Round Table - Asia and Oceania -

Performing Arts Market in Seoul 2009 Oct 16 2009 at the National Theatre of Korea Round Table - Asia and Oceania - Moderator: Gyu-Seong LEE, Director of Namsan Arts Center, Korea Panel - Rosemary Hinde, Melbourne Arts Centre, Artistic Counsel, Australia - Hirata Shuji, Hokkaido Performing Arts Foundation, Executive director, Japan - Jafer Rathi, Indo-Korean Cultural and Information Centre, Director, India - Nick Rongjun Yu, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Producer, China ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator Gyu-Seog LEE Director of Namsan Arts Center, Korea We will now begin the round table session for Asia and Oceania. We have many panelists so please ask your questions efficiently. Each panelist will spend about five minutes to introduce to us about their countries. Let me introduce 4 panelists first. Rosemary Hinde, She is the person who is most familiar with Asian arts market in the Western world and is in charge of artistic counsel at the Melbourne Arts Center. Hirata Shuji, He is the executive director of Hokkaido Performing Arts Foundation which operates based on private sponsorship. Mr. Shuji is responsible for international exchange for companies and play. Jafer Rathi, She is from the In-Ko Center which was created to support cultural and art exchanges between Korea and India. Yu Rongjun, He is the producer and playwright of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. <Scholar and an Executioner>, the works of the Shanghai Arts Center will be introduced to Korean audience next week, and every year the Center holds Shanghai International (former Asia) Contemporary Theatre Festival. Rosemary Hinde Artistic Counsel, The Arts Centre Melbourne The first thing I want to talk about in relation to Australia is the way in which distribution in Australia is controlled by three very important factors. The first one is geography. The size of Australia is seven times the geographical size of Korea. The

population which is half that of Korea. And the demographics, the distribution of the population of Australia, where 70% of the population live in four cities on the East coast. So what you have is a very large country with population very densely concentrated in a few places that shapes the context for everything we do. History is a third factor that it's important to understand that Australia, as a nation, is only one hundred years old; that it came from five separate colonies. Each of those colonies are now states, and share powers with the central government. So there is a lot of duplication of both resources and policies in many areas of government and that applies to the arts, too. So we have touring organizations that are run by federal government as well as run by state governments, and have a whole range of players in the touring scenario. Firstly, there are obviously the presenters and the presenters comprise many arts centers both in capital cities and in very small regional centers in Australia. They form the Association of Performing Arts Centers and there are 360 members of that group. They are central in touring. Secondly, each state, each of the five states of Australia has a regional arts organization that manages tours within those states. To facilitate touring across states, each state also has a touring coordinator. They work together as a consortium. And the consortium as a mechanism for touring within Australia one of the key aspects of it. Recently, a number of new organizations have developed to facilitate touring of more contemporary work because what was happening in Australia was the same companies were touring because the presenters were unwilling to take risks. And, so, to bring new players into it, a number of new organizations sided up. One is called Mobile Sites which is a consortium of smaller venues who tour two or three productions annually. Another one is called RoadWorks that concentrates on touring contemporary performance to regional venues and capital cities. Funding for touring in Australia, and I'm talking about the domestic situation, funding for Australian companies touring within Australia, also comes from many sources from the federal government and from state government agencies. There are also many festivals in Australia, too, and there is a separate fund for funding festivals. For overseas productions, for foreign companies to enter in to Australia and tour, there are many fewer opportunities. And the principle opportunities are through major international festivals. Each city in Australia has a large, multi-art form festival. And those festivals are basically the Sydney Festival, the Perth International Arts Festival, the Adelaide festival which takes place every two years, Ten Days on the Island in Tazmania which takes place every two years, The Brisbane festival, the Darwin Festival and the Melbourne International Arts Festival which is happening right now. Now, for non-commercial productions to come into Australia, that is by far the most common way in which they come in. The other major way is through the larger arts centers in Australia and so each capital city also has a major arts center and the arts center in Melbourne is one of those venues. They program on a year-round basis, so it is not programmed within a fixed period, it is programmed in any time of the year. They usually work through program managers and the program is decided by the programming managers; in festivals, the program is decided by the artistic director. I work for the arts center in Melbourne and I'm part of a new program which is the Kenneth Myer Asian Theater Series which will run on a bi-annual basis. I'm the curator, so I am the artistic director of that program which will start next year. It's a contemporary program; it aims to bring in performances that have not toured to Melbourne before and that have some kind of a relationship to each other within the whole program. The other thing that it aims to do is to not simply present performances but to develop a context through workshops and forums that expands understanding of the companies that we are presenting. In conjunction with Asia Link, we will run a foreign program, workshops for artists, and direct access programs for

the general public. This is a new initiative. There is also, in Adelaide, the OzAsia Festival and that is a festival that happens every year, it's happening now that invites leading Asian companies to present work there. The main way I see accessing that is through the programming staff. There are many Australian organizations that facilitate domestic touring but very few that in fact facilitate touring of highly contemporary work outside of the festival context. One of the consequences of that when you combine it with a very large geographical area with many few population centers, is that cutting into the Australian market, it is actually very difficult to tour within Australia. So one of the other strategies that we have with the Asian Theaters Series is to attempt to find a partner in another city for every production. And this is not primarily for financial reasons; it is simply to build a network that makes it possible to tour Asian productions within Australia. I think some festivals in Australia also have policies of exclusivity. So if you performed at their festival, they won't allow you to perform at another festival or at another venue. That works fine for the festivals. Being someone who has come from touring productions around Asia, I know it doesn't work so well for the artists and so we are trying to very much work against that trend. In addition to direct models of distribution of productions, there are other opportunities that are less regular. The major festivals and the major venues are the primary points of access, but there are smaller venues that run exchange based programs that are less frequent but are also sometimes points of access. Thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hirata Shuji Executive director, Hokkaido Performing Arts Foundation Hokkaido Performing Arts Foundation is involved in a variety of activities including the facilitation of play performances and the support of local communities through play. We have our own theater company called TPS(Theater Project Sapporo) and we operate a small theater called Theater Zoo. Today I d like to talk about international exchanges in particular, beginning with the activities of the TPS. The TPS has staged its work overseas four times. We first went to Hungary and toured cities around the region. Then in 2007, we came to The Peace Theater Festival in Gwangju, Korea. Last year, we went to Seoul and Uijeongbu to present our work. In the case of Seoul, we took part in the Seoul Theater Festival. If you are interested in the work we do, you can go to the Seoul Theater Association to see the translated version of our script and materials. In 2009, we toured two cities in Hungary and two cities in Rumania. I came to Seoul right away after the two weeks tour of Hungary and Rumania. If you are interested in the TPS, please come and see me. Secondly, I d like to introduce to you our collaboration projects with international play companies. Korean Theatre Chung- Woo, which will be presented in November is a good example of our international collaboration efforts. The play writer is from the TPS and Mr. Gwang-Bo Kim will be the director. Four actors from the TPS and four from Theatre Chung-Woo will participate. I have brought with me English and Japanese brochures. I m confident that it will be an interesting work but nobody can say that for sure until you actually see it. If you are interested, please come to Sapporo next month to watch the premier. Thirdly, I want to talk about the works staged in theaters. Every year we stage a number of special performances. The brochure I have with me contains information about all the performances that will be presented for the year. Teams who wish to present their work in the theater need to undergo some tests. Next, I want to touch on the Sapporo Theater Festival. It is part of what is called the Sapporo Arts Stage and what you are seeing right now is the poster. Of the works presented during the Festival, we select one for the Sapporo Arts Stage Award. The

judges for the award include one Hungarian artist, and Prof. Kyung-Jin Min from Korea. Prof. Min majored in opera in Korea and art management in Tokyo and right now teaches at Sapporo about art management. Nine theaters in the Sapporo City take part in the festival and about 40 works are presented each year. Last year, we had Theatre Chung-Woo, and Blue Theatre Community as participants. If there is anybody here who wants to take part in the Sapporo Theater Festival, please come and see me so we can talk in more detail. Jafer Rathi Director, InKo Center I'm director of the Indian-Korean cultural center which was set up in 2006 to promote an inter-cultural dialogue between India and South Korea. The reason being, that with trade pushing out, we had a number of Korean companies in India, and in my city alone we have about 3000 Korean residents. The center was set up with support from Hyundai Motor India Limited and TBS Motor Company, which is an Indian company, and the idea was that through a non-profit registered society, we would set up a sustainable program where we would bring in quality work from Korea across the performing and visual arts (so theatre, music, film, dance, sculptures, ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, the entire range). We would also run a language studies program and offer Korean language teaching. As well as a wellness program that draws on the rich traditions of both countries: yoga, taekwondo and calligraphy. We are twenty-eight plus one states and six union territories, twenty-two scheduled languages with over 2000 dialects, it's incredibly difficult for us to have--and I think we shouldn't even aim to have--one single cultural policy. Because, while we have on the one hand a very strong national identity, the notion of the nation has been structured with a long interest with English. On the one hand, we have a very western thinking, western critiquing audience. On the other hand, we have a strong sense of regional identity, a strong sense of regional pride. So I think that there are many natives within India but we also have a loosely structured notion of a nation. We have the Indian Council of Cultural Relations which is directly under the Ministry of External Affairs. They do the big programs, taking out Indian Programs around the world as well as inviting international performances into India. It tends to be typically traditional work; they haven't ventured yet into the more contemporary interpretations of tradition. So if it is coming in from Korea, we would probably invite the National Theatre of Korea etc. We also have the Sangeet Natak Academy, which is specifically looking at music and dance. And music, dance, and theatre have been integral to India. We have had a very strong and continue to have a very strong classical tradition but more recently very interesting departures from tradition and modern interpretations of it. Given that we have very little time, I am just going to scrunch my presentation. In the hands outs you have, I have listed a represented sample of regional agencies as well as national agencies with their websites so you can check that out in terms of whatever interests you more. But over the last ten years, there has been an increase in non-governmental funding and corporate sponsors have come in to support the arts. And I think [since the] forced liberalization in 1991, there has been a sudden explosion in terms of smaller agencies who are working at grassroot levels, doing some interesting work, especially with folk theatre with folk music and dance. There continues to be a strong interest in India of receiving work from abroad. At the same time, there is urgency to, for the lack of a better word, export Indian work abroad. And in the last not even five years, maybe ten years,

there is an increased need to understand India's position within an Asian sensibility. I think for far too long, we've been looking to the west, and looking for mediation from the west. But now, there is an increased pride and increased need and urgency to fit into an Asian network. On the economic side, quite recently, with Korea the CEPA(Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) was signed, which is really to facilitate more trade links. But following on its heels, and I think very soon in the future, there's going to be much more opportunity at a government-to-government level for cultural partnerships. At the moment, I will speak of what InKo Center does. We have established over the 3 years, significant partnerships between Korean and Indian organizations, starting at the National level with the national academies like the Cross Council of India or the performing arts centers in India and the main festivals, the Korea Foundation, the arts council here, Korean Film Council, working with the Asian film academy in Busan. With dance, we've had companies like Dance Theater CcaDoo who has come to perform in India and was here recently to perform a SIDance. We've had interesting theatre coming out from Korea. Very recently, the Seoul Factory for Performing arts was performed and received extraordinarily well by Indian audiences who were very familiar with these texts--shakespearean or Greek who have studied in either school or college. And to see a very Korean interpretation of it has been very interesting. The funding is usually split three ways. When we invite a company from Korea, we request them to find local partners here to fund for flights. And the festivals that we link with, whether it is theatre, music, dance, film, contemporary or traditional, they then cover the accommodation, presentation costs, local venue, and transport- -all the sort of in-country costs. And we have just begun doing the reverse also in areas like literature with the established literature residencies for Indian writers at the residency, and Korean writers in Pondicherry, which is just outside of Chennai. We do the reverse when we bring artists from India to Korea; we cover or we find sponsors to cover flights and we request the Korean organizers to then take care of in-country costs. In your presentation as I said, we have just listed a sample of festivals that I have opened up. And these are really new exhibition spaces, working quite independently from the government. It would either be, to give an example from theater, the Hindu Festival, which is one of the largest newspaper companies with a very large readership base. There is the National School of Drama in Delhi which runs an annual festival, partly funded with the government but also corporate sponsors coming in. There is an interesting space which has opened up in Bangalore, the I.T. center of India, and represents both contemporary and folk theater. We have the Center of Dance in Chennai, which literally means Temple of Dance. So they teach traditional dance but they are also increasingly opening up to inviting foreign companies to present and looking for collaborative possibilities. The Park's new festival (the Park is a hotel chain but the person who heads the chain is very much into design and strongly supportive of the arts) usually travels to three or four cities around the year, and it is a completely contemporary festival as against traditional ones that are in offer. We have again, that's in your handout, the agencies that we already work with in India. So I would be quite interested during question time to see how we can as a cultural agency be of help to facilitate the links between India and South Korea.

Nick Yu Rongjun Producer, Playwriter, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre In fact, I tried to prepare to talk about something about touring in China, but I see you already have- that is a map in your hand- so I will change my topic. First of all I think that is a chance for me to introduce our theatre. We are the only national theatre in Shanghai, and we have the three venues; the big one is 536, we have two small ones, a studio of 200 seats. Each year we perform 30 to 40 new productions, new plays. We have the tour in China, also we have some tour outside of China. For our audience, more than 90% of the audience, their age is under 35. So our audience is really young. I want to talk something about the marketing for our theatre right now. In 2008 we have double box office than 2007. This year from January to June, we have the same, the box office of last year. So you can see from our theatre, you begin to see the market in China grows very fast. We also do some co-productions from companies from abroad. For next year we do 6 coproductions, with 3 companies from Denmark, in our theatre, also another company from Shanghai. We have the 5 companies to do one production. And also we do the production with the company from U.K. from United States, also we invited the director from Germany to do the production in our theatre. So in the future, in China, we will have more. So that is the something about our theatre. I want to try to do a brief introduction about some of the theatre things in China right now. In each city we have the traditional theatre city company and venue. We have more than 300 different concert opera. Also we have lots of the drama theatre right now. In each big city we have a big company; they do the western style drama. Just one month ago in our theatre we hold a meeting for the Chinese drama theatre right now we have more than 15 big companies attend the meeting. Before, 1st of September of 2005, in China you cannot have the private company. But after that, by the law, you can start have the private company. Just before 2005 until now in Shanghai, just 5 years, we have more than 50 private companies. I always say to right now in China that a big time for the arts, not just for theatre, because you have lots of chance. Lots of things will change. But now, more than one private company comes out from Shanghai from Beijing from other cities in China. In Shanghai we have the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and the Shanghai Music Spring Festival. In Beijing they have the Beijing Contemporary Theatre Festival, Meet in Beijing Festival, etc. For the arts marketing special for the performing arts marketing in China we just have one international marketing that will happen in the bay in Shanghai. But in China, we have a lot of the performing marketing for China, but not international, they're just for the company in China. We have the market targeting for east of China, south of China, west of China, the whole of China. But these kinds of marketing are not involved with the international but will be open. I give you an example; we have a really small company from Germany, the actors they are all from U.K. but they have the company from Munich. They do some of the works from Shakespeare. Five years ago we invited them to Shanghai for the first time. They are really good quality for the theatre works, so 2 years ago they start a tour in China. They have lots and lots of fun to come in China. They toured in Beijing and Shanghai in the beginning, but now they have also toured in many cities. As example, for our theatre we started to have a tour in China that is 2 years ago. Last year we have more than 150 performances tour in the major cities. We have 32 cities to have the performance from our theatre. Next I want to talk about the funding body in China. We don't have lots of funding body. Some of the foundation also belongs to the government. Then it is really difficult to plan the foundation from the project from the outside. You must use your local partner to get the money from the foundation.

I give you example, when we do the co-production with the company from Singapore, so we have some money from the Shanghai culture Development foundation. But the company from outside cannot apply it. Private foundation in China is not allowed but soon it will be changed. Lastly, I want to introduce my small festival that happening in our theatre. I run the Shanghai International Contemporary Theatre Festival from each November and December. Each year we invite productions from all over the world, we choose one subject each year and then we try to get some productions from abroad to attend it. About the tour in China you can see the papers in hand. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q & A Seung-Gul PARK - I am a director of Theatre Tool. After hearing from all of you, I realized that the scope of our exchange now extends to text-based works as well. But when we in Korea think about going overseas or bring a foreign work to Korea, there is one thing that we all think first. That is, there is a possibility that we might distort our work in the process whether we intend it or not. I think this problem is not limited to Korea but is something that concerns many countries that use their own language as the means of communication. In Korea, people tend to think that they must be very strategic from the creation stage to be able to penetrate into foreign markets. In a sense, works wholly created by artists targeting their own people are rather difficult to be sent overseas. To talk a little bit about myself, by accident, I had an opportunity to present my script overseas when it was targeted for the Korea audience. It was translated into a different language and I didn t expect it to be successful but it was. So in this vein, I want to know what the panelists here think about the language barrier in brining our work across borders. Do you know any cases where the language barrier was overcome? Hirata Shuji When my company goes overseas, we still use Japanese and rely on captions. There are things that can be expressed and understood only by the people speaking the same language but we decided that this method is the best so far. We work on how to use our captions to produce the best result, where to locate the captions, and so on. After the analysis, we locate the most appropriate spot for captions and try things like shooting captions earlier for parts that need more digesting, like funny parts. We don t think such efforts dramatically improved the effect of a show, however. What I believe is, whether you stage your work at home or abroad, the most important thing is finding a translator who understands the work and has passion for the work as well. Rosemary Hinde I think that a text is a part of a play. Of course, language is very important as well as communication. I m not only referring to texts. We also use captions and sometimes there are problems. So we usually present non-text works for international festivals. What I want to emphasize about translation is that the translator must have a very good understanding about the cultural and historical contexts of the work. Inza IM In the cases of India and China, I hear that there are exchanges of works that are based on Shakespeare. At a time when we still have to look for a common

Asian context, I realized that this is what we have to work on: finding common denominators. As for China, I got this impression that the majority of the foreign guests invited to the country are from the Western world, such as Denmark, Germany, the U.S. and the U.K. So I want to know if China is indeed leaning toward the west, whether strategically or not. I this sense I thought we have a lot to learn from Japan. Mr. Shuji said that one of the limitations of performing arts is the lack of exchange between regions and he also said that he had good time at the Peace Theater Festival Gwangju. I got the impression that he had a certain principle that guides his selection of works that comes to and leaves Japan. It s important that we produce good works to present but I want to ask him about some of the common interest areas that he would like to see the two countries to work on together. As for Australia, you said you are preparing to select works to be presented for 2011 and I want to know about the program you have in mind since it can help us in Korea to know about the trend in Australia.