Here are some questions I asked Simon Day and Won Kim about leading the BE Next workshop. Simon were one of the leaders last year and Won is one of the leaders this year.
What are your feelings about working with Be Next ?
Simon Day:
I have such fond memories of last year’s groups and project. We worked really hard but had a lot of fun. I was so impressed with the group’s focus and how they worked together – I kept forgetting that most of them had only just met each other! It was really great for me to work alongside a theatre-maker from Spain whose work I admired as well, it was a really inspiring experience.
Won Kim:
Manolo and I had a blast devising with a group of 6 teenagers. What was most satisfying was seeing disparate types of adolescences of differing age and socio-cultural groups coming together as a coherent team. As the final play may show, each personality offers a unique contribution. This program offers a non-elitist access to teenagers to participate in a quality, and more importantly, creative program. For directors, working with limitations of such a groups pose an interesting challenge for creation.
Where there any difficulties ?
Simon Day:
Well, we didn’t have that much time! It’s quite unusual for me to attempt to make something from scratch to show in public in a couple of weeks, but the young people were up to the challenge. We were also making work to perform outside, which is something I’ve never done before as a director. Audiences relate to work very differently in the open air than in the focused setting of a studio, so we were having to have one eye on that all the time we were creating material indoors.
Won Kim:
It was a first time working with teenagers and thus, quite an adventure. While I have worked with college students who had very little theatre or performing experience, working with teenagers pose other challenges such as lower maturity and concentration levels. For me, it was rediscovering my training in a more fundamental light, i.e., finding what are the principles that can be taught in such a short time frame to an uninitiated audience. Also, not having consistent attendance during the first week prevented us from creating more group choreographies and exercises. Another challenge is that the limited time frame gives us very little time to discover a student’s handicaps, such as not being able to memorize basic steps or even a line of text. But in the end, every single participant was challenged in their own unique way. The show is a celebration of the unique performing qualities of each student. I am sure each of them felt the pressure.
Why did you decided to come back and lead the Be Next again?
Won Kim:
In fact, it is a three session program for this year. But given the results of the first session, I am really looking forward to how the next show will develop. We had much difficulty in cutting our first show down to 20 minutes. For the second session, we only have 10 minutes more and many newer students. I think we will have even more difficulties in fitting the time frame. In other words, there is a lot of interesting material to work with. That is why I am excited to come back again.
/Disa