Doughnuts

In a hotel lobby, several guests are waiting for a taxi to take them to a conference. Outside, an increasingly dense fog envelops the city; inside, the waiting experts are conducting carefully assessing, looped discussions on how to proceed. Should they continue to wait for the taxi or try to find an alternative? Director and author Toshiki Okada and his cast have created a show of perfectly balanced rhythm and choreography, where verbal and physical acrobatics go hand in hand and there is still room for interpretation.

Statement of the jury
A foray into the theatre of high modernity: In “Doughnuts”, Toshiki Okada has assembled an illustrious group of internationally active Japanese high-achievers in a hotel lobby. Urbane cosmopolitans, the elite of academics or business, or both, it’s hard to tell. A mere banality delays them: The taxi that they ordered just isn’t coming – perhaps due to the fog outside. All they can do is wait, talk and move. They complement their lines with complicated, often reversed and yet totally organic contortions of their arms, legs and hips, executed with complete concentration. Along with these, they form complicated, compound sentences, measured to the very millimetre, wondering with unyielding rationality and relentless friendliness whether it would be better to take the bus or wait for the taxi a few minutes longer. This consistently results in judiciously weighed alternatives which block each other so effectively that nothing happens yet again. Only the Wi-Fi and the hotel’s sauna work flawlessly: It’s simply a world of doughnuts, revolving around an empty centre.

Tojuror Sascha Westphalʼs video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)