Toshiki Okada

Toshiki Okada is a playwright, a novelist and a director. He formed the theater company “chelfitsch” in 1997, and is known for 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 his debut of his work overseas, he has continued to present works not only domestically but also internationally, putting on performances in over 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 (Münchner Kammerspiele) and in 2022, Doughnuts (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 (Shinchōsha) in 2007, which won the 2nd Kenzaburō Ōe Prize. In 2022, he received the 35th Mishima Yukio Prize and the 64th Kumanichi Literary Award for his novel Broccoli Revolution (Shinchōsha).