Sojung Jun

My work is about staging stories. These stories originate from my own memory or from people who participate in my projects. They are the small stories hidden away in someone’s memory; childhood memories, frequent dreams, terrors and fantasies. What they have in common is that, while they can be expressed in an interesting way, depending on the teller, they can be something the individual does not want to reveal to others or does not even regard amusing for him or herself.

Among all our memories there are those that we want to hold on to. They are not always beautiful or delightful but through the process of staging these memories, I can sort out the ones I wish to remember. On the stage they can be made to look more beautiful and I can reveal just as much as I want; the reality of the memory gets sugar-coated and the collected fictions become reality. The theatrical stage is a tool to help the small memories of individuals to flow freely on the boundary of fiction and reality.

When cooperating with another person, I create the scenario through in-depth conversations and interviews with the participants and include their drawings, narration, singing and dancing in the play, directly and indirectly. This way, the participants can naturally narrate their own individual stories and become the “hero” of the performance. This process has been found to have great self-healing effect.