photo: Kikuko Usuyama
Toshiki Okada
Playwright / Director / Novelist. He formed the theater company “chelfitsch” in 1997, and writes and directs all of its productions. Since 2016, he has also consistently created and directed works in repertory programs at public theaters in Germany. In 2020, his work “The Vacuum Cleaner” (Münchner Kammerspiele) and in 2022, “Doughnuts” (Thalia Theater, Hamburg) were selected as part of the Berliner Theatertreffen’s “10 Remarkable Productions” (an annual selection of notable works in German-language theater). He received the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards Selection Committee Special Prize for his work “Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession,” a stage adaptation of a contemporary Thai novel featuring Thai actors. His work “Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster - ZAHA / TSURUGA” (KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre), which utilizes the narrative structure of noh, won the 72nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Play/Scenario Award) and the 25th Tsuruya Namboku Drama Award. In 2021, he directed the opera “Yuzuru” (All Japan Opera Co-Production Project). As a novelist, he published “The End of the Moment We Had” (Shinchōsha) in 2007, which won the 2nd Kenzaburō Ōe Prize. In 2022, he received the 35th Mishima Yukio Prize and the 64th Kumanichi Literary Award for his novel “Broccoli Revolution” (Shinchōsha). From FY2025, he serves as Artistic Director of the Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite Tokyo, and from FY2026, as Artistic Director (Performing Arts Division) of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre.
The theater company chelfitsch was founded in 1997 by Toshiki Okada, who writes and directs all of its productions. The company made its debut abroad in 2007, when it performed “Five Days in March'' at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Belgium. It has produced commissioned works such as "Grand and Floor" (2013) by Kunstenfestivaldesarts, "Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich" (2017) by Theater der Welt 2014 (Germany), “NEW ILLUSION” (2022) by Ob/Scene Festival, “Metamorphosis of a Living Room” (2023) by Wiener Festwochen (Austria), and co-produced works with theaters and festivals. It has been invited to and performed works in more than 90 cities around the world. Recently, Toshiki Okada, together with Shimpei Yamada, a stage and video designer, has begun to develop EIZO-Theater, a new type of theater that is an attempt to transform display space into theatrical space by the effects that projected images have on human sensibility. They have presented the exhibitions “Beach, Eyelids, and Curtains” (2018), “The Landscape, the World, and Accidents: Everything That Happens Outside of This Room” (2020) and the theatrical performance “NEW-ILLUSION”(2022) as EIZO-Theater. The troupe has proactively collaborated with musicians and artists. It collaborated with the artist Teppei Kaneuji in the production of “Eraser Mountain” (2019) and “Eraser Forest” (2020), which probe for a new relationship between objects and human beings based on the concept of departure from anthropocentrism. It premiered a new music theatre “Metamorphosis of a Living Room'', collaborated with the composer Dai Fujikura, in Wiener Festwochen in May 2023. In 2021, it launched a workshop with people whose native language is not Japanese and premiered “The Window of Spaceship 'In-Between'” in August 2023.