Yaneura (Attic)

Rinko-gun Theater Company, one of Japan’s most politically radical theater companies presents Yaneura (Attic), the award-winning, darkly comic original work from playwright and director Yoji Sakate. After twenty years of refining their aesthetic in Japanese realism through works that aim to heighten social awareness, Rinko-gun has also become known in its native Japan for first-time Japanese translations of renowned scripts from abroad, such as the off-Broadway plays Charlie Victor Romeo, 2.5 Minute Ride, The Laramie Project and The Exonerated.

Performed in a claustrophobic 4-meter-wide set, Yaneura (Attic) takes an incisive look at the recently growing social issue in Japan called hikikomori. The term, which literally translates as “withdrawn,” refers to people whose obsessions or disconnection from society have led them to cocoon themselves in their rooms and refuse any contact with the outside world except through the internet. This explosive play winds through the weird, ridiculous and profound, exposing strange and intimate details from the secret underbelly of contemporary Japanese culture. The play is performed in Japanese with English titles.