Translation in the arts is rarely straightforward. In theatre, film, and literature, it’s not just about swapping words from one language to another — it’s about carrying over the tone, the rhythm, the unspoken silences, and the emotional undercurrents that give a work its soul. And when the original work emerges from a deeply specific cultural context, the task becomes even more intricate.
Adapting Japanese works for English-speaking audiences often presents this very challenge. It’s a delicate dance: what to keep, what to reshape, what to let go of — all while ensuring that the emotional truth still lands. The aim isn’t perfect equivalence, but emotional resonance.
Our Cosmic Dust is a great example in this kind of cross-cultural adaptation. The production takes a visually minimalist, poetically charged tale and translates it — not just linguistically, but emotionally — for a new audience. In doing so, it reveals not only the challenges of cultural translation, but its transformative power.
A Tale Born in Tokyo, Reborn in London
Photo credits: Pamela Raith
At first glance, Our Cosmic Dust may seem like a minimalist fable of puppets and stars. But underneath its soft-glowing visuals and dreamlike tone lies a powerful narrative about loss, memory, and the desperate urge to reconnect – a tale that transcends language and borders.
First staged in Tokyo in 2023, Our Cosmic Dust is the brainchild of visionary Japanese director Michinari Ozawa. The production blends lifelike puppetry, hand-drawn animation, cinematic video projection, and live acting into a surreal storyworld that is equal parts magical and heartbreaking.
The story follows Shotaro, a young boy represented by a puppet, who journeys into the cosmos in search of his deceased father. His mother, Yoko, searches for him – torn between grief and hope. The set design is stark yet expressive: a LED screen serves as both a cosmic void and emotional mirror, shifting from greyscale to bursts of vibrant colour, evoking everything from black-hole grief to childlike wonder. It’s a visual poem. But when the show took the leap from Tokyo to London’s Park Theatre, the creative challenge wasn’t just logistics. It was language. It was culture. It was translation – in the deepest sense of the word.
Bridging Cultures: Ozawa Meets Hingley
Photo credits: Pamela Raith
To bring Our Cosmic Dust to London, Ozawa partnered with Susan Momoko Hingley – a British-Japanese theatre maker and translator with one foot in each culture and a deep understanding of the nuanced alchemy that happens when stories shift languages. Hingley adapted and translated the script for English audiences, working closely with a talented international team that includes associate director and dramaturg Alexandra Rutter, puppet designer Kayla Teodoro, costume and co-set designer Ceci Calf, video designer Eika Shimbo, sound designer Tomohiro Kaburagi, and composer ORENOGRAFFIT.
The production is brought to life by appare co and Momoko Handa.
“I was perplexed by the cultural and linguistic differences,” Ozawa admitted. “But when everyone laughed and felt moved… I realised anyone in the world can have a similar emotional response.”
Her realisation gets to the heart of why cultural translation in theatre is not about word-for-word fidelity but more emotional accuracy. Hingley’s work on the English version went far beyond standard translation. She reframed metaphors, replaced references, and restructured beats so that the humour, poignancy, and pacing would resonate with British audiences – without losing Ozawa’s intent.
“Some jokes made perfect sense in Japanese but completely fell flat in English,” Hingley explained. “We had to ask: What’s the equivalent emotion here? Not just the equivalent phrase.”
Crucially, the team also decided to make the play culturally neutral. The original Japanese setting was softened to allow for a more universal fable-like space, giving space for a diverse cast and audiences to project their own meanings onto it.
“We wanted to create a piece that could belong to anyone,” Hingley said.
Adapting Japanese Theatrical Sensibilities
Japanese theatre often dances in ambiguity – favouring silence, symbolism, and stillness. In contrast, British theatre can lean toward explicitness, direct humour, and linear storytelling. Navigating these differences was one of the most exciting creative challenges of the production:
Form meets function
Ozawa’s minimalist LED set, with stark black-and-white visuals, mirrored ma – the Japanese concept of negative space or meaningful silence. Hingley helped shape this into something that Western audiences would intuitively grasp, without the need for overt exposition.
Dialogue and humour
Japanese plays often use visual gags, double meanings, and cultural idioms. In adapting the script, Hingley often worked with the actors during rehearsal to test lines out loud – seeing what clicked and what didn’t.
“Some things were just too rooted in Japanese cultural expectations,” she laughed, “but then a brilliant actor would come up with a version that felt right.”
Emotion and tempo
One of the most radical changes came in the emotional pacing. Japanese stories can build very slowly, but Hingley had to find a tempo that worked for British audiences – honouring stillness without sacrificing engagement. This wasn’t just about “making it British” – it was about honouring the Japanese essence while making the heart of the play legible to new eyes and ears.
The Creative Process: East Meets West in Practice
Visual Design
Michinari Ozawa describes the visual aesthetic as a “landscape of memory.” The LED screen – a character in its own right – shifts from black-and-white to gentle watercolours to jagged abstract animations, reflecting Shotaro’s internal universe.
By avoiding photorealism, Ozawa invites the audience to project their own memories onto the visual canvas. “It’s not about what it looks like,” he said. “It’s about what it makes you feel.”
The Puppet as the Protagonist
Photo credits: Pamela Raith
Shotaro’s puppet is eerily lifelike, but his movements – controlled by Hiroki Berrecloth and team – are intentionally mechanical at times, mirroring how memory and trauma can distort perception. Audiences forget within minutes that he isn’t real. Critics have called the puppet “a small miracle,” noting how its fragile gaze held the entire theatre in silence.
Translation as Collaboration
Unlike many stage translations done in solitude, this one unfolded during rehearsals. Actors would flag lines that felt clunky or confusing. Hingley would tweak them on the spot. Sometimes entire emotional moments were reimagined on the fly.
“We were creating a shared language,” she said. “Not Japanese, not English – something in between.”
Ozawa praised the London team’s openness, saying, “It was a joyful, collective reinvention.”
The Universal Servant of Creative Translation
Photo credits: Pamela Raith
Our Cosmic Dust proves that cultural specificity is not a barrier to universality – it’s a gateway. By thoughtfully navigating differences, the production reveals how much we actually share.
The story could be Japanese. Or British. Or universal. And that’s the point. The grief of losing a parent, the strange beauty of memory, the absurdity of human longing – none of that needs translation. As Ozawa said, his goal was to “ignite the audience’s imagination in a universally infinite way.” He succeeded not by watering down cultural richness – but by inviting it into dialogue with another culture.
Final Word: A Story Written in the Stars
Photo credits: Pamela Raith
If you’re in London before 5 July, don’t miss Our Cosmic Dust at Park Theatre. It’s definitely worth checking out. Beyond its moving story of grief & loss, it’s a technical marvel, and a reminder that the stories that stay with us are often the ones that come from far away, only to find their home right here.
So whether you come for the art, the puppetry, or the heart, you’ll leave with a little cosmic dust in your own pocket – and perhaps a broader sense of what storytelling can truly be. Curious about how Japanese theatre influences modern storytelling—or how translation shapes emotional universality?
