Toshiki Okada, one of the most innovative and original directors of the contemporary Japanese theatre scene, comes back to VIE after three years with his new play Super Premium Soft Double Rich Vanilla. Eclectic artist, Okada has aroused the interest not only of the theatre world, but also of the contemporary dance, art and literature, a field in which he distinguished himself mainly thanks to the use of language: a hyper-colloquial Japanese that reflects the youth culture of the contemporary Japan. Okada continues with this pièce his own research on everyday life, on the difficulties and uncertainty of human relationships. The characters of Super Premium Soft Double Rich Vanilla are characterized by extreme minimalism, by the lack of structuring of the dialogue and by compulsive gestures. The unusual relationship between word and deed are the strength of Okada’s plays that all almost arrive to touch the boundaries of contemporary dance. In this pièce, Okada crosses the borders between word and deed, error and repeat arriving here to an even more radical result: on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and on the characteristic phrases of baroque music, the performers return a frenzy of syncopated words and deeds. Set in one of the largest Japanese supermarket chains, Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich puts up daily neuroses, reflections, uncertainties and expectations about Abe, Sakamoto and Tamura’s future, the three part-time clerks players. A convenience store is particularly bright even from outside. It is shiny and clean inside. Always pleasantly kept room temperature. Do I spend all my life in this tepid paradise-like place? Often Abe gets seized by this fear; but he tries to overcome this fear and goes in front of the cash desk. Sometimes he intentionally mis-registers the attribute of customers into the POS system. Even if a female teenager buys the potato chips, he presses the button of ‘over fifties – male’ at the cash register. He tries to throw the marketing data into disorder. This is his modest resistance. One of the loyal customers, called ‘prof.’, stops by at the store today too. Prof. always talks against the convenience store culture to the part-time staff. If you criticize so much, why are you coming? A full-time employee from the headquarters, the supervisor Uno, comes to tell the headquarter decisions. New products are launched every Monday and Tuesday. This week they recommend the supersize ice-cream ‘Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich’. In one year 70 percent of the products of the convenience store will be replaced by others. The ‘deadly’ products will be given up and get switched off with new products. When the new products arrive, Sakamoto happily lines them onto the shelf; but he knows he surely belongs to the ‘deadly’ products side.                                                                                   

Toshiki Okada

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Toshiki Okada, biography