Skirball Salon: “Eraser Mountain” and the new ecological theatre

In this salon we explore “Eraser Mountain,” the latest work by playwright-director Okada Toshiki, and a representative work of the new ecological theatre. Part installation work and part contemporary performance, “Eraser Mountain” will figure in a wider discussion about performance, ecology, ecocritical theory and the role of arts and scholarship in addressing environmental crisis.

Helping to introduce and contextualize the work of Okada, the salon will feature esteemed speakers who work on Japanese theatre, culture and society including Uchino Tadashi (Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo), Karen Shimakawa (NYU) and Tom Looser (NYU). They will be joined by Una Chaudhuri (NYU) whose work on ecocriticism is foundational, and Mary Ting (CUNY John Jay College) artist scholar whose work addresses cultural political history and ecological loss. The salon will be moderated by Japanese theatre scholar Peter Eckersall (CUNY Graduate Center), who is currently coediting a book on Okada and his theatre group Chelfitsch.

This event will take place in the Department of Performance Studies: 721 Broadway, 6th Floor.

Free and open to the public – please RSVP via Facebook, below! The venue is wheelchair accessible. Reception to follow. Co-sponsored by NYU Performance Studies, and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and the Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Working Group at NYU.

In this salon we explore “Eraser Mountain,” the latest work by playwright-director Okada Toshiki, and a representative work of the new ecological theatre. Okada’s performance is in response to the on-going catastrophe caused by the Fukushima triple disaster of 2011. The name of the play refers to the excavation of a mountain top, when its rock and soil was taken away to support the reconstruction of the coastal city of Rikuzentakata, one of the cities that was destroyed by Fukushima tsunami in which many thousands of people died. The rocks taken from the mountain top to fortify the coastline literately erase the mountain and weaken the ecosystems around it. Everything is connected in tangible and intangible ways in this environmental cataclysm that in Okada’s work is an example of the new ecological theatre. For “Eraser Mountain,” Okada has worked with the visual artist Teppei Kaneuji to question a “human-centric approach” to the environment and, instead, he asks us “to reimagine the relationships between people, objects, and the world.” Part installation work and part contemporary performance, “Eraser Mountain” will figure in a wider discussion about performance, ecology, ecocritical theory and the role of arts and scholarship in addressing environmental crisis.