theatre Akcent festival

Doughnuts

Toshiki Okada, Thalia Theater, Hamburg (Germany)

part of a 28th Prager Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache

Saturday 4. 11. 2023
20:00
In German with czech subtitles
75 minutes
Large auditorium

Tickets available via Archa Theatre and GoOut.cz

Japanese theatre star Toshiki Okada invites his audience to encounter the hypermodern in real concrete spaces: at a late-night tube station in Tokyo (“Nō Theatre”), in a karaoke bar (“No Sex”), in a residential house (“The Vacuum Cleaner”). There, he approaches them with the tools of the contemporary version of the Japanese Nō Theater technique. For “Doughnuts” he is gathering a handful of conference guests in a hotel lobby.

The world is like a doughnut: lots of edge and a hole in the middle. An empty space that grows ever bigger, with the increasing erosion of all certainties. A perfect image for a modern phenomenon: A species takes over a foreign living space and causes confusion. A bear in the supermarket, a mutating virus or social media without a heart. It reaches a point where nobody knows anymore whether their own way of thinking is still valid – not least because humanity demands a redefinition of its values at high speed. Or even: because humans lose the connection to speed.

Okada came to international attention with his company ‘Chelfitsch’, and regularly performs his work in Asia, North America and Europe. “The Vacuum Cleaner” (Munich Kammerspiele) was invited to the 2020 Berlin Theatertreffen. “Doughnuts” is Okada’s first production at Thalia. "Doughnuts" on the studio stage at Gaußstraße is Okada’s first production at Thalia.

Born in Yokohama in 1973, Toshiki Okada is a dramatist and director. In 1997 he founded the Chelfitsch Company, where he writes and directs all of the plays. He is renowned for his idiosyncratic use of language and examining cultural change. Together with Chelfitsch, Okada has gained international recognition, and alongside performances in Asia and North America he regularly brings his productions to Europe, guesting at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, at the Vienna Festival, at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts Festival in Brussels and the Paris Festival d’Automne.

Toshiki Okada has received many awards for his work. His 2005 production of ‘Five Days in March’ was honoured with the renowned 49th Kishida Drama Award, and in the same year ‘Air Conditioner’ received the Kishida-Kunio Prize. Most recently, in 2020, he was given the Special Recognition Award at the Yomiuri Theatre Awards for his stage adaptation of ‘Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession’ by Uthis Haemamool.

From 2006 to 2007 he worked as the director of Summit, an annual theatre festival hosted by the Komaba Agora Theatre in Tokyo. Alongside his work as a director, he is also well known as an author. His story series ‘The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed’, translated into German in 2012 under the title ‘Die Zeit, die uns bleibt’ earned him the Kenzaburo Oe Prize.

From 2015 to 2020, Toshiki Okada regularly staged plays at the Munich Kammerspiele, most recently ‘The Vacuum Cleaner’, for which he received an invitation to the 2020 Berlin Theatertreffen.

„Doughnuts“ at Thalia Gaußstraße is his first Thalia production. It is invited to the 2022 Berlin Theatertreffen.

Reviews:

"A stroke of luck" - Heiko Kammerhoff, Hamburger Morgenpost, Jan. 24, 2022.

"A truly beautiful evening, a special theatrical experience. As expressive as it is tender, as funny as it is clever." - Stefan Forth, nachtkritik.de, 1/22/2022

"Okada (...) proves to be a clever, life-philosophical expert on form in his first work at the Thalia Theater. From content to staging, the evening is consistently choreographed and masterfully presented by a highly focused ensemble." - Annette Stiekele, Hamburger Abendblatt, Jan. 22, 2022

Credits

Director: Toshiki Okada
Dramaturgie: Julia Lochte, Makiko Yamaguchi
Set Design: Dominic Huber
Music: Kazuhisa Uchihashi
Performers: Johannes Hegemann,Maike Knirsch,Björn Meyer,Toini Ruhnke,Steffen Siegmund, André Szymanski

Translated from Japanese by Andreas Regelsberger

Translated into Czech and subtitles are prepared by Marie Voslářová

First performance on January 21, 2022, Thalia Gauß

The AKCENT festival 2023 is funded by the City of Prague, the Ministry of Culture and the State Fund of Culture.