Developing the Play

How did you develop the piece that has become Looking for Yoghurt?
The idea grew out of a previous production The Bridge, a bi-lingual piece with Korean and UK actors that my company had developed. This time there were three countries collaborating: Japan, Korea and UK and three producers; and it was extremely important to us that the collaboration was equal. This ‘equality’ became a theme through both the process and the story, that we were ‘equal but different’; the perfect triangle you could say.

We started with the structure – three actors, one from each country; similarly three writers and then the set and costume designers (Yeon Choi and So Young Park) from Korea, the composer (Ohiro Minato) from Japan and myself, the director from the UK. Simon Bond, the lighting designer is also from the UK.Our starting point was ‘what can we learn from children to bridge the cultural, communication and language gaps? I had noticed with my own children when we were working on The Bridge in Korea that they would make friends very easily despite not knowing the language and culture.