Are you now or have you ever been...

The first moderately major crisis hit late on Friday night, with a call from Stuart at the Rep and a potential obstacle to negotiate. It has emerged that all of the company working in the UK will need to go in person to get their visas here in Seoul, and there is a maximum turn around time of ten days, which is very tight. But Stuart has worked through the tortuous paperwork [or cyber-work] of the process, and sent everything we need to get through it. Eight people need photos, complex filled in forms, letters of invitation, proof of marital status, passports, photocopies of passports, notes from their mums [alright I lied about that one] and 260,000 won in cash, and we need to go to an office in Namdaemun at 8am on Monday.

Hye Jin took matters in hand this morning, after I had printed off the forms, and Byung Ho is organising the money, so it has not interfered with our process at all, and we are confident that we will get the visas processed - the only issues being whether they will really need to see Minato's wedding certificate! The company spent a happy hour after lunch answering questions like ,'have you ever expressed public support for any terrorist activity, if yes please give details', and 'is there any other way in which you might be considered not to be of good character, if yes please give details'. I suppose it is an indication of the times and countries in which we live, that everyone seemed to approach this with a shrug, and the forms are all filled. We will see what the British Foreign Office has in store for us on Monday. I am promising to avoid inappropriate jokes - always my potential downfall in those kind of situations.

Anyway, back to the important stuff..... Dong Myeon and Yeon were not in rehearsal today, so we were without english translation, and with Mijeong away at a wedding, and Hye Jin caught up in visa stuff, the rehearsal room was much more thinly populated [although nowhere in Seoul ever actually achieves much of the 'bliss of solitude'] Actually this was quite nice, and we got a great deal done, across our language barriers. Today it was the machine monster, and the digging for Brazil. There is a kind of rythmn exercise around the digging scene now, and Mijeong had suggested a nice linking moment, when Norang finds seeds as they scrape away the soil.

Toyoko is away for a few days now, and Milorad is back to Birmingham tomorrow. In the afternoon, we had a final production meeting with him, and went through all the elements of the set and so on. It does seem to be in hand. The final simplification has now happened, whereby there are two scaleable fence posts, with wire between them, which come together to form a ladder for the end of the play. Two posts and a pole [to be built in Birmingham] two sheets of plastic, 10 crates assorted, a danger sign, a length of wire, three silks and three patchwork backdrops, and that is our play.

After the production meeting, the UK lads [PWW and Daniel and Milorad] went via Dongdaemun, over to Yeon's studio, to see the backdrops being made. Then off out into the night for more barbecued pigs, more beer, and a descent into a Moroccan bar with rose petals and floor cushions and strange-smelling smoke, and the week disappeared into a hippyish haze. Tomorrow is Sunday [well today is Sunday, it being 2.30am and time for bed] There may be a brief pause in the blog, before I return to let you know who made it through the terrorist test.