Engage, Encounter, Enliven.
About the Festival
Established in 2020, Toyooka Theater Festival is a city-wide theater festival that maintains a strong connection with tourism and community development efforts. In addition to conventional theater venues, the festival extends its stages to locations throughout the city, including the hot spring town, coastal areas, highlands, and even the traditional wooden community stages found at shrines. More unexpected locations emerge as performance venues with each passing year.
The festival program features around eighty performing groups from Japan and abroad, including international artists, and other creators and street performers from various regions. Performing arts enthusiasts are sure to gather from across the country for this eagerly anticipated event.
The theme for the sixth edition of the Toyooka Theater Festival is “演、縁、宴。,” three characters that all read as “en” in Japanese. In English, the theme is expressed as “Engage, Encounter, Enliven.”
Engage with the theater. Encounter people you may not otherwise meet. Enliven your senses as you enjoy a meal with someone new. This theme embodies our hope that you will discover your own unique approach enjoying the festival.
The ways we can engage with a theater festival are ever-expanding—to encourage, enflame, enchant, encircle…
What ways of enjoyment do you envision?
Oriza Hirata
The essence of the Toyooka Theater Festival lies in its sense of exploration.
One of the most compelling aspects of this festival is the abundance of performances, events, and cultural sites to explore and enjoy.
This year’s Director’s Program presents a selection of works that are more ambitious and avant-garde than ever before.
At the same time, for the people of Toyooka and the wider Tajima region, we will continue to enhance the festival with content that remains accessible and familiar—something you can easily attend in your everyday geta sandals.
We hope you and your loved ones will have a wonderful time enjoying the variety of casual, family-friendly performances and programs.
Between performances, we encourage you to curate a uniquely personal festival experience by indulging in the region’s renowned hot springs and savoring its exquisite cuisine.Once again, we look forward to seeing you this year in Toyooka and Tajima.
Hiroyuki Takamiya
It has been a surprisingly quick five years since the Toyooka Theater Festival began. Since then, it has steadily established itself on the international stage as a place where artists from Japan and abroad come together, deepening their exchange amidst the rich landscape, history, and culture of the Tajima region. Each year, the festival presents works across diverse genres, offering fresh perspectives and touching the hearts of attendees while also nurturing new connections between the local community and the arts.
When the Toyooka Theater Festival first began, many people were unsure how exactly to take part in and fully enjoy a theater festival. But over time, by engaging with a rich variety of works—across theater, dance, music, and video—the festival has sparked noticeable shifts in the perspectives of local residents. Art has become a more familiar and personal presence in their lives, and people have discovered their own ways to experience and enjoy the festival. In turn, the entire community has been enlivened through this interaction with the arts.
This year, the Toyooka Theater Festival expands to include Shinonsen Town as a new venue, transforming all of Tajima into its stage. Set against a captivating backdrop of hot springs, mountains, and coastline, this site-specific presentation of artworks is sure to evoke deeply moving experiences unique to this region.
This year’s theme for the Toyooka Theater Festival is “演、縁、宴。,” three characters that all read as “en” in Japanese. In English, the theme is expressed as “Engage, Encounter, Enliven.” With this theme, we hope to create a space where artists, audiences, and the local community can come together, sharing in the experience of the works and fostering deeper connections. 演 (en) represents the resonance of theater and performance; 宴 (en), the joy of gathering and shared celebration. We look forward to discovering what kinds of 縁 (en), connections, will emerge from this year’s festival.
In recent years, the number of participating artists and attendees from abroad has steadily increased. This international presence connects the local community to the wider world, creating new opportunities for cultural exchange. Works by international artists bring fresh and thought-provoking perspectives, offering Japanese audiences diverse new ways of seeing. Furthermore, as overseas visitors spend time in the region, the unique charm of the Tajima area is introduced to a broader public.
The Toyooka Theater Festival seeks to deepen its role as a space where art and the local community come together. We look forward to sharing this special time with you.
The Toyooka Theater Festival started in 2020 as a performing-arts festival primarily focused on theater and dance. The festival serves as a platform for artists to create and showcase their work, while also providing opportunities for visitors and residents to engage with diverse cultures and values, aiming to become a space for international exchange.
Furthermore, the Toyooka Theater Festival maintains a strong connection with tourism and community development efforts. It endeavored to give back to the local community, by promoting travel, conducting trials and demonstrations of public transportation, introducing a local currency, fostering programs that work closely with the tourism industry, and developing programs and workshops that involve local residents.
These efforts have been positively received, with the festival being awarded the Tourism 2021 Sports Culture Tourism Award, Tourism Award (Sports Agency, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan Tourism Agency); the Special Award at the 20th Kansai Zaikai Seminar (Kansai Association of Corporate Executives); and the 2023 Furusato-zukuri Grand Prize Group Award (Commendation by the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications).
Through our collaboration with the Professional College of Arts and Tourism (established in Toyooka City in 2021), we will engage in academic analysis and impact assessments to contribute even further to the local community.
A Theater Festival that Swirls and Connects
The festival has initiated various collaborative endeavors with businesses and organizations, including pilot schemes to ease travel between venues, the introduction of a local currency, and partnership with the local university.
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水田雅也『シンボル玉入れ』2023年 ©︎トモカネアヤカ Come together and interact, both the audience and the citizens.
In addition to offering a diverse lineup of performances by artists from Japan and overseas, the festival creates opportunities for various people to engage in dialogue. The night market and Meeting Spots serve as platforms for local residents, visiting theater goers, and artists to connect with each other.
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©︎トモカネアヤカ Developing New Initiatives to Connect with the Community
The festival involves the local community not only through their participation as support staff but also through the development of original goods which incorporate the area’s specialties and the offering of programs that are anchored in the region. Our goal is to engage a wide audience, providing ways to enjoy the festival which are not limited to conventional ways of experiencing theater.
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Utilize local community currency
To create a system where feelings of empathy stimulate the local economy, we have introduced a local currency for the festival. The currency can be used to purchase official goods and is also accepted at the night market and participating stores in the area.
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©︎トモカネアヤカ Collaboration with Students.
The Professional College of Arts and Tourism, established in Toyooka in 2021, is the first public university in Japan where one can study theater and dance in depth. As a part of their practical learning, students participate in the Toyooka Theater Festival, enriching the festival with their unique perspectives.
The “Toyooka Theater Festival Support Coin” is a local currency which creates a system where feelings of empathy and gratitude become central to the circulation of the local economy. The unit of currency is a CLAP, with one CLAP equal to one yen. The currency can be used at participating stores by scanning a QR code and making a payment through an online transaction.
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Constituent Organizations
- Community Art Center Platz, a non-profit organization
- General Incorporated Association Toyooka Tourism Innovation
- Toyooka Tourism Council
- Hyogo Prefecture Tajima Prefectural Government
- Toyooka Chamber of Commerce and Industry
- Toyooka city society of commerce and industry
- Toyooka City
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Secretariat
- Tourism Policy Division, Toyooka City Hall
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