The Seekers

Ilhan is a Somali high school student living in Minneapolis on the verge of deportation when she is visited by figures from far flung places: the Arctic, European fringes, and an African refugee camp. They draw her into an unseen and forgotten world that exists just beyond reality and appeal to her for the sanctuary of their souls.  A poetic drama on migration, displacement and freedom.

Jeesun Choi on The Seekers

“A boy. Trapped in a glass box. In the middle of the ocean. That image, told by a Russian refugee boy to a journalist, kept circling back to me. Then one day another figure joined him. She was from an isolated world of her own, far from Somalia, with no friends; no one to talk to. Then I started to wonder what it would mean to find a friend, whom you may or may not be able to trust, in the most unlikely of circumstances?”

Jeesun Choi

JEESUN CHOI is a transnational Korean playwright and physical theatre artist. Her plays move through diaspora, (im)migration and transnationalism to reveal the joy and agony of the human condition. She currently is the Playwriting Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. Plays include The Seekers (2019 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Winner, 2019 O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, 2018-19 Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Fresh Ground Pepper Artist Retreat); Dahlia (Lark’s 2018 New Voices Fellowship Finalist) which received a public reading at Dell’Arte International; Cecilies (Red Eye Theater’ New Work 4 Weeks, 2013 Minnesota Fringe Festival). She was the Fellow at 2017 National Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation, hosted by Pangea World Theater and Art2Action, and Works-In-Progress Artist at Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis. She is the co-founder of Creative Traffic Flow, a theater collective committed to creating ensemble-driven performances that uphold the power of communities. As the Artists-In-Residence at the University Settlement, CTF produced Duets of Difference for Speyer Hall and Women Center Stage Festival. Supported by Clean Valley Council and Works On Water, they presented Voices from the Roanoke River at the Governors Island and Earth Summit 2018. MFA Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre, Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.