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Fri 09 Oct
|Holy Cross Church, Cromer Street
Kassna Kollectiv: User Manual for a Broken Machine (Bloomsbury Festival)
A darkly comic Korean diaspora performance built from instruction manuals and troubleshooting guides, following a performer who slowly becomes the broken Daewoo vacuum cleaner she's trying to fix. Movement, text and live piri music by Seayool. Two nights at the Bloomsbury Festival, tickets from £12.
Time & Location
09 Oct 2026, 19:00 – 10 Oct 2026, 21:00
Holy Cross Church, Cromer Street, Holy Cross Church, Cromer House, 98 Cromer Street, London WC1H 8JU
About the event
A darkly comic theatre performance exploring failure, burnout and the body under pressure reflecting Korean industrialisation, capitalism and diaspora.
Music composed and performed by Seayool.
A broken Daewoo vacuum cleaner. A user manual that no longer works. A body trying to follow instructions that were never written for her. User Manual asks what happens when a person can no longer follow the instructions they have been given.
User Manual for a Broken Machine is a darkly comic interdisciplinary performance using the language of instruction manuals, troubleshooting guides and malfunction reports as a performance score. Through text, movement, sound and fragments of Korean traditional music, the piece follows a performer who reads, repeats, mistranslates, repairs and gradually becomes the broken machine she is trying to fix.
Developed by KASSNA, the work explores failure, productivity, migration and the pressure placed on female bodies to keep functioning within broken systems. Moving between the domestic object and wider histories of Korean industrialisation, capitalism and diaspora, it asks what happens when a person, a machine, or a society can no longer obey its original design.
Absurd, physical and unsettlingly funny, User Manual for a Broken Machine turns repair into ritual, breakdown into performance, and failure into a possible beginning.
The team
Suyoung Park, our MOVER, brings her practice as a physical performer and choreographer.
Seayool, our PLAYER, brings his original compositions and live Piri performance.
Eden Jun, our READER, shares the intimate story of a broken vacuum cleaner and memories from Korea’s pre-Gangnam Style era.
Directed by Namoo Chae Lee
Friday 9 October - Saturday 10 October 2026, 7pm. Tickets from £12.
Also performances at Voila Theatre Festival, 11-12 November @ Theatro Technis, Camden.
@kassna_kollectiv
Find out more info or book your tickets on https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bloomsburyfestival/2302976
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