「隕石」
とはなにか？

Our lives are profoundly affected by the larger conditions of the world. And the current state of this life-determining world is in sheer chaos. Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite Tokyo seeks to offer a response to this situation, a humble contribution to your attempts to make sense of the world today. The meteorites fly in from outside the regions, cultures, values, and contexts that we know. Chance encounters with them provoke us. We have the potential to transform through these catalyzing coincidences. I view this potential transformation as part of our response to the state of the world—that is, I see value and possibility in it. Autumn Meteorite Tokyo welcomes the meteorites. We also welcome those who are interested and curious about them, and eagerly anticipate their chance encounters. This is why we continue our “Hello and Welcome (Attendee Support)” system in 2026. We implement a comprehensive Attendee Support system to ensure that access to the meteorites is not hindered for any reason, that no encounters are missed. Throughout the festival’s run, we host a “Kids Play Theater,” supporting theatergoers with children. Many programs also include audio guides and surtitles. Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo opens with “Generative Sensei,” a child-friendly participatory performance by Pijin Neji + YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media). This piece, which takes the form of a class conducted by an AI robot “teacher,” touches on the fundamental question of what it means to be human individuals. And while some may assume this question is meant only for children, it is precisely these adults at whom this work is also aimed. Autumn Meteorite Tokyo has commissioned a new work by Hideo Arai, a dance artist who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) four years ago. His perspective and dance style continue evolving with his physical condition. As we experience “San Marudaga Dankoro 3 —A Performance of Sound and Movement” by the collective Aitara Ei (Hideo Arai x Kiyoko Itasaka x Eiko Yamada), these evolutions usher an opening up of our perceptions and senses to the subtle vacillations, sounds, and presences floating in their world. A noh performance in which Elvis Presley’s ghost is the shite (lead role); a noh performance that is conducted in a non-Japanese language—simply a gimmick? Absolutely not. It’s only natural that this highly versatile form of Japanese performing arts is practiced across cultures, and that a masterpiece would be born from such a context. Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo introduces Theatre Nohgaku’s English noh piece “Blue Moon Over Memphis” as an undeniable example of this phenomenon. Continuing from last year, Civic Creative Base Tokyo (CCBT) and Autumn Meteorite Tokyo ccollaborate on the Future Ideations Camp. This year’s title is “Fiction←Technology→Imagination.” Theater is an art form that establishes a type of fiction through the involvement of the audience’s sense of imagination. How can we use digital technology to fundamentally expand its possibilities? With this four-day camp, we hope to incubate meteorites. Theater representing lesbians for lesbians; theater in which lesbian desires, joys, and loneliness are performed by lesbians; theater in which being a lesbian is a natural given—Junko Emoto yearned for such a form of theater and proceeded to realize it on her own, culminating in “A Play to Watch When You Feel Lonely at Midnight.” In a society dominated by heterosexual values, this work can only be described as a meteorite. Mexico’s contemporary history is also that of the normalization of the country’s global neoliberalism-induced economic crisis. Those who suffer the repercussions are, of course, its people. Labor that endlessly eats away at one’s daily life and soul—Anacarsis Ramos and PORNOTRÁFICO’s “MI MADRE Y EL DINERO” (My Mother and Money) deploys documentary filmmaking methods in a work of contemporary theater that vividly focuses on these relatable themes. The work is especially notable for the charming performance of Anarcarsis’s actual mother, Josefina, in which she shares her experience working multiple jobs over the course of sixty years and reenacts some of them on stage. Sarah Kane’s words remain as a legacy of a damaged soul that lived through the severity of Margaret Thatcher’s UK, resonating deeply with us in today’s context more than ever. Through Christopher Rüping’s direction, the fragmented, narrativeless textual score of Kane’s “Crave” results in a singular performance that brings us tender pain and solace. Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo invites this piece to our program from the repertoire of Deutsches Theater Berlin. Dadaruzu’s Emi Oishi is strikingly unique. Known for her texts filled with deceptively logical nonsense and astonishing plot developments, she brings the words to life on her own, standing exposed and empty-handed in front of the audience. She questions them; she highlights the absurdities and lies lurking within our society, within us. No matter how you look at it, Dadaruzu can be none other than a meteorite. Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo stages Dadaruzu’s “Drooling Ferris Wheel” at the GLOBAL RING THEATRE in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre. This outdoor performance will surely cause a scene. In a society that still operates under patriarchal values, “femininity” continues to be encouraged, and therefore imposed. Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo invites Nadia Beugré’s “Burning Girls” as a meteorite that further ignites our spirit of resistance against this frustrating reality. Two fiery, bold girls living in a city of Ivory Coast reclaim the space of dance—long maintained as one to show off masculine physicality—and steal the show. Along with AKHE ENGINEERING THEATRE’s “WHITE CABIN,” introduced later in this text, this piece is part of our ongoing Object Theater program, curated by Yoko Yamaguchi. NIJIGUMI FIGHTS is a gay idol ensemble. Formed in 2009 with the concept of “mimicking idol groups,” the organization has actively worked across Japan for the past 17 years. The existence of a longstanding ensemble of this kind is itself already a kind of meteorite. This year, we would like to offer you all NIJIGUMI FIGHTS’ “The 11th Nijigumi Academy Autumn Culture Festival” as a gift in our program. The atrium of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre consists of a large open ceiling, making it a public space where it is impossible to expect everyone to remain silent. Using this entire space as a venue, a free one-day-only performance focuses on the concept of subtle sounds and silence. “A Massive Attack of The Quietness,” with music conducted by Kazuki Yamada and narrated text written by Toshiki Okada, will surely be an invitation to shift our perception and imagination toward the ephemeral, while also serving as an analogy for the infinite existences in our world whose voices are neglected or not heard. This year both artists were appointed Artistic Directors at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre: Yamada of the Music Division and Okada of the Performing Arts Division. With this piece, they embark on their truly unprecedented first collaboration. Following an open experimentation and creation process during last year’s Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo, the full-scale premiere of Shin Hanagata’s “Ergonomic Embryo” takes place at Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo. We, the audience, encounter a space in which the latest technology, such as AI and motion capturing, is deployed toward the realization of the will and desire of Hanagata and several performers to metamorphose before our very eyes into a chair. It is an unprecedented work with an overwhelming meteorite-ness. “Recalling(s) — Theatrical Version” is a performing arts piece by contemporary video artist Chikako Yamashiro, who presents the raw and multilayered reality and history of Okinawa. The work is primarily composed of videos about memories of war, many of which focus not only on Okinawa but contain interviews in and footage from Tokyo and Palau. These materials are placed within the theater space, alongside various artistic approaches to sound, chronology, and so on. We at Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo introduce “Recalling(s) — Theatrical Version”—a performing arts piece devoted to provoking meditations on memory—with an awareness of our privilege as a festival hosted in Tokyo, a site emblematic in its asymmetricality with Okinawa. Founded in Saint Petersburg in 1989, AKHE ENGINEERING THEATRE consists of members who are living legends of the world of object theater, and who continue to actively work across Europe, even now past their sixties. Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo presents one of their masterpieces, “WHITE CABIN,” which was created over 30 years ago. We invite you to take in the lyrical imagery that flows from their sense of humor, to marvel out how these very qualities serve as direct forms of political expression. Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo offers you this lineup of meteorites, and our warmest of welcomes to search for your own serendipitous encounters with them.