New Korean musical is adopted from novel

Park Myung-sung

It is time to produce a Korean musical that is laudable and has international
appeal, said Park Myung-sung, 44, president of Seensee Musical Company.
The company will begin performing “Dancing Shadows” on July 8. The
show will have a two-month run at Seoul Arts Center.
“Dancing Shadows” is a new Korean musical adopted from Cha Bumsuk’s
novel, “Forest Fire,” a tragic story about people in an isolated village
during the Korean War. The musical, however, is different from the original novel in many ways.
“Korea’s musical industry has a short history and the musical market
has exploded in the last five to six years,” Park said.
“Most of the licensed musicals have already been shown in Korea. The
time has come to upgrade our musical,” he said.
Park said the company will continue to produce licensed musicals, but at
the same time he plans to produce at least one Korean musical each year.
The new musical attracted a great deal of attention because it filled its
creative team with well-known foreign staff: Pau Garrington is director,
Ariel Dorfman is the script writer and Eric Woolfson is the composer. This is
the first musical that employed foreigners as chief staff members.
By employing the foreign production team, “Dancing Shadows” is the
most expensive musical Korea has ever produced for an opening performance
showing at a single location. It will cost 4.5 billion won ($4.8 million) for
the 60-day run. “I wanted to produce a Korean musical that has global standards and attains something more than shortlived fame, but Korea does not yet have
talented musical staff,” Park said. It is the hope of Park that the Koreans
will learn from the expertise of the foreigners.
“We will be handed musical know-how,” Park said. “For our next
performances, the Korean staff can do it by themselves.”
Dorfman, the script writer, turned the original war fiction novel into a
“modern fairytale.” The names of the characters were changed to Cinda,
Mama Aster, Nashtala and Solomon, which are not typical of any nationality.
“The musical still has the same motives, characters and structure of the
plot,” Park said.
“If the audience sees that the musical is completely different from the
original, ‘Forrest Fire,’ that would be a success. I wanted the musical to have universal themes that Koreans and non-Koreans could understand,” Park
said.
Asked why he adopted a serious novel into a musical, he said, “I prefer
a story-based piece to a show.”Park began his career as a stage actor in 1982. Then he started producing
musicals instead of plays. “In the 1990s, when I went to London and New York, I believed that someday the public would embrace musicals,” Park said. He said 2004’s“Mamamia” was a turning point for Korean musicals, attracting adults. Before that, musicals were largely entertainment for the young.English subtitles are not available.For information, visit www.dancingshadows.
co.kr

By Limb Jae-un Staff Writer [jbiz91@joongang.co.kr]