If Lady Gaga were to be a city, her name would be Osaka. In this frantic metropolitan the neon lights are flashing continuously. A group of friends gather to party. Throughout the night they share their dreams, doubts, desires and fears.
Will we still know each other in ten years? Have we held on to our values? Have our voices vanished in the anonymous mass?
The friends look down onto the city from a skyscraper rooftop. In the early morning light the first men dressed in suits leave for work.
OSAKA is a visually exhilarating performance about the way individuals find their place within a group. Fifteen teenagers lead us into the world of manga and ancient Japanese pop-culture guided by the beats of DJ Alec Smart. They want to start a movement, but against what, for what and for whom?
The OSAKA PROJECT is a co-production with Amsterdam-based theater company Factory/Likeminds. Factory organizes special projects in which they invite professional theatre companies to work with young people that are on the brink of leaving high school and going to university. Some of them aspire to become a professional actor, others just really enjoy making theatre. In just three months these people learned the basics of Japanese Bunraku puppetry and together we made this performance that premiered at April, 9 2015 at the Dutch youth theatre festival Breakin’ Walls.
