About Artist
As a playwright and director, Toshiki Okada works not only with his company chelfitsch but also with other Japanese and German theatres. Beginning in 2016, he directed works in a repertory program at Münchner Kammerspiele (Germany) for four consecutive seasons. "The Vacuum Cleaner" was selected as one of the “10 remarkable productions” by Theatertreffen 2020, Berliner Festspiele. It was followed by “Doughnuts”, a repertory program at the Thalia Theatre (Hamburg, Germany), which was also selected for the festival in 2022. In November 2022, he presented "HVALEN I ROMMET” ("Whale in the Room") , a repertory program at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway.
Okada actively collaborates with artists in various fields, including choreography and dance.
In 2018, he authored the script for and directed "Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession," an adaptation of a novel by Thai author Uthis Haemamool. It was rated highly and awarded Japanese and Thai theater awards.
As a novelist, his collection of short stories titled "The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed" was published in 2007 and awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize in the next year. This novel has been translated into English, German, Korean and Thai. "Broccoli Revolution" (2022) was awarded the 35th Mishima Yukio Prize.
Recently, Okada has been further enlarging the scope of his activity, as exemplified by his translation of works of Noh theater (a genre of traditional Japanese theater) into contemporary Japanese, creation of new performances using the format of Noh theater, and direction of opera.
Coming up at SIFA
NEW-ILLUSION
NEW-ILLUSION invites you to step into that mysterious space of intrigue where reality and fiction blur into each other on stage. It is the latest work in chelfitsch’s innovative theatre style EIZO-Theater, which plays with dichotomies of reality and fiction, present and past, and presence and absence within the performance space.
