News
[Opening Soon!] Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo Opening on Wednesday, October 1!
Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo, centered around the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro, will finally open on Wednesday, October 1, 2025.
For the first year under the artistic director Toshiki Okada, we will feature “Performance Program”, presenting 14 diverse performances from Japan and abroad, “Non-Performance Program”, offering lectures and workshops, and “Hello and Welcome (Attendee Support)” to support accessibility and inclusivity across all programs.
Our various programs will allow audiences to understand and relate more directly with contemporary performing arts from Japan and around the world. And it also creates opportunities to become aware of different realities and reconsider our world through fresh perspectives.
Message from Artistic Director Toshiki Okada
It all begins now. The moment to experience the “meteorites” we have prepared and will introduce throughout a month-long festival period. The moment to encounter works and artists that embody “meteorite” I mean by something foreign and unfamiliar. The moment to feel the atmosphere of this festival, what I call its “meteorite-ness,” has finally come.
Under the name Autumn Meteorite, we have created a space to encounter meteorites arriving from beyond the dominant contexts of the present, Tokyo and the world of performing arts itself.
If you become a witness to the space and it allows you to feel sensations you have never felt before, or to be confronted by aesthetics you have never experienced, there is no greater happiness than this.
This reality, this society, these circumstances. Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo is a question shaped in the form of art, devised to face them.
And the question bursts forth and flows toward you—it is upon us at last.
I sincerely hope that this meteorite-like question may spark even a small transformation within each of you who take part in this festival.
To live is a process of transformation. To make this festival itself such a site, such a space to celebrate that process, Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo will now unfold together with you, with the participating artists and with the staff who have brought this event to life.
Here, I proclaim the long-awaited birth and the grand opening of the Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite Tokyo, and of its first edition, Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo.
Additional Event Information
Toshiki Okada "Writing Something Right There"
Date and Time: October 26, 12:00pm (end time TBD)
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre │ Lower Plaza (B1F)
*Japanese–English translation available
This live performance features Toshiki Okada, Artistic Director of Autumn Meteorite Tokyo, writing a piece of fiction in a corner of the plaza inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre. The fiction he creates will be about what is happening right there in the moment. The screen of his device, where the text is improvised, will be displayed, allowing the audience to watch in real time as the words are written and rewritten. A fiction generated through text will take shape on the spot, transform the space as it unfolds, and disappear the instant it ends. This is a one-day-only live event.
Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Guided Tour in Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo
Date and Time: October 25, 12:30 pm
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre
Language: English
This is a guided tour of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre during the Autumn Meteorite 2025 Tokyo. This special tour offers the chance to not only learn about the theatre itself, but also experience the unique atmosphere of the festival. Participants will also have the opportunity to explore the inside of the theatre’s halls.
Schedule: October 1 – November 3
Venue: The plaza in front of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre
Restaurants within Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre will open at Welcome Galaxy.
- Cafe des Arts – Autumn Meteorite cocktails
- Gonta– Autumn-flavored Meteorite rice balls
- BERG AUBE – Autumn Meteorite Beer
*Please check our website for daily opening hours and vendor schedules.
Where to Next? A Residency for Watching and Talking Sharing and Exchanging Session
Date and Time: November 2, 11:00am - 2:00pm
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre │ Lower Plaza (B1F)
Languages: English / Japanese (with consecutive interpretation)
Participants—emerging performing arts practitioners from across Asia and beyond—will reflect on their experiences of watching Autumn Meteorite performances and visiting art spaces in and around Tokyo. They will share their insights in connection with their own practices, reviewing the residency period while engaging in dialogue and exchange with the audience.
Date and Time: October 31, 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre │ Rehearsal Room M1 (B2)
Languages: English / Japanese (simultaneous interpretation provided)
Producers, dramaturgs, critics, and others invited from around the world by Autumn Meteorite will come together to discuss the current state, challenges, and emerging themes of performing arts in their respective countries, while reflecting on their own practices. The discussions will be divided into multiple thematic sections, providing a valuable opportunity to gain a multifaceted and cross-cutting understanding of international trends.
Other additional programs have also been confirmed:
- Ikebukuro Walking Tour & Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite Tokyo Opening Program Viewing
- Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group × NIWA GEKIDAN PENINO "The Bathhouse of Honest Desires" Special Ticket with English Guide Backstage Tour