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Yoduk Story Update

There is a change of date and location to report:

The plans have now been finalized to bring Yoduk Story to the USA! Opening night will be 7:30 pm on Wednesday, October 4, 2006, at the Strathmore located in North Bethesda, Maryland. Performances will be held on October 4, 5, 6 at 7:30 pm, and we also hope to plan a special Friday, October 6 performance at 3 pm especially for students.

Tickets will be available for sale beginning this Monday through the Strathmore website at Strathmore http://www.strathmore.org

The National Theater might have more name recognition, but Strathmore is a major step up. It’s a massive place, brand new, gorgeous, with superb accoustics. It’s the next best thing to the Kennedy Center, and it’s easily accessible from the Metro. If you lead a religious congregation or other interested organization — or if you know someone else who does — I’d greatly appreciate it if you could get a group of people together to attend. Please drop a comment.

8 Responses

  1. I hope that they get someone competent to proofread the English text that they project onto screens for the benefit of non-Koreans.

    My wife and I saw the performance about three weeks ago and informed them of the language problems. I even offered to correct the English but was informed that it had already been proofread three times and that no other foreigners had mentioned any problems.

    Well, if they won’t believe a native speaker of English who teaches British and American literature at Korea University and who tells them that their text has problems, then let them find out the hard way … on tour in America.

    Jeffery Hodges

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  2. You’re absolutely correct about that, and I’m going to raise that issue. If you’re still willing to help make corrections, I’d volunteer to do a piece, and we might even get a few other bloggers to sign up. Idea?

  3. sign me up joshua if you need help proofreading.

    i will even get it signed off by some korean language teachers at UCLA.

  4. That sounds fine to me though I have less time now that the semester’s begun, but if several people share the work, then there’s no problem for me to do some of it.

    If we do this, we’ve got to make sure that the weakest link in the chain is strengthened. The person who uses our corrections to correct the National Theater’s copy had better be careful, precise, and willing to double-check. I’ve had too many students, out of sheer carelessness, not make corrections that I’ve shown them that they need to make.

    Jeffery Hodges

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  6. HJH — Before I ask people to help with this, I need to straighten a few things out. First, will they accept the help we offer? Second, how much work is this, and how many volunteers will we need? Third, have other arrangements been made? I ask because most of those involved in bringing the production to America are native speakers of English who have likely predicted the same problems. When I have answers, I’ll do a post. Thanks for raising the question. I’ll let you know what I find out.

  8. I attended the performance of _Yoduk Story_ in Seoul over the summer. The English supertitles were filled with errors. As for the story itself — rubbish. This is a Christian fundamentalist musical with all the contrivances of a South Korean soap opera, literally. Evangelical Christian propaganda is no substitute for serious (dramatized) criticism of North Korean Stalinism.