The Window of Spaceship 'In-Between'

Toshiki Okada creates this theatrical gem, in which a science fiction reality meets the everyday poetry of group dynamics in a confined space. For this project, he decided to work with four actors who are not native Japanese speakers. By making them custodians of Japanese culture, Okada reminds us that language simply belongs to those who speak it while using the spaceship as a metaphor to critically reflect on Japan’s colonial past in Southeast Asia, its linguistic expansion and the politics of language. Before our eyes, the four humans interact with the android and an alien that appears on board while the spaceship passes through a space time tunnel. Together, they open a delicate dialogue on origins and nostalgia for the earth. From the window, we observe them, or perhaps they observe us, those who remain on earth. Suddenly, ‘In-Between’ isn’t just the name of a spaceship or a tunnel between two areas of the galaxy, but a hymn to the identities that exist beyond a defined one, in between. Toshiki Okada returns to the festival with a performance of rarefied beauty, suspended in the absence of gravity.