Toshiki Okada Five Days in March - Re-creation

Toshiki Okada, one of Japan’s foremost theatre directors, presents two pieces in which personal accounts are interwoven with major upheavals in history : Five Days in March, created in 2004, and his latest work Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession. Both are emblematic of the choreographic and theatrical work of Okada and his company chelfitsch.

Five Days in March, the chelfitsch company’s signature work, follows the everyday activities of Japanese youngsters during five days in March 2003, while the US began bombing Irak. In a present where time appears to stand still, the different characters make their way onto the stage one by one, and describe the events of these five days, wielding the prosaic and stylised language of Tokyo’s youth. The director plays upon the disarticulation between this spoken word and the bodies with their borrowed postures, the movements of which have been dissected - revealed - by the virtuoso precision of the choreography. The toing-and-froing between the spoken word and its incarnation, between the present moment and the distant theatre of war, enables Okada to build up a portrait of a generation struggling to find itself. Almost fifteen years after its creation, the piece, performed by a new troop of young actors, echoes, in a unique way, the era we live in, at a time when the question of political will is as urgent as ever.
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Running time : 1h30
Performed in Japanese, with French subtitles