TOKYO, May 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Tokyo Festival
Executive Committee has announced that Toshiki Okada
(playwright, novelist, and director of the theater company
chelfitsch) has been appointed as Artistic Director of Tokyo
Festival, effective from fiscal year 2025*. Tokyo Festival is a
comprehensive urban arts festival that aims to engage with the
world through Tokyo's rich and
diverse arts culture. Since 2016, the festival has primarily taken
place in the Ikebukuro area of Toshima
Ward, and the Tokyo Festival 2024 in September will be the
ninth annual event. For the past six years, from 2018 to 2023,
Satoshi Miyagi, recognized for his
international performance work, served as the General Director of
Tokyo Festival. Beginning in fiscal 2025, Tokyo Festival will
introduce fresh new conceptual ideas under the leadership of
Artistic Director Okada, who has garnered attention and acclaim
both domestically and internationally for his unique methodology
exploring the relationship between language and the body, along
with his insights into contemporary society. Okada has also been
appointed the Artistic Director (Performing Arts) at the Tokyo
Metropolitan Theatre from April 1,
2026.
*Japan's fiscal year runs from
April 1 to March 31.
Image of Toshiki Okada (C) Kikuko
Usuyama:
https://cdn.kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M105782/202405100618/_prw_PI1fl_0y2quGpc.jpg
Statement by Toshiki Okada
"This festival invites artists and performances, from various
regions and aesthetic backgrounds, to participate in the
distinctive and celebratory framework of an international
performing arts festival. Some of the works emerge from the
distinct realities experienced in contemporary Tokyo, but others originate elsewhere,
offering intellectual and sensory stimulation to the city through
their resulting freshness and heterogeneity. This wide scope allows
us to encounter the unfamiliar hidden within the familiar: humor
from a different culture, or narratives waiting to be shared and
brought to light. I envision Tokyo Festival as a period where these
emerging ideas can take shape and intersect. My vision is that
these ideas will resonate with the contextually limitless
environment that spans the Tokyo
megacity and its environs, inviting responses from international
and future landscapes. I would be thrilled if the festival were
able to contribute, even if only slightly, to dismantling the
complex societal divisions of our time. Together with staff,
artists, and audiences, my aim as Artist Director is to develop
Tokyo Festival into a vibrant celebration of our various
contexts."
Profile
Toshiki Okada is a playwright,
novelist, and the director of the theater company chelfitsch, and
is known for exploring the unique relationship between language and
the body found in his approach. In 2007, he participated in the
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, held in Brussels, with his work "Five Days in March."
Since this debut of his work overseas, he has continued to present
works not only domestically but also internationally, putting on
performances in more than 90 cities across Asia, Europe,
North America, and South America. Since 2016, he has also
consistently created and directed works in a repertory program at a
renowned public theater in Germany. In 2020, his work "The Vacuum
Cleaner" (at Muenchner Kammerspiele) and in 2022, "Doughnuts" (at
Thalia Theater, Hamburg) were
selected as part of the Berliner Theatertreffen's "10 Remarkable
Productions." 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" (Shinchosha Publishing) in 2007, which won the 2nd
Kenzaburo Oe Prize. In 2022, he received the 35th Mishima Yukio
Prize and the 64th Kumanichi Literary Award for his novel "Broccoli
Revolution" (Shinchosha).
About Tokyo Festival
Tokyo Festival is a comprehensive urban arts festival held every
fall around Tokyo's Toshima Ward, centering on the Ikebukuro area,
which aims to connect with the world through Tokyo's rich and diverse arts and culture
scenes. Tokyo Festival 2024 will be held in September 2024.
URL: https://tokyo-festival.jp/en/
Tokyo Festival 2024 outline
- Organizers: Tokyo Festival Executive Committee (Tokyo
Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture <Tokyo
Metropolitan Theatre & Arts Council Tokyo>, Tokyo
Metropolitan Government)
- Sponsor: Asahi Group Japan, Ltd.
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