Summers Livestream

Today, the Earth is quietly heating up.

A boy sets out to fight the sun.
A girl silently watches over him.
Together, they witness a village consumed by fire.

The boy becomes an environmentalist.
The girl has no choice but to work at a factory to make a living.
The boy becomes a “cool” environmentalist—trying to protect the planet with capital.
The girl becomes pregnant, and watches as the boy no longer fights the sun.
The boy loses everything and becomes a science teacher.
The girl tries to leave the country.
She falls ill.

The boy proposes to her.
What choices are we truly able to make in life?

A story of summer—where every moment leads back to the heat: the warming Earth, the burning relationships, and the heated lives of those who live them.

Writer: Heejin Kim
Director: Mia Sumida
Producer:Li Xu
Assistant director: Simone Sklan
Performers: Mia Sumida, Pietro Cannizzaro, Alia Al-Shabibi, Dong-Hyun Lim

Website

Heejin Kim is a playwright, director, and performer, leading the theatre company Knees. She explores absurdity in everyday life, focusing on themes of women, young adults, and discrimination. Through “Physical Writing” and “No-Translator play,” she delves into collaborative methods, experimenting with multicultural, multilingual, and multiform theatre. Her first play, Bot, won the grand prize at the 3rd Youth Drama Festival, sponsored by the Korean National Academy of Arts. Heejin graduated from RCSSD in 2022.

Mia Sumida is an actor with a unique approach as both a “performer who acts” and an “actor who thinks.” Her work examines personal identity as an Asian female with a family immigration history, exploring the relationship between identity and society through language and physicality. Mia graduated from East15 MFA International Acting (University of Essex) in 2023 and currently resides in England.

Together, Heejin Kim and Mia Sumida are international artists from Japan and Korea, with performances in the UK, Korea, and Japan. They were recently selected for the DOOSAN ART LAB 2024, where they presented Mia Mia MIA at Space 111. Mia Mia MIA is an autobiographical documentary play that reflects the lives of working women in South Korea and Japan, spanning from the past to the present. The play uses video, choreography, and text to tell true stories about the experiences of East Asian women. Their work consistently highlights their shared cultural backgrounds, addressing issues faced by women in both Japan and Korea.