Akira Takayama’s <i>McDonald’s Radio University</i>

Akira Takayama’s McDonald’s Radio University (2017) transforms McDonald’s fast-food restaurants into auditory and affective performance spaces for collective reflection and sociopolitical engagement. Migrant “professors,” seated inside, deliver lectures via portable radios. Drawing from Brechtian radio theatre, Takayama foregrounds the ethics of listening, urging audiences to confront vulnerability and marginalization within noisy, unpredictable public spaces devoid of theatre’s protective distance.