Description Playwright, novelist and theatre director Okada Toshiki is one of the most important voices of the current generation of Japanese contemporary theatre makers. He founded his globally influential theatre company chelfitsch in 1997. Using a unique style and a distinctive language, his plays address issues such as social inequity, life in Japan after the 3/11 Earthquake, and posthuman society. Okada is a theatrical visionary showing undercurrents in everyday moments and the strangeness of being alive in our time. In Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre, Okada’s work and its importance to the development of contemporary performance in Japan and around the world is explored. Gathered here for the first time in English is a comprehensive selection of essays, interviews and translations of three of Okada’s plays by leading scholars and translators. Okada’s writing on theatre is also included, accompanied by an extensive array of images from his performances. The phenomenal success of Okada Toshiki’s global productions has galvanized international critics into forming intriguing theoretical perspectives on his theatre. Acknowledging Okada’s affinity to Japan’s lost generation, Brechtian distantiation and Noh aesthetics, these critics have applied new conceptual frames such as the poetics of disarticulation, the poesis of liminality and slow dramaturgy to elucidate the deep structure of his performances. Mari Boyd, Professor Emeritus, Sophia University, Japan. Cover image credit: chelfitsch and Kaneuji Teppei Eraser Forest, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa), 2020. Photo Kioku Keizō. CONTENTS SECTION ONE: OKADA’S DRAMATURGY Okada Toshiki’s Narrative Method Cody Poulton The ‘Hyper-Real’ and the Shadow of Noh Stanca Scholz-Cionca Making Time Material: On Okada Toshiki’s Time’s Journey Through a Room (2016) Sara Jansen Translating Okada Toshiki Andreas Regelsberger Fuzzy Boundaries, Foggy Pictures: Okada Toshiki’s poesies of liminality Iwaki Kyōko Ruptures, Gravity, Dwelling. Reflections on Okada Toshiki’s movement aesthetic Holger Hartung SECTION TWO: ART, SOCIETY AND GLOBALITY Seen From Close-up in the Distance: Shibuya as a bubble downtown Noda Manabu Simultaneous Turns in Globality: Performative and social turns in the new millennium, or theorizing/historicizing Okada Toshiki’s welcome to European festival cultures Uchino Tadashi Reflections on Precarity and Emotional Fulfillment in Everyday Life in the Theatre of Okada Toshiki Barbara Geilhorn ‘Who Knows We Want To Be An International Artist?’ Producing Okada Toshiki’s theatre and the international scene Yokobori Masahiko Okada Toshiki’s Dramaturgy in the Post-global Condition Peter Eckersall Foreign Assembly: Okada’s Time’s Journey through a Room in the United States Carol Martin SECTION THREE: DOCUMENTS, INTERVIEW AND PLAYS An Interview with Okada Toshiki Iwaki Kyōko Reflux: A protean theatre theory By Okada Toshiki. English translation by Iwaki Kyōko Sounding like a Typical Post-Corona Theory of Theatre By Okada Toshiki. English translation by Cody Poulton THREE PLAY TRANSLATIONS Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and The Farewell Speech By Okada Toshiki. English translation by Aya Ogawa The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise By Okada Toshiki. English translation by Aya Ogawa Ground and Floor By Okada Toshiki. English translation by Aya Ogawa
