The Hive, Seoul
Exploring the reality of living and working as a foreigner in a foreign land, the show looked at the experience of feeling trapped in a strange place, the adrenaline rush of wanting to encounter everything at once and the paralyzing fear that nails us to the ground. The performance invited the Seoul community to venture into the land of the lost and explore the different paths that lead us to new possibilities.
Playing in an underground nightclub, the show turned the audience into blind villagers who participated in the building of their land as they experienced the force of a sighted foreigner entering their space with his own ideas. The performance allowed the audience to debate and choose the result of 'the foreigner's' exploits.
This site-specific performance was a collaboration of artists Simon Magnus, Oliver Bedford, and Kate Hamm that used H. G. Wells’ short story, The Country of the Blind, as a springboard for a show that combined shadow puppetry, object theatre, mime, clowning and much more.
Wells’ story was inspired by the old proverb, “In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King." In his story a man is lost in a mountainous region and falls down a snowy cliff to find himself in a strange valley. Due to a mysterious illness centuries earlier, the people there have evolved without eyes. His challenge to communicate with the people and his need to show them what they’ve been missing drives him to derision.
