Plays by famous directors that have become a hot topic in Europe and Japan are scheduled to premiere one after another in Korea in the second half of the year.
According to the Seoul International Performing Arts Festival on the 4th, the play 'The Distance Between' will premiere in Korea from the 8th to the 10th at the Arko Arts Theater in Jongno-gu, Seoul.
‘The Distance Between’, which the festival invites overseas, is a work by Portuguese director Thiago Rodríguez. Rodrigues served as the artistic director of the Avignon Festival in France, a world-renowned performing arts festival, and has received attention from the global theater community by crossing the boundaries of cities, countries, and languages.
'The Distance Between' is director Rodríguez's latest work, which he first staged at the Avignon Festival last year. It depicts the story of a father who remained on Earth and his daughter who left for Mars, set in the year 2077, where humanity lives separately on Earth and Mars.
The work sheds light on the relationship between a father and daughter who become closer and then move apart like celestial bodies orbiting their own orbits beyond the unreachable distance of a planet. The performance will be held in French, and Korean and English subtitles will be provided.
From the 13th to the 15th of next month, the play 'Roscoe' will meet domestic audiences for the first time at LG Arts Center Seoul.
'Rosco' is a representative work by Śkaş Tvarkovsky that is attracting attention in the European theater world, and was produced by the Dyles Theater in Latvia. Tvarkowski, who is from Poland, has been attracting attention for his attempts to combine visual art, cinematic techniques, and digital technology in theater.
This work was based on the motif of the ‘Mark Rothko forgery incident’ that shook the art world. It was discovered that a work by abstract artist Rothko, sold for $8.3 million in New York in 2004, was in fact a forgery painted by an unknown artist.
The four-hour long performance is held on a huge set, like a movie set, with techno music blaring, and the actors' performances are captured by live cameras and broadcast on a large screen in real time. The audience looks at the stage and the video on the screen that captures even the invisible parts of the stage at the same time and thinks about ‘what real art is.’
Multinational actors from Latvia, Poland, and China will perform passionately across their respective languages, and Korean subtitles will be provided.
The play 'American Dream', which will be performed from the 30th to the 1st of next month, is a new work by Koki Mitani, a leading Japanese playwright and director. Mitani has established himself as a master of Japanese comedy through films such as ‘University of Laughter’ and ‘When I’m With You’.
The work is set in the United States in the late 1940s, when the Cold War was in full swing, and sheds light on the anti-communism craze that raged in Hollywood. The audience gets to closely observe the human psychology where survival, conscience, friendship and betrayal intersect through the filmmakers who are forced to inform their colleagues in order to survive.
Koki Mitani's unique fast-paced dialogue adds to the sense of immersion, and the actors present an intense closed-door psychological battle that alternates between tension and laughter.
This stage, featuring the same Japanese premiere cast, will be conducted in Japanese and Korean subtitles will be provided.
