Toshiki Okada "Writing Something Right There"

Toshiki Okada is a playwright, novelist, and the director of the theater company chelfitsch. In 2005, he received the 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award for "Five Days in March." In 2007, he participated in the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, held in Brussels, with his work "Five Days in March." Since this 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. Okada’s work also involves many international co-productions such as "God Bless Baseball" in 2015 featuring a Japanese and Korean cast, "Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession" in 2018, which is based on a Thai novel by Uthis Haemamool featuring Thai actors and which received the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards Selection Committee Special Prize, as well as "Metamorphosis of a Living Room" in 2023 commissioned by Wiener Festwochen. 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." His work "Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster – ZAHA / TSURUGA" won the 72nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Play/Scenario Award) and the 25th Tsuruya Namboku Drama Award. This play together with his opera "Yuzuru" received the Director Award of the 29th Yomiuri Theater Awards in 2022. 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).