Farnham Maltings Presents FACTORY GIRLS

Set in a factory during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the in 1930s, Factory Girls is the tale of a young woman whose loyalties are tested and working rights challenged. Adapted by Yangson Project, a rising star on the Korean contemporary theatre scene, Factory Girls is based on a short story by Chin-O Yu which was published serially in 1931 in Chosun Ilbo, one of the major newspapers in South Korea. Combining text (in Korean with English surtitles), movement, sound, and ensemble of four, Yangson Project brings a piece of Korean history to a UK audience.

Ok-sun is a young girl working in a Japanese factory during the Korean industrial boom of the 1930s. Silently she endures the back-breaking work and oppressive conditions. One day she is ordered by the foreman to spy on her friend, whom they suspect of rallying the workers. What she hears and events that follow make Ok-sun decide the time has come to find her voice.

Yangson Project is a collaboration between actors Son Sang-Kyu, Yang Jo-Ah and Yang Jong-Ook, and director Park Ji-hye. Each member decides and shares the process of creation from the beginning to the end. Through the staging of novels and short stories, Yangson Project explores new theatrical languages. The company have previously toured to China, Japan and France; this is their first time in the UK.

Farnham Maltings is an arts organisation based in Surrey, England and working on a local, national and international level. They support, collaborate with and invest in artists to make new theatre and reach new audiences. The UK tour of Factory Girls is part of caravan - Farnham Maltings' international strand of work, which is designed to better connect artists and partners in the UK with their contemporaries around the world. The tour is funded by the Arts Councils of England and Korea.

Gavin Stride, Director Farnham Maltings, said, "I saw Factory Girls at the Performing Arts Market in Seoul in 2016 and was immediately struck by the humanity and craft of the show. Of all the work we saw it was the stand out production. It is an astonishingly well made, poetic and playful piece of work that feels both particular to a place that I didn¹t know and a whole world I know nothing about."

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