Toshiki Okada Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession

[Theatre]

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.

Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession, an adaptation of the novel by the Thai writer, Uthis Haemamool mixes the accounts of a painter’s tumultuous love affairs with that of Thailand’s recent past, from the 1990’s to the present day. Toshiki Okada has adapted this life story for the theatre and transfigures it, via his choreography inspired by gestures taken from everyday life, bringing out the sensuality of the actors, and via the set design, by the artist Yûya Tsukahara a member of the contact Gonzo collective. Thailand is seen as a deformed body, beaten into submission by an autocratic central power. Politics and the nation, control and power, desire and the body, seeing and being seen... the piece explores the nuances between these different poles in search of a through road. In doing so, the piece examines the notion of frontiers, and how we can erase their contours or of transgress them, in search of what is common to us all.
––––––
Duration : 4h with 20 minutes of intermission
Thaïe performance with French subtitles