Eraser Mountain
Toshiki Okada, for Europe one of the foremost protagonists of Japanese contemporary theatre, is returning to the Wiener Festwochen. This time with the charmingly chaotic arrangement Eraser Mountain. In a collaboration with visual artist and set designer Teppei Kaneuji, Okada explores increasingly unstable relations between people and objects. It all begins with a broken-down washing machine. Rendered redundant, it no longer has a useful purpose and becomes uncontrollable. The performers disappear among brightly coloured tubes, balls and nets. Taken out of their everyday context, they all create an unmanageable commotion. An egalitarian landscape comprised of materials, projections, performers and sound emerges, radically challenging humankind’s presumptuous interventions in nature. For Okada, the starting point for Eraser Mountain was the man-made raising of the Rikuzentakata coastline in the wake of the 2011 tsunami. With urgency and poetry, he explores the possibility of humankind’s presence in a world not based on hierarchies. The Anthropocene? That’s so passé!
An event by Wiener Festwochen hosted by Tanzquartier Wien
born in 1973 in Yokohama, is a dramatist and director. In 1997, he established the theatre company chelfitsch; he writes and directs all of its productions. His work is concerned with profound cultural changes and their effects on the surrounding society, especially in contemporary Japan. His unique methodology which blends quirky texts in colloquial Japanese with extraordinary physicality has profoundly influenced an entire new generation of Japanese artists and met with international acclaim. Moreover, Toshiki Okada has also published prose texts including short stories and scientific works on the theory of theatre. His productions were shown at festivals and art centres as well as by theatres in 70 cities on three continents and have won several awards, including the prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award for Five Days in March (2005). Since the 2016/2017 season, Toshiki Okada also directs regularly for Münchner Kammerspiele, most recently the play The Vacuum Cleaner (2019), which was honoured with an invitation to the Berliner Theatertreffen 2020.
Credits
Text, direction Toshiki Okada Scenography Teppei Kaneuji With Izumi Aoyagi, Mari Ando, Yuri Itabashi, Takuya Harada, Makoto Yazawa, Leon Kou Yonekawa Costume Kyoko Fujitani (FAIFAI) Lighting direction Masayoshi Takada (RYU) Sound planning Raku Nakahara (LUFTZUG) Video Shimpei Yamada Technical direction Koro Suzuki Stage management Chikage Yuyama Direction assistance Nagara Wada English translation Aya Ogawa Producer Tamiko Ouki (precog) Associate Producer Miyuki Tanaka Production management Megumi Mizuno Production assistance Nanami Endo Graphic Teppei Kaneuji Special web design HAUS Production partner precog co., LTD. Executive Producer Akane Nakamura Executive Officer, Publicity, Branding Direction Kao Kanamori Senior Producer Kumi Hiraoka Chief Producer Mai Hyodo Administration Yuka Morita Project management Hitomi Sato Project assistance Tomo Setou Production chelfitsch Coproduction Eraser Mountain Wiener Festwochen, Kyoto Experiment, Festival d’Automne à Paris, T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt a. M.) Coproduction Eraser Forest 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa) Coperation Eraser Forest CONNELING STUDY/YAMABUKI FACTORY, Steep Slope Studio, Kyoto City University of Arts With the support of Kyoto Art Center Artists-in-Studios program Co-presentation Tanzquartier Wien –This project consists of two versions, Eraser Mountain for the theatre, and Eraser Forest for the museum (opened in February 2020). Premiere October 2019, Kyoto Experiment.
Tickets can only be purchased from Wiener Festwochen: festwochen.at
Japanese with English and German surtitles