Born in Yokohama in 1973 and formed the theater company chelfitsch in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company's productions, practicing a distinctive methodology for creating plays, and has come to be known for his use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and unique choreography. In 2005, his play Five Days in March won the prestigious 49th Kishida Drama Award. Okada participated in Toyota Choreography Award 2005 with Air Conditioner (Cooler) (2005), garnering much attention.

In September 2005, Okada won the Yokohama Cultural Award/Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement. As the representative of his country, he took part in Stuecke'06 International Literature Project and in December of the same year, he presented Enjoy at New National Theatre, Tokyo. He has also served as the director for the 2006-07 Summit, an annual drama festival hosted by the Komaba Agora Theater (General producer, Oriza Hirata).

In February of 2007 his collection of novels The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed debuted and was awarded the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. As a director he has directed Beckett’s Cascando for the Tokyo International Arts Festival ~ Beckett Centennial Memorial Festival, and Kobo Abe’s salient work Friends at the Setagaya Public Theater. More recently he also directed a workshop production of Strangeness with local actors at the Itami Ai Hall in Hyogo prefecture, Ghost Youth created through collaboration with students of Obirin University, and wrote a new play called Three Women for director Naoto Takenaka, among other projects.

chelfitsch Theater Company
http://www.chelfitsch.net/

chelfitsch Theater Company was founded in 1997 by Toshiki Okada, who writes and directs all of the company’s productions. The company made its debut with Kyokoku (Canyon) at the Yokohama Sotetsu Honda Theater. Named after a deliberate mispronunciation of the English word "selfish," chelfitsch Theater Company began to refine its textual aesthetic as that of colloquial language representing contemporary youth culture with Surprised by Their Hopes which premiered in March of 2001.

With Five Days in March (premiere in 2004 and awarded the prestigious Kunio Kishida Award for Best Script) and Mansion (2002) the company began to juxtapose a noisy choreography derived from everyday mannerisms to the text. This led the company to garner attention in the dance scene; in July 2005, Air Conditioner (Cooler) was chosen as a finalist at the Toyota Choreography Awards.

The company’s international debut took place in 2007 when Five Days in March was invited to the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels. In 2008, Freetime was jointly commissioned by and premiered at Kunsten Festival des Arts, Weiner Festwochen (Vienna) and Fesitval d’Automne (Paris). The works of chelfitsch have been presented to great acclaim at premier international theater festivals and venues throughout Europe and Asia, including Brussels, Paris, Cardiff, Salzburg and Singapore.