The jigsaw is complete

We had a late start today, and an evening rehearsal, which was fortunate for some of the company who had enjoyed themselves noticeably, late into the night on Tuesday.
We started at the beginning again this morning, looking in detail at Iris’s section before the play proper, which is lovely, and then working through Norang and Aka’s arrival, and then discovering Blue. This time through the plan is to block everything finally, although pinning these inventive actors down to doing things one way is very hard. I suspect they will still be making plenty up when we get to performances.

Ayako has a great engaging quality as a performer, and in spite of her reticence, I think she will start the performance very well. There was a fascinating argument about this scene though, with Mijeong not liking the fact that her first piece of music is Japanese, because it upsets the balance of the piece, and contradicts our idea of Iris as not being specifically attached to any part of the world. Minato felt that the arrangement of the music was not very Japanese, but the discussion remains unresolved while we see what we think when we have had a chance to see it all in context. It is an illustration of the complexity of our project, because this would not be seen as a problem by an English audience, who would not recognise the provenance of the song, or by a Japanese audience which would, but it would very likely be seen as quite a problem by a Korean audience with a very particular relationship with Japan historically. Ultimately these conversations are one of the reasons we do this project.

Half way through the afternoon we were joined by Simon, our lighting designer and production manager, who is really the final piece of the jigsaw. He is making his first visit to Korea, and was brought up to the rehearsal room by Daniel, who of course is now an old hand here. It was good to have the team complete, apart from Nishida, who arrives tonight.

After our supper break, there was a music rehearsal, which centred on the scene where the children explore the building site, which now has a strong drum accompaniment. Then So Young brought some costumes for the photocall in the morning.

After rehearsals we went for beer and met a locally based opera group…I don’t quite have the energy left, or the words to do justice to the quirkiness of this encounter. Ask us when you see us…