This article was originally published in the Japan Times on September 29 2023.

For the past two decades, the Tokyo-based Chelfitsch theater company has been creating a form of eco-critical performance in Japan, confronting political and environmental crises of national and global significance.

The company rose to international prominence under the leadership of founder, playwright and director Toshiki Okada with a series of works in response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. This includes “Current Location” (2012), “Ground and Floor” (2013) and “Eraser Mountain” (2019). Among the different thematic strands that connect these works is the question of Japan’s identity against the backdrop of mounting ecological, economic and population issues.

In October 2021 and 2022, the company held a series of workshops in Tokyo with the purpose of creating “Japanese theater with people whose native language is not Japanese.”

The workshops attracted residents of Japan from a range of cultural backgrounds, Japanese speaking levels and acting experience. The participants were first tasked with describing a space at home through speech and gestures. Later on, they were asked to talk about another participant’s home as though it were their own.

After these sessions, all participants were invited to a two-round audition process for roles in “The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between,’” a play written by Okada and in collaboration with the cast. The production, which features four workshop participants and two Chelfitsch company members, premiered at Tokyo’s Kichijoji Theater this August and is being revised in early October as part of Kyoto Experiment, the Kansai region’s landmark international theater festival running from Sept. 30 through Oct. 22.

In “The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between,’” a crew of four humans and one android assemble on a spaceship as part of a mission to find a new habitable environment in the wake of Earth becoming less sustainable for life. The crew’s vessel is boarded unexpectedly by an alien, and a series of discussions ensue on what it means to be human, android and alien.

The roles of the android and alien are performed by Chelfitsch members, Leon Kou Yonekawa and Mari Ando, who are both native Japanese speakers. The four human roles are played by Tina Rosner, Qiucheng Xu, Ness Roque and Robert Zetzsche, who all have different levels of Japanese-language proficiency.

One of the reasons Okada embarked on this mixed-roots project was to respond to the state of contemporary Japanese theater; the playwright observed that actors who are non-native Japanese speakers tend not to be judged by their theatrical prowess but more by their linguistic aptitude. Having spent time directing works for the Munich Kammerspiele public theater, Okada noticed that in contrast, the opposite trend was true in German theater. Okada then decided to explore what could be done to challenge the status quo of the Japanese stage.

In July 2022, well after the first round of workshops, Chelfitsch organized a panel discussion under the following title: “Reflections on a Chelfitsch Theater Project with Non-native Japanese Speakers.” Two important discussion points were how to define “native” and “non-native” speakers of Japanese and how to position “non-native Japanese theater” within a cultural landscape that takes standardized Japanese for granted.

The general problem with this type of categorization is that it maintains a division between “native” and “non-native.” Okada’s project, therefore, set out to work “in-between” these kinds of restrictive categories. His ambition was not only to make a one-off production based on the workshops, but for it to become a platform from which mixed-roots Japanese theater of the future might draw inspiration.

Rosner, a theater researcher and practitioner from Hungary who has been based in Tokyo since 2014, is enthusiastic about the project’s inclusivity. She says she finds it refreshing to work on a production that puts the categories of “foreign” and “native” aside and instead focuses on mutual explorations of what the Japanese language is and can be.

She points out that the two main spaces for non-native actors in Japanese theater are either one-off parts in professional productions or student-led plays in university language departments. “The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between’” offers a new way of working.

In talking about her personal experience of living in Japan, Rosner points out that just as in any language, there is plurality in Japanese, whether it’s in different levels of proficiency or differences in regional accents and dialects.

“It’s something that is already there,” Rosner says. “It’s only the hardcore language purists that don’t want to see that, and what we’re doing is just adding another layer to it.”

In terms of the acting experience, Rosner notes that it resulted in “a real boost in confidence with Japanese because even if you make mistakes, in theater you have to stick by them.”

Rosner explains that she had been self-conscious about having a strong accent in Japanese and in English, but she has come to realize that “(having an) accent takes courage because it means you are already trying to take part in another linguistic medium, and that in itself is a positive step.” The entire project has become an intense listening exercise for her. Closely paying attention to each other as actors, directors and audience members is, for her, a crucial part of moving forward as a plurality of Japanese speakers.

Okada also finds the play to be a rich learning process.

“The biggest discovery (for me) relates to the essence of theater itself,” he says. “The project brought me back to the fundamentals of theater: how to deliver lines to an audience in a clear and impactful way, but also that it’s crucial to devote more rehearsal time to reading the text together around the table.”

One of the keywords that is repeated in the production is “multiverse” — the idea that multiple realities are in play, either already within our world or as adjacent worlds. In this production, there is a “multiverse” not only of characters from different space-time dimensions but also within the language and experiences brought to the stage. The theater is often sensitive to these differences, but that cannot be taken for granted. It is never given that such a mixed tapestry of tones and voices can find true expression. But “The Window of Spaceship ‘In-Between’” takes a refreshing step in that direction.