Toshiki Okada

Toshiki Okada's play Five Days in March won Kishida Drama Award in 2005, and the same year Okada got the Japanese Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement. Okada is in particular known for his use of hyper-realist Japanese daily speech and his unique choreographies.

Works by Toshiki Okada include: On the Harmful Effects of Marihuana (2003), Air-Conditioner (2004), The End of Toil (2005), Freetime (2008) and Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (2009).

Okada's particular style is characterised by the way he uses a tight, fragmented language found in the daily speech of young Japanese - a language that can be vague as well as coherent. In addition his stage expression is distinct, and he has a tendency to let some roles be performed by more than one actor, who comment on the role as well as on themselves.

Among his more recent work are The Sonic Life of A Giant Tortoise (2011) and We Are the Undamaged Others (2010). In 2007 he published the double novel the end of the special time we were allowed, in which one part is an adaption of Five Days in March.

The webpage of chelfitsch can be found here.

In June 2012 Oslo International Theatre performed a staged reading of Toshiki Okada's Five Days in March in collaboration with The Norwegian Theatre.

Source:

Oslo International Theatre,http://oslointernasjonaleteater.com/2012/04/05/toshiki-okada/