Toshiki Okada
Teppei Kaneuji Eraser Mountain

Is it possible to invent theatre that does not place human beings at the centre of the performance? The brutal reconstruction of a Japanese city decimated by the tsunami in 2011 is the starting point for a show which seeks to reinvent the relationship between man, objects and the world.

The city of Rikuzentakata, devasted by the earthquake undertook large-scale construction work in order to raise its ground level to protect itself against more tsunamis in the future. However, the use of local stones has caused serious damage to the surrounding mountains. The vision of this landscape reshaped by man has inspired Toshiki Okada and his company chelfitsch to embark upon a quest in the opposite direction : is it possible to move away from theatre's anthropocentrism in order to create, in the words of the director himself, « a theatre for things, a theatre of things » ? In order to conceive the staging for this radical process of de-centring, Toshiki Okada has called upon the artist and sculptor Teppei Kaneuji and his mastery of the art of collage. On a stage strewn with objects of all kinds, an evocation of the art of installation, the choreographed movements of the actors create the impression of individuals haunted by obliteration and disappearance. Similar to Current Location (2012), Ground and Floor (2013) and Time’s Journey Through a Room (2016), Eraser Mountain looks into the collective trauma that the Fukushima catastrophe brought about. Similarly, its dialogues invite us to re-think not only our place in our environment but also the foundations of theatrical representation.
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Duration: 2h20
In Japanese with French subtitles