Enjoy

THE LOFT (The Pit)

*Seat Z(¥1,500): Sold at the NNTT Box Office and some Ticket Pia outlets on the performance date. One ticket per person. No phone reservations.
*Same day student tickets (50% off, except Seat Z ): Sold at the NNTT Box Office and some Ticket Pia outlets on the performance date. One ticket per person. No phone reservations. Students must bring a valid student ID.

In 2004 Okada Toshiki was propelled into the front ranks of Japanese playwrights with Five Days in March, which won him the 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award. A new work by Okada will be featured this season in the critically acclaimed series, “THE LOFT—Concepts from a Small Space”.
Okada presents, with his own unique sensibility, a collage of contemporary society, and especially urban youth. His ear for the language of contemporary young people, an attention to movement and gesture bordering on choreography, and a compositional style unbound by theatrical convention have won him recognition from fields outside drama, such as fiction and contemporary dance. Five Days in March was much discussed for its portrayal of a couple spending five days in a love hotel in Shibuya as the air war against Iraq commenced. Enjoy is set in a manga café in Shinjuku, and depicts the increasingly visible inequalities of contemporary Japanese society and the trend towards “downward mobility” by focusing on a group of 30-something “freeters” (freelancers) and their attitudes toward their dead-end jobs, romance, and daily life. Their problems are also placed in the context of the growing global issue of marginalized workers, as seen in the recent student protests in France.
This is an ambitious work by Okada, who says he wants to use the venue of the New National Theatre, Tokyo to stir up a “productive friction” with his audience, for the most part of a different generation with different life experiences than his own. A fresh cast and staff have been assembled through the workshops. Come with your five senses tuned to Enjoy a completely new theatrical experience.