The musical opened at Circle in the Square on Broadway last year and made history as the first Broadway production with a mostly Asian creative team and cast, telling a distinctly Korean story about the world of K-pop.
Excerpt from the Article:
“KPOP is a new musical, with a book by Jason Kim and music by Helen Park and Max Vernon. It premiered at A.R.T./New York as a co-production by ArsNova, Woodshed Collective, and Ma-Yi Theater Company in 2017, and recently opened at Circle in the Square on Broadway on November 27, 2022. The musical centers on and is infused with K-pop, a genre of Korean contemporary popular music, which is a hybrid of various genres including EDM, hip-hop, R&B, rock, dubstep, and pop, optimized for stunning choreography in live performance, and oftentimes mix Korean and English language in the lyrics. K-pop has recently become a global leader in contemporary popular music and the center of hallyu (the Korean cultural wave), with the worldwide success of K-pop artists including Psy, BTS, Blackpink, NCT, SuperM, TWICE, and Seventeen. . . .
KPOP marks a historic achievement, being the first Broadway production with a mostly Asian creative team and cast. It is further distinguished by the fact that it tells a distinctly Korean story with its groundbreaking creative team and cast. . . .
For this article, I am focusing on the artistry of the production and the cultural context in which it exists and to which it contributes – that is, how K-pop is reflected in this musical and how the musical uses the K-pop genre forms to tell a story. A brief discussion pertaining to KPOP’s abruptly announced closing will be provided at the end of the article.
This article seeks to archive in written, descriptive form the production in its time and place. I believe I can offer a unique and valuable perspective as a South Korean theatre artist; as a critic who wrote about the original 2017 production and interviewed members of the artistic team in two articles in The Theatre Times – “The ‘KPOP’ Invasion in a New American Musical Part I” and “The ‘KPOP’ Invasion in a New American Musical Part II: Interview with Jason Kim and Helen Park”; and as a fan of K-pop who saw the birth, rise, and evolution of the music since the early 1990s in Korea and its subsequent rapid growth in international popularity. . . .
I would describe my overall experience of KPOP as a feast of heung, a distinctively Korean emotional state, which Professor Suk-Young Kim translates as “spontaneous energy stemming from excitation, inspiration, play, and frolicking” in her book K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance. . . . In this musical, heung is built through many skillfully combined elements. First is the music, which reflects an authentic variety of popular K-pop sounds and subgenres. Second are the musical performances, both solo and ensemble, which demonstrate versatility and meticulous precision in their choreography. And third are the classic and widely appealing themes regarding overcoming challenges, reaching maturity, and forming deep bonds through the process.”
The full article is available at:
https://thetheatretimes.com/kpop-on-broadway-a-multisensory-feast-of-heung/