Akira Takayama

Akira Takayama founded the collective Port B in 2002. Together they develop projects that break the existing parameters of theatre and intersect collaboratively with other media. Takayama’s audience-orientated works are an attempt to invent a theatre that extends beyond the physical theatre space and establishes itself as a platform with a different structural function in society. He produced his first theatre works as a stage director: these included the Japanese premieres of several texts by Elfriede Jelinek. His projects are usually devised in close collaboration with cultural institutions around the world, such as the large-scale participatory project ‘Our Songs’ for the Biennale of Sydney, the ‘Heterotopia Project’ for the Tokyo Festival and others, and ‘McDonald’s Radio University’ and the ‘Wagner Project – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ for Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt.