I've now closed George in Storyland, the show I was doing for the last 3 months and amazingly I never got tired of it. It was great fun up until the very end and I'm now gearing up to direct a show for the winter season and also working on revisions for another script that's been picked for production. It looks like I'll be having a busy final three months here. In the meantime, though, here's another recap of my recent notable adventures.
In early August, I went to my first Korean wedding:
My friends David and Yeonhwa got married and I got to see their traditional ceremony, which was really cool.
Weddings in Korea are much less of a big deal than in the U.S. Basically anyone who knows the couple is invited and it's common to be invited to a wedding at the last minute. Money is also the only traditional wedding gift. While I didn't really understand what was going on during the ceremony, the music was really nice and there were a lot of elaborate rituals. Many of the guests weren't really all that concerned with paying attention to the ceremony and there was a lot of indoor-outdoor movement and even talking going on. This was definitely a cultural difference that took some getting used to, but the wedding was a great experience and David and Yeonhwa seem really happy.
Also in August a friend of mine held another "anything but clothes" party. It seems to have become an annual event now. I'm pictured above in a towel and a skirt made of old issues of the New Yorker magazine, with purse and hair ornament to match. Rachel is wearing a dress made of posters from our summer concert hall shows and Christian is wearing a sleeping bag. Oh, the creativity.
Another very important August event was of course my 27th Birthday. In honor of the fact that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain all died at age 27, I decided to throw a rock star-themed party.
My friend Rachel deserves a nod for her spot-on Amy Winehouse costume. People were encouraged to dress up and a lot of them did. I held sporadic rounds of "name that tune" and there was a rock star trivia competition which was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.
Here I am, dressed as none other than the loud-mouthed Courtney Love. Woohoo!Jeff also made yet another sojourn to the RoK to celebrate my Birthday with me and to play a set at the monthly "We Love Techno" party in Seoul.
Here we are at the club getting ready to cut a rug to some great music.
And here he is playing his set...
And here are the people freaking out and dancing. It was a great night and he played really well. Good times for sure.While he was here we also took a day trip to North Korea, where we visited Kaesong City which was the capital of Korea during the Koryo dynasty. It was fascinating and totally worthwhile in my opinion. We weren't allowed to take pictures from the bus, which was too bad. The landscape was incredibly beautiful, more so than South Korea and more mountainous as well (though I didn't believe that were possible).
This is Pakyon Falls, a bona fide North Korean waterfall.
Here are some buildings and far-away pedestrians and riders of bicycles near the center of the city.
Here is some good, old fashioned communist ice cream. At first glance I thought that the wrapper just said, "ice cream" but it actually says "Eskimo."
This is one of the North Korean presenters telling the group about Sungyang Lecture Hall. If you look closely, you can see her tiny Kim Il-Sung pin on the right side next to the pink bow on her Hanbok (traditional Korean wear).
Here I am with a a giant Kim Il-Sung statue in the background (photo courtesy of Jeff and his awesome camera). It may appear that I am distressed over the plight of the North Korean people, and while this is true, the intensity of my expression is actually due to very bright sunlight. I started posing for the picture with my hands on my hips, but one of our North Korean escorts motioned for me to put my arms down by my side. Apparently arms akimbo does not show enough respect for the Great Leader.The whole experience felt strangely anachronistic. On the bus we saw people working the fields with their own hands. Soldiers were everywhere in their big caps, just like in the pictures I've seen. Lots of people road by on bicycles, some of them looked malnourished and some looked just fine, though their clothes and haircuts were what could only be described as rather frumpy. Some people waved at the bus, some didn't even look up.
In the last 9 months I've read two memoirs of North Korean escapees and while I saw nothing nearly as horrible as what they described, I was surprised that we were allowed to see so many run-down buildings. The whole city looked like it could use a new coat of paint. The identical cottages in the countryside were so picturesquely run down it was almost breath-taking. I had expected to be shown nothing less than a glittering Utopian propaganda empire. It also felt pretty odd to sit down to a lunch of 13 different side dishes served in fancy, golden bowls, knowing that entire families in North Korea have to try and get by on just a few kilos of cornmeal a month.
I left with a couple of cool propaganda posters and some really neat postcards, some really weird North Korean cookies, and a brain full of crazy images that pretty much defy description. I feel fortunate to count myself among the small number of people who have had the opportunity to visit the Hermit Kingdom.
