Satoko Ichihara
Playwright, director, novelist and Artistic Director of Kinosaki International Arts Center (KIAC). Satoko Ichihara has led the theater company Q since 2011. She writes and directs plays that deal with human behavior, the physiology of the body, and the unease surrounding these themes, using her unique sense of language and physical sensitivity. In 2019, “The Bacchae−Holstein Milk Cows” based on a Greek tragedy, premiered at Aichi Triennale 2019 and won the 64th Kishida Kunio Playwriting Prize. In 2021, she co-produced “Madama Butterfly” with the Theater Neumarkt (Zurich), which was presented at Zurcher Theater Spektakel, SPIELART Theatre Festival (Munich) and Wiener Festwochen. In 2023, “Yoroboshi: The Weakling” premiered at Theater der Welt 2023 (Frankfurt). After a national tour, it was performed at the Festival d’Automne à Paris and elsewhere in 2024.

Tomoko Sato
Born in Nagano in 1990. Received her M.F.A. in Film and New Media from Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts. She constructs narratives based on extensive research and engages in artistic practice of “storytelling” mainly in the form of lecture performance. Her recent works include “Index for Obake Tokyo” (Theater Commons Tokyo, 2021-), “TWO PRIVATE ROOMS – A Circle of Reading” (Collaboration with Natsumi Aoyagi, 2020-), Participation in 14th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2022) and “Public production vol.2 Tomoko Sato White fox, Antigone, Centaurus” (Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, 2022). She studied in Taiwan and Korea as an overseas trainee of the Pola Art Foundation in 2023.
http://tomokosato.info/

Mei Liu
Mei Liu is Filmmaker, artist and performance-maker from Shanghai who now lives in Amsterdam. She studied MA Artistic Research in and through Cinema at Netherlands Film Academy, participated in the Apichatpong Weerasethakul film lab in the Amazon jungle. She’s now supported by Forecast Platform to work with artist mentor Lieko Shiga on her research-based performance ‘Homesick for Another World’. Mei strives to create new filmmaking spaces that disrupt existing hierarchies and interactions in society. She is developing a ‘film yoga’ practice to gain political and spiritual insights through filmmaking.