Destination: Seoul, South Korea
Seoul, as the capital and largest city in South Korea, is the home of countless professional and amateur companies—including the National Theater of Korea, which hosts International and Korean Drama as well as traditional Changgeuk Korean Opera. Theatre has been mostly shut down in the country due to COVID, but in the city, theatres have been running at 50% with distancing, masks, no shouting/yelling, and everyone needs to fill out a form for contact tracing. These restrictions make profitability a problem.
Theatre Company: Vérité
Vérité was formed by students out of the pandemic who wanted to supplement their artistic training. “Since we had no face-to-face classes or chances to prepare a whole play/musical for academic performance, we gathered and started to figure out what we could do,” said producer Sujin Kim. “So all the members are students who really want to make a leap on their own personal and academic abilities.”
Production: The Mad Ones by Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk
The Mad Ones (US/UK) is a catchy musical exploring grief and difficult life choices. “The actors fell in love with this wonderful musical because of the main topic—almost every university student has gone through the struggles,” said Sujin. “We also look for pieces with good construction of plot, so that we are able to analyze the text precisely and deeply, and it we prefer that multiple main roles can be played by female actors.”
The show did very well even with restrictions — selling out all tickets available, but the limitations were sometimes difficult. “The audience was not allowed to shout or yell for the actors so all they could do was applaud. We think a full audience once restrictions are lifted will be more exciting.”
What’s next?
“We are figuring what we can do for the next step as we are now in our ‘training season’ (this is what we call the period of training) so we can develop personal skills more effectively. We are planning to make a new show in July or August—assuming things will be better then. Because of the high quality of our performances, we are now very positive that we are able to make another successful production again.”
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Visit the Concord Theatricals website to uncover more universal plays and musicals in the US or UK.
Header Image: Vérité production of The Mad Ones (Dahyeong Choe)
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