In July 2005, YMT: UK was asked to provide a creative team to work with two groups of young people in Seoul, Korea, courtesy of an invitation from Mr Eui Kim of the Korean Institute of Performing Arts. Each group worked for four days on themes associated with Romeo and Juliet including sections from the original Shakespearean text, from West Side Story and devised pieces set in contemporary Korea.

Director Stephen Jameson writes:

"It was a great honour to be invited to Korea by Mr Kim and it was with a tremendous sense of excitement and anticipation that we boarded the long haul flight to Seoul. My collaborators Gary Peacock ,composer and Musical Director, and Vincent Manna, choreographer, despite having worked all around the world, had never travelled to the far east and so we had no idea what to expect from either the culture or the students. We needn't have worried. Once we had shaken off the jet lag we were shown our rehearsal space at the magnificent Seoul Performing arts Centre - imagine the Royal National Theatre in London magnified five times, and you'll have some idea of the scale of the place - the facilities were magnificent and so it would transpire were the students.

Aged between 16 and 19 we worked with two groups of twenty over two four day workshops. Loosely basing our work on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet we improvised, lyricised and composed together creating a whole new frame work, context and situation for the drama.

Coupled with the creation of new songs and movement pieces we also looked at numbers from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, singing and dancing in the original English in a true hoofing Broadway tradition.

The young practitioners rose to and proved themselves equal to every challenge. We showed our work to a select audience of friends, relatives and various luminaries from the Korean arts world and judging from the response our work went down very well indeed.

All in all our visit to Korea was one of the most satisfying theatrical experience any of us has ever experienced. This was of course due to our working experience, but equally the hospitality, warmth, respect and kindness that we encountered from every one  met in Korea made the visit complete."

THE COMPANY

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