The Lady with Three Hats

Today was officially a free day, although it started with a long meeting with Toyoko, where we talked through all her thoughts on the play. She is back off to Tokyo in the morning, and so I wanted to make sure I held onto her perspective on things while she is away. At the end of the day we had an even longer meeting with Mijeong too, with Yeon and Jakyoung translating.
In between was the company outing, or ‘Supong’, as we call it in these parts. It had been planned by Byung Ho and announced when we arrived, and turned out to involve us in joining a much bigger group of assorted artists and interesting people, on a day honouring the memory of the poet Chon Sang Byeong, who died 16 years ago today. He had a remarkable life, persecuted and severely tortured by the South Korean Regime, disappearing completely for several years at one time, and existing largely just on cigarettes and rice wine for chunks of his life. Never did him any harm, although he did die at 60 from liver disease…

His admirers are a really interesting group, and the bus trip to the graveyard outside Uijeongbu was a jolly one, involving most people on the bus, including me rather terrifyingly, having to make speeches of tribute and welcome over the PA. There were a number of poets present, plus theatre people and academics, and friends of Sang Byeong himself. I had my picnic with Brother Anthony, a professor at the Jesuit Sogang University, who is his translator, originally from Cornwall, attached to an ecumenical community in France, and resident in Korea for many years, as well as Mr Choi a friend of the poet who had originally run a theatre company, but had in the early 60s objected to it being used for propaganda work by the government, and left it to become a miner. I was also joined by a very friendly professor from another university, who wanted her photo taken with me on a big rock, and then appeared again later in the day in three different hats, but always with her loud, ‘Sexy Girl’ T-shirt.

In Uijeongbu we saw a play for children by Joyful Theatre about the poet, and two exhibitions, one by artists inspired by his work, and the other a wonderful collection of work by children. Then there was a long and impressive concert, agin focusing on settings of his work, several of which were versions of his most famous work. With apologies to rother Anthony this is my own translation of this, which is called Kwi Chon [usually translated as Back to Heaven].

I will go back to the sky again
With the morning dew that melts
At the touch of the dawning day, hand in hand

I will go back to the sky again
With the twilight together just we two
After playing on the hills, at a sign from a cloud,

I will go back to the sky again
At the end of my picnic in this beautiful world
I will go back and I will say…it was beautiful

The end of the day meeting was back at the Tous Les Jours coffee shop where it all started with our very first writers meeting in 2008. The symbolism of this seemed nice, it was a good moment to get back in touch with the soul of the project. There is now a tree growing in the centre of the upstairs room where we sat at the same table as before. OK, I expect it is a pretend tree, really, but I was feeling faintly tearful after the stress had built up a little this week, so was ready to believe that this tree was a sign. The centre of our project is strong, and really all the things that we have to crack next week are relatively superficial. I finished the day with a speech aimed mostly at myself, about keeping our eyes on the real task, and maintaining our confidence as we navigate the minefields of set props costumes, cuts, translation errors, visas visas and visas over the next week. We have a good play on our hands, and all the stuff is only what we need to get through to put it on.

We finished our meeting on our ‘day off’ at 11.00.