolitan city under the direct control of the central government's Home ...
,
Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...
for the Asian Arts Theatre Festival in September 2015. chelfitsch has also toured
Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
,
Cardiff Cardiff (; ) is the capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of in and forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area officially known as the City and County of Ca ...
,
Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...
,
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
,
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
,
Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...
, and other cities.chelfitsch
English-language portion of official site. Accessed 5 December 2011.


America

Okada made his American debut in 2009 with a seven-city tour of ''Five Days in March.'' The premiere of the play was presented with
supertitles Surtitles, also known as supertitles, Captitles, SurCaps, OpTrans, are translated or transcribed lyrics/dialogue projected above a stage or displayed on a screen, commonly used in opera, theatre or other musical performances. The word "surtitle" ...
by chelfitsch Theater Company at Japan Society in February 2009. The following year in April–May 2010,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...
-based company, the Play Company, produced ''Enjoy'' at the
59E59 Theaters 59E59 Theaters is a venue presenting a year-round curated program of live theater. The three theater building is located in New York City. It shows both off-Broadway (in Theater A) and off-off-Broadway plays (in Theaters B and C). The complex is ...
with Dan Rothenberg from Pig Iron Theatre Company as the director and Aya Ogawa as the translator. The Play Company has also produced works of other renowned Japanese playwright-directors such as Yōji Sakate in the past. In May 2010, Daniel Safer adapted ''Five Days in March'' in English based on Ogawa's translations at
La MaMa La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (sometimes abbreviated as La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1961 by African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer Ellen Stewart. Located in the East Village neighborho ...
. Since then, Okada's works has been produced numerous times in New York, where he has received generally favorable reviews from various media outlets such as
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
, nytheater now, Time Out, and
The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...
. Jason Zinoman from New York Times claimed that, " kada'smelancholy style suits the current recession-era America." In 2012, was presented by the Japan Society as part of the 2012 Under the Radar Festival. Also in that year, Okada had his first English-language world premiere with ''Zero Cost House,'' which was a collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company,Pig Iron - Zero Cost House
Retrieved on 9 September 2012.
as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Set in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake, the play is partly an autobiography of Okada's life, and is also influenced by
Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon sim ...
's ''
Walden ''Walden'' (; first published as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is an 1854 book by American transcendentalism, transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. T ...
'' and Kyōhei Sakaguchi's nonfiction essay, . On March 11, 2012, in collaboration with other playwrights and theaters from Japan and New York, one act from Okada's was showcased at the Segal Theater for the event "Shinsai: Theaters for Japan." The purpose of the event was to raise funds for members of Japan’s theater community who were affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. In 2014, Okada returned to New York with ''The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise'', which was staged by the Play Company and performed at the JACK Theater.


Awards and nominations


Awards

*2005: Yokohama Cultural Award/Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement *2005: 49th Kishida Prize for Drama for ''Five Days in March'' *2007: 56th Kanagawa Culture and Sports Award *2008: 2nd
Ōe Kenzaburō Prize The Kenzaburō Ōe Prize (大江健三郎賞) was a Japanese literary award sponsored by Kodansha (講談社) and established in 2006 to commemorate both the 100th anniversary of Kodansha's establishment and 50th anniversary of the writing life of ...
for ''The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed''


Nominations

*2005: 2005 Toyota Choreography Awards for ''Air Conditioner'' *2015: 28th Mishima Yukio Prize for ''Current Location''


Works


Stage works

*1997: *1998: *1999: *2000: *2001: *2001: *2002: *2003: *2003: *2004: *2004: *2004: *2005: *2006: *2006: *2008: *2009: *2009: *2011: *2012: ''Zero Cost House'' *2012: *2013: *2014: *2015: ''God Bless Baseball''


Adaptations

*2008: , Original:
Kōbō Abe , known by his pen name , was a Japanese writer, playwright and director. His 1962 novel ''The Woman in the Dunes'' was made into an Woman in the Dunes, award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kaf ...
*2009: ''Tätowierung'', Original: Dea Loher


Novels

*2007: *2008:


Notes


References

*Erbe, Anne (2013). "Translating Indirection". ''Theater'' 43 (1): 99–108. * *Iwaki, Kyoko (2015). "Japanese Theatre after Fukushima: Okada Toshiki's ''Current Location''". ''New Theatre Quarterly'' 31 (1): 70–89. *Iwaki, Kyoko (2011). ''Tokyo Theatre Today''. Tōkyō, Japan: Hublet Publishing. pp. 101–114. *Nahm, Kee-Yoon (2013). "Selfless Acts". ''Theater'' 43 (1): 126–132. *Poulton, Cody (2011). "Krapp’s First Tape: Okada Toshiki’s ''Enjoy''". ''The Drama Review'' 55 (2): 150–157. * *Uchino, Tadashi (2006). "Globality's Children: Thinking Through the "Child's" Body As a Strategy of Flatness in Performance". ''The Drama Review'' 50 (1): 57–66. *Zinoman, Jason (2014). "Writing For Foreigners (Americans)". The New York Times. Retrieved May 4, 2015.


External links


chelfitsch
official site
chelfitsch
Facebook page {{DEFAULTSORT:Okada, Toshiki 20th-century Japanese novelists 21st-century Japanese novelists Living people 1973 births Writers from Yokohama 20th-century Japanese dramatists and playwrights 21st-century Japanese dramatists and playwrights