Checks and balances

After a day off which involved most of the company seeing the spectacular and vast Buddha's Birthday parade up Jongno, and which for me had the real pleasure of an afternoon with three babies [Sun Duck, Ji Ok and Hye Jung all with their offspring] we set about the new week with some determination and focus. Still no sign of the visas, but I am under instruction to leave that to others, and concentrate on the play.

So we had a very full day indeed, working hard on the Brazil scene, trying to cut down the 25 minutes that the play overran on Friday. After that we worked on the Grandmother's Story, which is running well, but is a little long, and hard to follow for Japanese and English speakers. Cutting it down was a complex process, because making it clear in the other languages obviously involves some loss of subtlety form a korean perspective - if you understand the language, the emphasis can seem overdone. These are the kinds of balance that are so fascinating in this project.

Another tricky balance was the ongoing debate about the beginning of the play. Mijeong has been very clear that she thinks the song that Ayako sings at the beginning is wrong, because it is in Japanese, and Iris is not supposed to be from any country in particular. Minato is equally adamant that it is right, because it is an expression of a child folk song which could apply to anyone irrespective of language or culture. He has used the rythms from the song through the play too, which complicates matters. I tend to feel Mijeong is right about it, but have been waiting for the debate to find its conclusion. This seemed clearly not to be happening, so after a heated debate, I made the decision to cut the song, and look for soemthing that everyone could agree on. This triggered a very long and interesting conversation with Minato. In the end he went away to think about it. Ultimately, these are the things that make this work worth doing, but along the way it can often feel very ambitious, to try and create a unified and coherent piece from such a diverse group.

We made good progress today, but it also seemed as if we have a long way to go suddenly. This is partly because of the shadow of possible lost rehearsal time if the visa thing does not get solved, but it is also because of the complexity of the process, and the slowness of waiting fro translation.

The back cloths are now finished, and looking great. Costumes too arrived today, and particularly considering the especially complex process through which So Young arrived at a design, with her many advisers in many languages, they are looking great.

I finished today pretty exhausted, working through e-mails in a smoky PC-bang.