"Devising Across Borders: Silent Clamor"

How do you devise culturally specific work when you’re thousands of miles from where that story began?

Ji Won Jeon brought us into her ongoing project “Silent Clamor,” a physical theatre investigation of Korean “comfort women” - victims of military sexual slavery under Japanese Imperial forces. Developed in the United States with ensemble members from varied cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary backgrounds, the work asks a question most of us avoid: what does ethical devising across borders actually require?

The productive tension showed up immediately. Tradition and contemporaneity. Historical trauma and modern embodiment. Cultural specificity and universal resonance. Jeon doesn’t resolve these tensions - she uses them as the structure itself. Devising becomes not just a creation method but a framework for ethical collaboration, applicable to physical theatre, classical text, any contemporary practice.

Jeon is South Korea - born, Michigan-based, Assistant Professor in Directing at Michigan State University. She holds an MFA from Northwestern and works internationally across devised, contemporary, and classical forms. Recent projects include Othello and Inching Towards Yeolha. She’s currently leading the MSU MFA Catalyst Play Commission with the University of Iowa.