Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich: Performance by Tokishi Okada and the chelfitsch Theater Company

Toshiki Okada, playwright and director, formed the theater company cheltfish in 1997. He writes and directs all of the company’s productions, practicing a distinctive methodology for creating plays. Okada has come to be known for his use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and his unique choreography. He was awarded the 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. Okada he has been on the jury for the Kishida Kunio Drama Award since 2012. In 2013, his first book on theatrology was published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha.



chelfitsch Theatre Company, named after a deliberate mispronunciation of the English word “selfish,” began to refine its textual aesthetic in connection to that of the colloquial language of contemporary youth culture. With Five Days in March, the company began to juxtapose a noisy choreography derived from everyday mannerisms with text. The works of chelfitsch have been presented at international theater festivals and venues throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. The troupe continues to update its methodology, which is centered on the relationship between speech and the body. Since Current Location, which debuted in 2012, chelfitsch has created works that are exploratory forays into the realm of fiction.

Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich is set in a convenience store. The performance, at once humorous and merciless, unfolds to the background music of the convenience store, which happens to be all 48 preludes and fugues that make up J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. The convenience store is an entry point for reflection on today’s Japan in light of the earthquake and nuclear catastrophe that befell it almost five years ago.



Text and Direction: Toshiki Okada. Performed by: Makoto Yazawa, Tomomitsu Adachi, Hideaki Washio, Shuhei Fuchino, Shingo Ota, Mariko Kawasaki, Yukiko Sasaki. Set Designer: Takuya Aoki. Costumes: Sae Onodera (Tokyo Isho). Stage Director: Masaya Natsume, Koro Suzuki. Sound Director: Norimasa Ushikawa. Lighting Director: Tomomi Ohira. Music Arranger: Takaki Sudo. Subtitles: www.sprachspiel.org. Japanese-English translator: Anna Galt. Producer: Akane Nakamura, Tamiko Ouki. Company Manager: Nana Koetting. Production: chelfitsch. Associated production: precog. Commissioned by Theater der Welt 2014. Co-production: Theater der Welt 2014 (Mannheim), KAAT (Kanagawa Arts Theater), LIFT - London International Festival of Theatre, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal (Lisbon), Culturescapes (Basel), Kaserne Basel, A House on Fire; with the support of the European Union. Special thanks to: Steep Slope Studio.