Performance Information
About
Theater freed from the “human yardstick,” updating our vision of the world
space, and language appear in unknown forms…
Through theater, an activity for people, is it possible to bring forth a world in which human beings, things, and the environment surrounding them all exist in a flat relationship?
The city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture incurred immense devastation in the Great East Japan Earthquake. Earthwork construction aimed at raising the level of the ground to prevent damage from tsunami artificially altered the landscape with an amazing rapidity. Toshiki Okada’s idea for creating a work that questioned the “human yardstick” sprang from a firsthand look at this sight. Eraser Mountain, the resulting play, was prepared in collaboration with the artist Teppei Kaneuji, who continues to expand the domain of sculpture. In space cluttered with countless items, actors build a new relationship with objects, and audiences come to see the world with a new vision.
Statement
The performance is not delivered to the here and now.
Driven by the need to create this sort of theater, chelfitsch set about the task by pooling the esthetic sensibilities of Teppei Kaneuji and other participating members.Eraser Mountain is theater that goes beyond humanity and radiates its light into the boundless future.
Toshiki Okada
People often talk about “an age of anxiety or instability.” To the best of my knowledge, historically speaking, I believe there was never even a moment that such feelings were entirely absent.
We must recognize that what humankind has experienced or witnessed in common over the last few years has had an impact big enough to change our erstwhile perception of time, space, and the relationship between humanity and non-human existences. As might be expected, even today, the world continues to be turning upside-down in the same way.
Just where will this masterpiece too far ahead of its time land? Or will it continue to drift? The future course has a frightening aspect, but is also something to look forward to. People perhaps think about the existence of time unconnected with themselves. People perhaps build a connection with existences not facing themselves. We are confident that this attempt, which was saddled with contradictions right from the start, could kindle a new fire or lead to a new harmony.
Teppei Kaneuji
Profile
Playwright / Direction
Toshiki Okada
Okada’s works have attracted great attention for the distinctive relationship between words and body in his methodology. In 2005, his play Five Days in March won the prestigious 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award. He participated in Toyota Choreography Award 2005 with Air Conditioner (Cooler) (2005), which was one of the finalists. In 2013, his theatrical theory collection Soko : Henkei shite iku tame no engekiron, was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha.
Beginning in 2016, he was continually engaged in the production and direction of works for the repertories of public theaters in Germany. His The Vacuum Theater (staged at Münchner Kammerspiele in 2020) and Doughnuts (staged at Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre in 2022) were both selected for the Theatertreffen Berlin theatrical festival as one of the 10 remarkable German-language productions in their respective years.
Okada’s Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession, a theatrical adaptation of a contemporary Thai novel with a cast of Thai actors, won the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards Selection Committee Special Prize. His Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster – ZAHA / TSURUGA, which has the structure of a Noh narrative, was staged at Kanagawa Arts Theater (KAAT), and was awarded both the 72nd Yomiuri Bungaku-sho (prize for literature) and the 25th Tsuruya Namboku Memorial Drama Award. In 2021, he directed an opera, YUZURU.
As a novelist, his collection of short stories titled The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed was published in 2007 and awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize in the next year. Broccoli Revolution (2022) was awarded the 35th Mishima Yukio Prize and the 22th Kumanichi Bungaku-sho (prize for literature).
Scenography
Teppei Kaneuji
Kaneuji employs a collage-like methodology of collecting preexisting things and re-composing them with alternative values and perspectives. He creates mainly sculptures, but also produces works in various other media including photographs, video, scenography, and performance. He has consistently pursued designs for formative systems that actualize relations between materials and images. His major solo exhibitions include S.F. (Something Falling/Floating at ICHIHARA LAKESIDE MUSEUM (Chiba, 2022), Teppei Kaneuji’s ‘ZONES’ at Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (Kagawa, 2016), Towering Something at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2013), and Melting City / Empty Forest at the Yokohama Museum of Art (Kanagawa, 2009). He has also participated in numerous other exhibitions inside and outside Japan. Beginning with We Can’t Understand Each Other Like Household Appliances at Owl Spot (in Tokyo, 2011), he has collaborated extensively with Toshiki Okada and chelfitsch. In tower (Theater) at the ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Kyoto Experiment (2017), he showed a stage adaptation of his own video works.
He currently serves as associate professor of sculpture at Kyoto City University of Arts.
Profile
Cast
Izumi Aoyagi
Aoyagi is active in two theatrical companies (chelfitsch and Mum and Gypsy) in parallel, in Japan and other countries. Izumi San, which she co-authored with the cartoonist Machiko Kyo, was published by Chikumashobo and is available for purchase at bookstores etc.
Aoyagi recites poetry on Kochira 99tousei (Little More), a record of poetry composed by Tahi Saihate, and takes part in the work I Can’t Become Cinderella by K-BALLET Opto and Tahi Saihate.
Cast
Mari Ando
Mari Ando participated in Strangeness, a workshop & performance led by Toshiki Okada in the Itami AI Hall in 2006. Subsequently, she appeared in Freetime in 2008, About a Room of Memory (as part of the Hundred Stories about Love program at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa), Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech in 2009, We Can’t Understand Each Other Like Household Appliances in 2011, and Time’s Journey Through a Room in 2016. Ando appears in Te to kokoro ga itchi shinai, directed by Maki Nishiyama.
Cast
Yuri Itabashi
Born in Miyagi Prefecture in 1993. The main theatrical works in which Itabashi has appeared in recent years are Five Days in March – Re-creation by chelfitsch (2017-19); KIPPO, the fourth performance by Papurika (2018); Beyond Good and Evil, written by Naotoshi Oda for the bijutsu techo & VOLVO ART PROJECT (2019), the Eraser Mountain, Eraser Forest, and Eraser Fields trilogy by chelfitsch and Teppei Kaneuji (2019-21), Imagination, directed by Shingo Ota (2021), and Sakurahime Azuma Bunsho,by Kabuki Kinoshita (2023).
Cast
Takuya Harada
Takuya Harada is an artist who was born in Osaka Prefecture in 1981 and graduated from the Kyoto Saga Art College.
Makoto Yazawa
Born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1972. He works on a free-lance basis. He has appeared in productions by NODA MAP, Uchu Re Cord, Nibroll, the Mikuni Yanaihara Project, the Yoko Ando Project, U-enchi Saisei Jigyodan, the Ton-Anzu Project URASUJI, the Honno chusu theatre, and Company Derashinera. He also had a role in the off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors. He appeared in chelfitsch works including We are the Undamaged Others, Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich, and Metamorphosis of a Living Room.
Leon Koh Yonekawa
Born in 1993 in the city of Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, Yonekawa presently resides in Kyoto. He graduated from the Kyoto University of the Arts Department of Film Production with a degree in film acting, and completed courses in acting at the Film School of Tokyo. Among the works by chelfitsch/Toshiki Okada, he has appeared in Five Days in March – Recreation; Eraser Mountain/Eraser Forest; Layer, Class or Hierarchy based on the method of chelfitsch’s EIZO-Theater; and The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between’. Other works in which he has appeared include Double layered town/Making a song to replace our positions, a video project by Haruka Komori and Natsumi Seo; Gagatach by Canaries; and Inheritance Tax |¥102006200 by Tokatsu Sports. He is also engaged in creative activities of his own, chiefly in the field of film. His recent films include Here, There or Where; Marginal New Town; and Tsuchi-Nochi-Nochi-Uchi.
chelfitsch
The theater company chelfitsch was founded in 1997 by Toshiki Okada, who writes and directs all of its productions.The company made its debut abroad in 2007, when it performed Five Days in March at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, which is regarded as one of the most important festivals on the European performing arts scene, in Brussels, Belgium. It has since performed works in a total of more than 90 cities in Asia, Europe, and North America. The company has performed in works that were commissioned by some of the world’s most prominent festivals and theaters (sometimes based on international collaboration), such as the Festival d’Automne à Paris (France) and the Wiener Festwochen (Austria). In recent years, it has set about EIZO-Theater together with Shimpei Yamada, a stage video artist. EIZO-Theater is an attempt to transform exhibition space into performing space by applying the effects on human sensation induced by images projected on a screen. In 2018, chelfitsch exhibited/performed Beach, Eyelids, and Curtains: chelfitsch’s EIZO-Theater at Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto. In 2021, it also started a project of collaboration with non-native Japanese speakers, and conducted workshops for actors whose first language is not Japanese. The project culminated in the play The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between’in 2023.