The selfish "N" generation? Quirky performance about youth culture this week at Walker
Skip to main content
Performing Arts

The selfish "N" generation? Quirky performance about youth culture this week at Walker

chelfitsch, Five Days in March, March 2006, Super Deluxe, Roppongi, Tokyo. Photo by Toru Yokota.

This quirky and darkly humorous work Five Days in March by director Toshiki Okada recounts the daily lives of four adolescents in Tokyo’s trendy suburbs of Shibuya and Roppongi during the first five days of the U.S.-Iraq war in 2003.

About the performance: A couple of drifting kids stay for five days in a love hotel worrying about their futures, while outside in the “real” world, war changes everything. The precarious balance of Five Days in March juxtaposes the grand sweep of history and the insignificant patterns of real daily life. And the insecurity held by urban Japanese youth of the “N” generation (no job, no income) takes form in this startling and indelible performance.

About the director: Toshiki Okada is a playwright and director who has gained international acclaim for his plays, called “super-real” for the way the characters speak in broken sentences, like fragments from private conversations.

About the company: The company’s name, “chelfitsch,” is Okada’s coinage. It represents the baby-like disarticulation of the English word “selfish.” It is meant to evoke the social and cultural characteristics of today’s Japan, not least of Tokyo.

Click here for more information and tickets for this performance beginning Thursday at Walker on January 15-17th at 8pm.
Join us for a post-show reception in the Warhol lounge by 20.21 for discounted drinks and conversation. Opening night the artists will be joining the party.

Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.