Life and Career
Born in Yokohama in 1973, Okada formed the theatrical company chelfitsch in 1997. The name chelfitsch, a play on the English language word "selfish," is always written with a lowercase c. (In katakana it is written チェルフィッチュ.) Okada has directed all of the company's productions.
His work has received numerous honors and awards. Five Days in March, a play that juxtaposes a couple spending five days in a love hotel against the beginning of the Iraq War, won the 49th Kishida drama award in 2005. Air-Conditioner/Cooler was a finalist at the 2005 Toyota Choreography Awards, and Enjoy was presented in December 2006 at the New National Theatre Tokyo. His book The end of the special time we were allowed (Japanese: わたしたちに許された特別な時間の終わり, Watashitachi ni Yurusareta Tokubetsu na Jikan no Owari), published in February 2007, consists of two novels. One is a reworking of his play Five Days in March; the other, an earlier piece, is called Our Many Places (Watashitachi no Basho no Fukusu). The book received the 2008 Kenzaburō Ōe Prize. Besides awards and recognition for specific works, he also received the 2005 Yokohama Cultural Award / Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement.
Besides directing his own plays, he has also directed Samuel Beckett's Cascando for the Tokyo International Arts Festival Beckett Centennial Memorial Festival, Kōbō Abe's Friends at the Setagaya Public Theater, and several workshop programs with theater students.
Besides performances in Japan, chelfitsch has toured to Brussels, Vienna, Paris, Cardiff, Salzburg, Singapore, Seattle, and other cities.
In 2012, Okada created his first English-language world premiere with Zero Cost House, which was a collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company.
Read more about this topic: Toshiki Okada
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