Shuntaro Matsubara and Ayaka Ono, Yo Nakazawa, and space not blank are returning to the Toyooka Theater Festival this year, following their appearances with “Dance Dance Revolutions” in 2024 and “Beautiful Ridiculous Scenario of the Sorcerer’s Apprentices” in 2025. Their new work this year is “Japanese as she is spoke”.

For Shuntaro Matsubara, this is his first short play. In collaboration with Ayaka Ono, Yo Nakazawa, and space not blank, it marks their return to the two-person play format for the first time since Sasayamaka-sa (A Modestness) in the early days of their collaboration, and is their seventh work together.

The title Japanese as she is spoke was inspired by English as She Is Spoke, a 19th-century English conversation guide notorious for its wildly inaccurate translations, which produced a peculiar and unintentionally comic form of English.

In this work, a conversation begins from a place where meaning fails to get across. The words spoken by the two characters, “Origami” and “Ayatori,” are misread, overlap, and trigger unexpected reactions, gradually connecting them to places far beyond what either could have imagined. Is the inability to communicate smoothly really a failure of conversation? As the two bodies struggle to keep using language that is riddled with gaps and misalignments, a reality unique to that particular moment and place begins to emerge between them.

A new 60-minute two-person play in which language and bodies unfold in unexpected ways. Come and experience it for yourself at the theater.

What is MURINKAN International?

Munrin-kan International is a program that supports and nurtures emerging creators in their international careers. Based at “Munrin-kan,” a creative platform founded and led by director Oriza Hirata, the program offers training aimed at international development, as well as performances with subtitles.

At the Toyooka Theater Festival, new works by artists participating in the program will be presented with English subtitles.