Toshiki Okada
Time’s Journey Through a Room
© Misako Shimizu ©
Written and directed by Toshiki Okada
With Izumi Aoyagi, Mari Ando, Yo Yoshida
Sound and set design, Tsuyoshi Hisakado
Stage manager, Koro Suzuki
Sound operator, Norimasa Ushikawa
Lighting operator, Tomomi Ohira (ASG)
Costume designer, Kyoko Fujitani (FAIFAI)
Translation into French, Mathieu Capel
Assistant director, Yuto Yanagi
Producers, Akane Nakamura, Tamiko Ouki (precog)
Production Assistant, Mai Hyodo (precog)
Production Coordinator, Chizuru Matsumoto
A chelfitsch production – Associate producer, precog // A Kyoto Experiment coproduction / ROHM Theatre Kyoto ; Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Bruxelles) ; Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt ; FFT Düsseldorf ; La Bâtie-Festival de Genève ; HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) ; SPRING Performing Arts Festival Utrecht ; Festival d’Automne à Paris // In association with T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers ; Festival d’Automne à Paris // With support from the Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan in 2016 // With support from the Fondation pour l’étude de la langue et de la civilisation japonaises under the auspices of the Fondation de France // With support from Onda // In collaboration with Nishi-Sugamo Arts Factory, Suitengu Pit, Kyoto Art Center Artist in Studio Program
First performed on 17th March 2016 at Kyoto Experiment 2016
Regularly performed in front of European audiences for the last ten years or so now, what makes Toshiki Okada’s work so distinctive is the breathtaking crossover between material of different kinds. His work switches between the informal language of Japan’s younger generations, irreverent choreographies, non-demonstrative acting styles, and sound creation which is torn between noise and the sound of silence... This explosion of our senses propels us way beyond the theatre of hushed voices, and headlong into biting, yet humorous tableaux of our contemporary lives.
Time’s Journey Through a Room portrays the numb pain born from Fukushima’s post-traumatic concentric circles. The onstage trio is a disturbing one: the ghost of a woman, who passes away still clinging to the hope that the nuclear catastrophe would give rise to a new sociopolitical era, her surviving husband, who is forced to face up to reality, and another woman, his present-day partner. Each has sensitivities of a different kind, and these subtleties are revealed in a profusion of details. In order to shed light on these innumerable, profoundly personal, tiny fractures, buried deep in the shockwaves of seismic collision, Okada hones in on the slightest flinch of the body, or wavering of the soul. An ingenious system, invented by Tsuyoshi Hisakado, of extending body movements through sound adds fluidity to this precise representation of psychological states, whilst giving the audience total freedom of the imagination at the same time. Via this unique mixing together, through sound, of words, movements and field recordings, Okada takes a fresh look at the relationship between sound, body, language and space. The result is, as we have come to expect from Toshiki Okada, a work of an essential, extreme nature, in which every second counts.
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