2026.02.01 Strange Seed Shizuoka 2026 to be held!

Street Theatre Festival
STRANGE SEED SHIZUOKA 2026

  • Dates
    2026 May 3 (Sun) - 5 (Tue)
  • Venue
    Sumpu Castle Park, Aoba Symbol Road and other places in the city, Shizuoka, Japan
  • Admission
    Free, no reservations required (with some exceptions)

  • Organized by the Committee of the Open-air Performing Arts Festival Shizuoka

About Us

Programs

Theatre

Core Program

  • 鈴木ユキオ×Stopgap Dance Company
    • Peace & Quiet
    • SUZUKI Yukio x Stopgap Dance Company [UK]
  • Collectif Protocole
    • One Shot
    • Collectif Protocole [France]

Official Program

    • Are You ALICE?
    • HIBINO KODUE Project
    • Light trap for shadow
    • Co.SCOoPP
    • Matsu-Matsu-Tatematsuri-Matsuri (The Wait-Respectfully-Till-the-End Festival) 2026
    • OKUMA Ryutaro
    • NEW HERO
      -we shall over come to the future-
    • SANPIN
    • Bench
    • ZEROKO

Open Call Program

Coming Soon

Workshop

Coming Soon

About Us

Imagine a play with actors lying on the grass in a park performing before a backdrop of spring green.
A parade of dancers in a shopping street with audiences invited to join.
As the performance starts, the atmosphere changes completely.

Strange Seed Shizuoka, a street theatre festival materializing such visions, was launched in 2016. As its title, Street Theatre Festival, denotes, it’s not an ordinary theatre festival—it is a festival that creates numerous questions of “What’s this? What’s that? What’s here?” in the city.

Every year during the Golden Week (a public holiday period in Japan, running from late April to early May), we host the street theater festival Strange Seed Shizuoka in the city center of Shizuoka City.

STAIR - Strange Artist in Residence

In 2025, Strange Seed Shizuoka embarked on an exciting new initiative with the launch of STAIR (Strange Artist in Residence), an artist-in-residence program that invites artists to stay in Shizuoka City and create works inspired by their interactions with local people and everyday life. What emerges through this program are unique, one-of-a-kind street theater works set against the distinctive backdrops of Shizuoka.
The first project developed through this initiative is BRAND NEW STREET: In Gofuku-cho, Only the Cobblestones Know, created by Sanpin and the New Heroes of Shizuoka. The second project is the HIBINO Kodue Project: Are you ALICE? Come and see the very moment when new street theater performances take shape in Shizuoka, Japan.
Building on STAIR, Strange Seed Shizuoka is committed to nurturing as many new street theater works in Japan as possible through support that grows from this very place―Shizuoka.

STRANGE Lab:
Street Theater Global Talent Development Project

This project provides opportunities for emerging artists in Japan to create and premiere original street theater works in Shizuoka. These premieres aim to serve as a springboard for these artists to catch the attention of international festival presenters and to enter the global performing arts market.

Participating artists: SUZUKI Yukio, OKUMA Ryutaro, YASUMOTO Asami, and ZEROKO

STRANGE Lab. logomark

Organized by SPAC - Shizuoka Performing Arts Center
Operation by Strange Seed Shizuoka Office

View detail (SPAC Website)
*This website is available in Japanese only