Toshiki Okada

Toshiki Okada (b. in Yokohama in 1973) is a playwright and director. He formed the theater company chelfitsch in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company's productions, practicing a distinctive methodology for creating plays, and has come to be known for his use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and unique choreography. In 2005, his play “Five Days in March” won the prestigious 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award. He participated in Toyota Choreography Award 2005 with “Air Conditioner (Cooler)” (2005), garnering much attention. His collection of short stories titled "The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed" was published in February 2007 and awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize. He has been on the judging panel for the Kishida Kunio Drama Award since 2012. In 2013, his first book on theatrology was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha. From 2016, he directed works in a repertory program at Münchner Kammerspiele, one of the foremost public theaters in Germany, for four consecutive seasons. "The Vacuum Cleaner" has been selected as one of the “ten remarkable productions” by Theatertreffen 2020, the German theater festival. In 2020, he won the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards Selection Committee Special Prize with his Thai artists-collaboration piece "Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession," which is an adaptation of a novel by Thai author Uthis Haemamool.In 2021, he won The Yomiuri Bungaku-sho (prize for literature) with “Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster - ZAHA / TSURUGA”.

Photo: Toshiki Okada © Kikuko Usuyama