Exchange Program
International Exchange Program
Intersecting Peripheries
The Toyooka Theater Festival began in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As physical contact and mobility were restricted, our ways of connecting with people and places were fundamentally questioned. In response to this backdrop, we conceived the program Intersecting Peripheries.
What we are drawn to are places that are neither urban nor central—not just in the geographical sense, but also in terms of values, history, and identity. We sense that cultural practices rooted in such peripheral contexts are deeply connected to global shifts.
This year, we were grateful to receive applications for the program from 36 countries around the world.
Artists, producers, and researchers from across the globe will gather in Toyooka, bringing with them their concerns and practices shaped by their own contexts, and allowing them to intersect.
From here, we hope to witness the emergence of new, web-like networks of dialogue and collaboration.
[Participants]
Group A – September 12 to 16

Arby Hamiya (Philippines / Based in Manila)
Arby Hamiya is a Filipino multi-faceted graphic designer who has evolved into multidisciplinary practices. Over the past years, Arby has collaborated with different creative projects, taking on various roles across production, performance and design. As an Executive Producer at Para Sa Sining Collaboratory, a pioneer team member at Kapwa Movement Project, and a collaborator at HUB: Make Lab, she focuses on collaborative and community-rooted artistic initiatives. Her cultural work intends to create new works with local communities and planning on programs and festivals in the future.

Angga Kusuma (Indonesia / Based in Dumai)
Angga Kusuma (Contor) is a theatre-maker and performance researcher from Dumai, a port city on the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. His practice investigates how everyday rituals and overlooked spaces—a security post, a coffee stall, a riverbank—become unofficial stages for power, memory, and absurdity. Rooted in his experience of growing up on the periphery, his work constantly asks: what unseen performances uphold our social reality?
Using methods of site-specific performance and performative ethnography, he deconstructs the languages of the body born from boredom, waiting, and unspoken social tensions. He is interested in creating dialogues between peripheries, bringing his lens from a Sumatran port city to explore and resonate with the unique social landscapes of other non-central regions, seeking the universal truths hidden in local specificities.

Nuttamon Pramsumran (Thailand / Based in Tokyo & Bangkok)
Nuttamon Pramsumran is a Thai artist and author who co-founded Circle Theatre Bangkok in 2018. She has collaborated on site-specific and community-based projects such as Loei Art Fest (2021) and Parallel Normalities (2021–2023) between Thailand and Japan. Currently based in Tokyo, she explores migration through personal and collective stories of Thai people living abroad. As an artist-in-residence at Treasure Hill Artist Village (July–August 2025), she deepens this exploration. Her current research focuses on the hidden waterways (暗渠) in Harajuku, Shibuya, and Setagaya, investigating their connection to urban life and the experiences of immigrants in the city.

Woo Yat Hei (Hong Kong / Based in Hong Kong)
Woo Yat-hei was born in Hong Kong, a dancer, performer and independent artist. His latest work Burn Out Nijinsky (2025) investigates the labor and inner world of performers, using intertextuality, parody, and satire as methods on reflecting how individuals become products of history and society. His previous works include Traffik Is-Land (2024, West Kowloon Cultural District Freespace Dance, HOTPOT East Asia Dance Platform); I Drag Deep Thought Word (2023, ROOM712); and Konstantin’s Video Essay (2022, Institute of Imagination).
He has formed a cross-disciplinary collective that conducted fieldwork researching in San Lau Street at the Sha Tau Kok frontier area, focusing on the ongoing interactions and intersections among the dynamics which were shaped by contextual and structural factors.

Tzu-Ching WU (Taiwan / Based in Taipei)
Tzu-Ching WU, born in Taiwan, based in Taipei. Graduated from Taipei National University of the Arts, dept. of theatrical design, major in set design. Now a member of an artist collective “House Peace”, and the resident artist of National Theatre and Concert Hall.
With a background in set design, her works focus on creating possibilities between theatre and space. She also makes interdisciplinary space design works of video art, installation and XR interactive performance.
Group B – September 19 to 23

Amos (Indonesia / Based in Yogyakarta)
Amos is a researcher and performing art practitioner from Indonesia. With a background in historical studies, his work engages with archival materials, historical narratives, and decolonial/postcolonial issues. As a co-founder of Kolektif Arungkala, a Yogyakarta-based multidisciplinary collective, Amos explores intersections of memory, microhistory, critical framework performing art, and socially engaged art practices.

James Harvey Estrada (Philippines / Based in Binangonan & Angono)
He is a Filipino educator, writer, director and performer, active in the Asian region, working on international collaborations on solidarity, fake news and human rights. Lecturer at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Manila teaching drama in broadcast performance and visual direction and techniques.
In 2022 and 2023 he co-facilitated the Tokyo Festival Farm’s Asian Performing Arts Camp, gathering artists to research in Tokyo.. He also participated in Theatertreffen 2023 International Forum in Berlin, Germany.
His first written play “Maikling Dasal, Mahabang Gabi” following the stories of OFW drug mules won awards at the UPTC Play Festival for the best original story and since then has been staged to different parts of Philippines. His newest work “Pagkalinga : Vibrations and Rituals of Care“. premiered at the Toyooka Theater Festival in September 2024. James has exhibited and created works in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and the US.

Ohelen (South Korea / Based in Seoul)
I am a Seoul-based multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of improvisational music, movement, and visual arts. My practice blends voice, live instrumentation, and physical expression to create immersive, site-specific performances exploring themes of identity, memory, and transformation. As co-founder of the collective “Odd Lips,” I engage in collaborative projects that challenge performance norms and explore social and environmental questions. I aim to dissolve the boundaries between performer and audience through theatricality, poetry, and spontaneous interaction.

Tomomi Onuki / 大貫友瑞 (Japan / Based in Tokyo)
Born in 1999, Tomomi Onuki is an artist and architect. She holds an MA in Architecture from Tokyo University of the Arts and studied performance at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. While working in architectural design, she is active in performing arts.
Her practice explores the “non-heroic body” in a society where humans easily overwrite cities and nature, losing the sense of “being here, now.”
She creates performances that propose new relationships between humans and their surroundings.
As a member of the performing media art collective pito, she also develops workshops and performances that transform perceptions of body and space through memory and cognition.

Jaeeun Kim / OUT OF BLU (South Korea / Based in Seoul)uma (Indonesia / Based in Dumai)
I’m a Korean actor and multidisciplinary artist working across video, poetry, music, and performance.
My work focuses on subtle emotional dynamics, fragile relationships, and the quiet spaces between people and places, through which I explore emotion, scene, and the ecology of human connection.
Rather than anchoring myself to a single form, I move fluidly between mediums, letting each project shape its own rhythm and voice.
Across all forms of practice, I aim to invite reflection rather than explanation.

Pearlyn Tay (Singapore / Based in Singapore)
Pearlyn Tay is an independent producer invested in enabling artistic developmental and creation processes across disciplines and genres. Dedicated to dismantling and reconstructing ways of working, she seeks to cultivate intentional and meaningful collaborative spaces for artistic creation. She takes a special interest in the development of emergent practices for artists and producers alongside community- and network-building, culminating in her work at Producers SG (Emerging Producers Programme 2024-2026) and co-founding of Morasum Network. In various capacities across different disciplines, she has also worked with organisations such as Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay (Seedlings 2025; Contemporary Performing Arts Research Residency 2024; International Presenters Visit Programme 2024), *SCAPE (Street Art Residency 2025; Somerset Threads 2025), and Centre 42 (Cor Machina 2024) alongside producing independent work in theatre (Air in Skin 2023; A Mirage 2022; Erosion 2021).
-
Contact Us
- ttf_inter_peripheries@toyooka-theaterfestival.jp
-
Credits
- Organized by: Toyooka Theater Festival Executive Committee