Koreaboo
Since the 1950s over 200,000 Korean children have been sent abroad for adoption, many of them to Australia. Michelle Lim Davison was one of them. It wasn’t until she began searching for her biological family that she realised she was one of a global community of Korean adoptees “reclaiming its past and redefining its future”.
“This play,” she explains, “is one small part of that reclamation. It was inspired by my life, but it’s not a documentary. It’s imagined from reality.”
That reality comes to life in the closeness of the Downstairs Theatre at Belvoir St, where the audience becomes the eavesdropping walls of a tiny 24-hour Korean convenience shop. The space is small, confined. The atmosphere is close. Anything that happens here is personal, intimate.
Soon Hee is the owner of this tiny shop in Itaewon, a commercial area of Seoul. She’s had to vary her stock and extend her hours to compete with changes in the neighbourhood, but she’s wily and practical and caters to locals and the many tourists that frequent the restaurants and bars in the area.
The neatly arranged stock is varied, everything from ramyun and snacks to toilet rolls, socks, sunglasses and a carefully arranged mountain of spam! There’s a drinks fridge, a microwave, a boiling water station and a small television on the counter. A lucky cat waves a paw beside the cash register next to some ripe persimmons … and some garden gnomes smile from different places on the shelves.
Soon Hee is busy, independent, contained – until Hannah arrives. Hannah is her biological daughter, brought up in Australia. They met for the first time a year ago. Soon Hee is surprised – because she wants to stay. For the summer.
Davidson has created a piece of theatre introduces is moving, insightful, and intensely personal. Director Jessica Arthur commends her “ability to shed dignity on the experience of others, as well as a sensitivity to how she herself is perceived, lends the character of Hannah and her birth mother a fullness and brightness … that deepens their shared experience”.
Heather Jeong plays Soon Hee. Her life has been hard, but the mart is her safe place where she works long hours and watches K-pop reality shows and learns English from “Sex and the City” late at night.
Jeong is a petite but commanding presence. The Soon Hee she creates is strong, self-contained. She holds the character in tight control, not allowing Hannah to break through the defences she has built around herself – but slipping every now and again to reveal a sense of fun. Timing is so important in this production and Jeong projects significance into every slight pause and every quirky reaction.
Davidson herself plays Hannah, carefully establishing a character that she has infused with personal experience and contemplation – questions, awkwardness, hope, despair, tenacity. The Hannah she plays is persistent, unwavering in the face of Soon Hee’s rebuffs, determined to try to find out more about her Korean family, and her father.
Jessica Arthur directs with a deft, caring hand, allowing these two accomplished women to find the truth, the emotion and the gentle humour in Davidson’s characters – and their stories. The blocking, carefully contained in the small floor space of the store, makes the tension elastic, the feelings and reactions of the characters clear, their emotions real, sometimes raw..
“… I think of you Hannah. Every birthday. Every night before I sleep. You think I forget my own baby?”
“…I’m too Korean to be Australian, too Australian to be Korean ...”
Davidson’s play is written with the compassion that comes from deep reflection – and a willingness to share things that are intensely personal. Yet its messages will resound with many Australians, for many reasons.
“Years ago, I went looking for someone who looked like me. Now I offer this story back hoping someone else might feel a little less alone”. (Michelle Lim Davidson).
Carol Wimmer
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