AMERICAN THEATRE | The Rise and Fall of ‘KPOP’

KPOP will play its remaining Broadway efficiency this Sunday, Dec. 11, after 44 previews and 17 performances (throughout previews, the present canceled a number of matinee performances, prompting producers to maneuver its official opening night time to Nov. 27, one week after its preliminary opening celebration). This makes this historic musical the shortest-running Broadway musical since Neil Bartram’s The Story of My Life shuttered after 19 performances in 2009.

Cancellations and delays have change into commonplace as Broadway rebounds from a pandemic and a worldwide quarantine that affected all stay gatherings, however theatre specifically. The closure and gradual return has had a main influence on Broadway, with 2021-22 income and attendance taking main hits, falling from the historic document of $1.829 billion set by the 2018-19 season to the entire of $845.4 million final season. These statistics by the Broadway League point out a plunge of 54 %, marking a drop in viewers attendance, which noticed a document excessive of 14.7 million in 2019 however fell to six.72 million this previous 12 months. Shows just like the long-running Phantom of the Opera and A Strange Loop—an inventive triumph which received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and earned the Tony Award for Best musical at this 12 months’s ceremony—will finish their respective runs on Broadway early subsequent 12 months. Even Stomp, the Off-Broadway percussion-and-movement mainstay, is about to finish its 29-year run on the Orpheum Theatre subsequent month.

One may surmise that KPOP, a pop musical penned and composed by three hip but largely unknown theatre artists, was partially a casualty of a few of these seismic forces. But the story isn’t that straightforward. Like many exhibits, it confronted delays and cancellations because of COVID, however ticket gross sales had been markedly anemic all through the present’s preview interval, main many to level fingers on the present’s defective advertising and marketing efforts to draw youthful audiences and followers of the more and more widespread Korean music style that provides the present its title.

And then there was the query of the present’s essential reception, which was decidedly combined. Most evaluations weren’t constructive, with at the very least one main exception (Variety posted a rave), however it didn’t assist that The New York Times’s Jesse Green had nothing good to say in regards to the present, evaluating it unfavorably to KPOP’s 2017 Off-Broadway staging and writing that “those who aren’t hard-core fans of the genre or don’t understand Korean” would in all probability not benefit from the present (a weird appraisal, contemplating the present is carried out primarily in English, with occasional Korean lyrics and dialogue, and with its Playbill making historical past as the primary to be bilingual). Green additionally acquired criticism for referring to Jiyoun Chang’s million-dollar kilowatt lighting designs as “squint-inducing,” an unlucky phrase selection that led many to understand his evaluation as racist, even when unwittingly so; producers and forged members went as far as to ask Green and the Times for an apology, although none was forthcoming.

Naturally, when information broke that the present would finish its run simply two weeks after its official opening, the theatre group went into an uproar about what went mistaken with a present that so many—and never simply these concerned in its making— thought deserved a greater likelihood to search out an viewers.

“Globally, this is a case of how the status quo of Broadway marketing (run by predominantly white people) fails to lift up projects attempting to bring new diverse audiences to Broadway,” wrote affiliate director Seonjae Kim by way of e-mail.

How did KPOP arrive at this crossroads? Just earlier than Thanksgiving and the present’s postponed opening night time, I spoke with members of the artistic workforce. The behind-the-scenes story of this groundbreaking musical is a story of intense collaboration, evolving perceptions and intentions, and quite a lot of artistic tinkering. Just as KPOP deserved an extended run, this story must be advised.

Blast Off

On a mid-November afternoon, after I lastly received in contact with composer Helen Park, she was holed up within the decrease foyer of the Circle within the Square Theatre between rehearsals, surrounded by a wall of placards and manufacturing images taken on the venue over its celebrated 50-year historical past. Connecting over FaceTime, our preliminary hellos had been a bit klutzy. It’s not on daily basis you’re tasked with interviewing a good friend, in spite of everything: Park and I each attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the place we enrolled into the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program in 2011. There we spent two years finessing our craft, fiddling with our ability units, and discovering our voices. Similar to my very own expertise, Park confronted and fought the stereotypes and preconceptions of patronizing elders within the musical theatre discipline. She’s a worldwide citizen lady of coloration who writes radio-friendly ditties with an effervescent pop sheen, within the face of a post-Sondheim white cis-het male-dominated trade; I’m a lower-middle-class Black poet and journalist-turned-librettist-songwriter who had extra in frequent with the safety guards manning the entrances than the trustafarian hipsters and preppies who frequented the campus.

Park dealt with all of it like a boss, in all probability as a result of she has a knack for proving others mistaken. At the age of 5 in Busan, Korea, she started enjoying classical piano, studying Schubert, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. At age 9, her father’s research introduced her to Missouri for 2 years, the place she performed state-level competitions. In sixth grade, she attended a musical theatre summer time faculty in Virginia, cementing her love of the craft with a manufacturing of Mary Rodgers’s musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress. After attending center faculty again in her native Korea, she satisfied her dad and mom to ship her greater than 7,000 miles away to a Christian conservative boarding faculty in Alberta, Canada, the place she would spend her highschool years listening to ’90s and early-2000s Korean pop ballads as a supply of consolation and connection. After a stint finding out life sciences, she moved to the Big Apple, the place she befriended co-lyricist and co-composer Max Vernon.

Vernon and Park’s collaborations started in graduate faculty, when a joint task led to The Lament of Asian Girl #3, a satirical romp about stereotypes and informal racism within the movie and theatre industries. Park advised me she actually responded to Vernon’s lyrical fashion, describing it as edgy, recent, and singular. In 2014, Park was approached by Vernon, who was already in talks with Ars Nova about growing a musical about Okay-pop; Vernon launched her to director Teddy Bergman of Woodshed Collective, in addition to co-conceiver and librettist Jason Kim. She then partook in a form of bake-off developmental workshop, alongside AAPI storyteller A. Rey Pamatmat, playwright Jeremy Lloyd, and the songwriting workforce of Maggie-Kate Coleman and Erato A. Kremmyda.

“We were experimenting with having many different composers write this score,” mentioned Park, who music-directed and contributed two songs to that preliminary workshop. “But we all felt there needed to be cohesiveness to the score, because they were all so different from each other. So Max and I became a team from there.”

Bergman described the origin of KPOP as an “arranged marriage” orchestrated by Ars Nova, with inventive director Jason Eagan and former affiliate inventive director Emily Shooltz bringing collectively a workforce to discover an immersive present set within the Okay-pop universe. Little did he know that Kim and Vernon, members of Ars Nova’s Uncharted program, had already been ruminating on the identical topic. After a profitable collection of workshops in 2016, Ars Nova greenlit the musical for a restricted engagement.

Meant 2 Be

For those that noticed the 2017 manufacturing, together with many critics, the brand new Broadway model of KPOP feels extra like a reinvention than a reboot—a religious successor from another timeline or fictional metaverse, if you’ll. Performed within the expansive A.R.T./New York Theatres house, the Off-Broadway manufacturing divided viewers members into teams who got a tour of JTM Entertainment, a fictional Okay-pop music manufacturing facility owned by South Korean energy couple Moon (performed by James Saito) and his spouse Ruby (Vanessa Kai), hoping to interrupt into the North American market with their model of infectious pop. Tapping the San Diego-born Korean American agent Jerry (James Seol), they strategized to tip the scales of their favor, plotting world domination with their contagious confection of earworms.

Theatregoers who toured the multilevel, multiroom facility had been then launched to the five-member boy band F8, the six-singer lady group Special Okay, and Seoul’s reigning glitterball prima donna, MwE (Ashley Park, in a star flip earlier than her Tony-nominated efficiency as Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls). They additionally met the corporate’s poisonous in-house plastic surgeon Dr. Park (David Shih), ferociously vicious vocal coach Yazmeen (Amanda Morton), and ruthless dance teacher Jenn (Ebony Williams, final seen as a backup dancer on Beyonce’s Formation tour and greatest remembered for the “Single Ladies” music video).

Onlookers noticed because the JTM artists had been put by the wringer: Required to take part in obligatory rehearsals to flawlessly execute bodily demanding vocal and dance workouts, they had been additionally anticipated to workshop and generate new recorded materials across the clock, to domesticate their fickle fandom by way of social media, to obtain media coaching, and to confront their physique dysmorphia by way of a rhinoplasty examination for any facial imperfections. And this abstract barely scratches the floor of a present that additionally addressed themes of xenophobia, racism, and youngster labor.

Audiences, and most critics, relished the cleaning soap opera-esque storytelling, with larger-than-life Asian performers enjoying multi-dimensional protagonists slightly than sidekicks or tertiary tropes. That iteration of KPOP would go on to change into probably the most nominated present of the 2017-18 theatrical season, taking house the Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, a Richard Rodgers Award, and an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, whereas incomes a number of nominations for each the Drama Desk Awards and Drama League Awards.

Even earlier than the present acquired these plaudits, a Broadway switch appeared imminent, with strains trailing down metropolis blocks and theatregoers cosplaying as characters from the present. Yet nobody might predict the trajectory of popular culture, or of Broadway, inside the demi-decade to return, and that’s the place issues get tough.

Super Star

Five years later, there’s no denying that Okay-pop has discovered a house within the land of Stars and Stripes. Just ask the legions of superfans backing radio leviathans like Blackpink (the highest-charting Okay-pop lady group on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200), Seventeen (the primary Okay-pop group to be nominated and win the MTV Push Performance of the Year), Girls’ Generation (current Guinness World Records holders), SuperM (the first Asian artists to high the chart with a debut launch) and BTS (the primary act to have six consecutive No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 within the shortest period of time since The Beatles), to call a couple of. While there has but to be a singular crossover celebrity equal to the likes of Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Anitta, Doja Cat, or Olivia Rodrigo, it is just a matter of time earlier than Okay-Pop produces its personal worldwide celebrity. Blackpink’s Lisa, who was just lately honored on the 2022 Video Music Awards for Best Okay-Pop for her solo single “Lalisa,” may very well be a contender.

KPOP director Teddy Bergman recalled a sold-out BTS live performance at MetLife Stadium in 2019, marveling at “the umbrella of who was in that crowd, not only AAPI audience members, but just a wildly diverse audience base there, singing along to songs in Korean.” Bergman, the son of first-generation German Jewish refugees, added, “Seeing that radical expansion brings up questions of, when the tent of your music gets so large, what piece are you holding onto? Like, is there a question of the dilution of the form as you’re spreading it further and further and you’re reaching a wider audience?”

Among different issues, such speedy growth within the cultural milieu meant that the writers must replace their references. Vernon mentioned that when the present was initially conceived, the artistic workforce was influenced by an earlier technology of Okay-pop stars: Wonder Girls, Girls’ Generation, SHINee, 2NE1, Big Bang, Exo, Psy. By the time the present was headed to Broadway, the songwriting workforce had turned their ears to a brand new technology: BTS, Blackpink, NCT 127, Seventeen, New Jeans, Monsta X, and Vernon’s private favourite, Lee Tae-min of Shinee and the supergroup SuperM. For her half, Park name-checked inspirations as wide-ranging as You Hee-yeol of the one-man band Toy, R&B music icon Stevie Wonder, international music megastar Michael Jackson, jazz, and ’90s sentimental pop ballads.

Changing perceptions of Okay-pop would additionally demand a special focus for the present: The burning query for the KPOP characters this time round wouldn’t be whether or not these acts would go mainstream, however slightly what they might be pressured to sacrifice in that crossover: their identification, as they assimilate into the worldwide market, or their autonomy and individuality as they attain the higher echelons of fame?

The different massive challenges of the Broadway switch had been scale and type: Not solely had been not one of the 41 Broadway theatres geared up to current an immersive expertise of the type the earlier KPOP had, however, as ebook author Jason Kim wrote in an e mail, the unique script “was over 500 pages. We had to include so much content to fill every corner of every room in the building. Cutting out parts of the story happened by necessity, but we also embraced it as an opportunity to distill the story down to its most essential points.”

The consequence that’s at present at Broadway’s intimate Circle within the Square options an 18-member forged and 4 swings, together with real-life Okay-pop idols Kevin Woo (of boy band U-KISS), Min-Young Lee (of lady group Miss A), and Bohyung Kim (of lady group Spica and music duo Keembo), to not point out Korean multimedia singer-star Luna. Audiences are available to look at rehearsals for a one-night-only live performance affair to be offered by a Okay-pop company known as RBY Entertainment, which is trying to introduce their roster to America. Okay-pop impresario and momager Ruby (an attention-grabbing Jully Lee) is hedging her bets with three of them: the newly fashioned RTMIS (pronounced Artemis), the riveting F8 (pronounced destiny), and her muse and prima donna of the dancefloor MwE (pronounced mu-wee), an orphan Ruby has personally raised for fame. The present’s type now resembles a mix of early-aughts VH1-style Behind the Music docudrama and reminiscence play, telling the story of MwE’s highway to superstardom by flashbacks and snapshots of her life, from her preliminary audition as a wide-eyed tween with massive desires and spectacular pipes by the frilly, Vox Lux-esque stage performances of her first world tour.

The new model of KPOP is actually principally targeted on MwE and her struggles for independence, inventive freedom, individuality, work-life steadiness, and childhood trauma. While stage time within the 2017 manufacturing was evenly distributed, the tales of the opposite bands have been considerably if essentially streamlined: Special Okay has been whittled right down to the five-member RTMIS, although F8 has expanded from 5 to eight members. (And gone is MwE’s supposed youthful shadow self, ready within the wings to dethrone her.) Instead the brand new script introduces Juny, MwE’s guitar-plucking, golden-voiced boyfriend, who’s intent on rescuing her from her gilded cage (performed by a pleasant Jinwoo Jung, seen in KPOP Off-Broadway as F8 member Oracle). Recording the spectacle is fame-hungry documentary filmmaker Harry (performed by Aubie Merrylees, in a thankless half), who needs to show the live performance and its behind-the-scenes drama right into a automobile that may land him recognition and awards on the pageant circuit.

On paper, this all sounds tremendous. But when one makes comparisons to that edgy authentic Off-Broadway manufacturing, the trials and tribulations confronted by the RBY artists within the Broadway manufacturing come throughout as champagne issues. In the unique manufacturing, the F8 section targeted on the cultural divide between South Korea and the U.S.; the Special Okay section targeted on the intersection of racism and sexism with regard to the unrealistic expectations of perfection; and the MwE section interrogated the commodification of kid stars. On Broadway, solely the latter concern is actually explored in depth, whereas the challenges dealing with F8 are merely glimpsed and the RTMIS story is just about non-existent.

There’s additionally the distinction between Jerry and Harry. In the 2017 script, Jerry was a Korean American who had purchased into respectability politics and the mannequin minority delusion, and was imposing assimilation and cultural agility on the expertise beneath his care. Jerry wasn’t a easy villain, as on the climax he realized his error and confronted his internalized racism. But within the new script, Harry is little greater than a stand-in for the exploitative, imperalist white gaze, demanding that the biracial, people-pleasing Brad (Zachary Noah Piser) translate what the opposite boy band members are saying in Korean in return for a stronger highlight within the documentary.

Songwriter Vernon defined these selections partially because of the ocean change in Okay-pop’s reputation.

“When we started writing almost nine years ago, it was about whether or not K-pop could transfer and cross over to an American pop market, and we were asking ourselves questions of what would the sacrifices those artists would have to make in terms of their own personal and cultural identity to appeal to American audiences,” Vernon advised me throughout a break from rehearsal for his or her present The Tattooed Lady, which ran simply earlier than KPOP‘s opening on the Philadelphia Theatre Company. “I think one of our main assumptions was that there would have to be a much greater cultural sacrifice, so we had this character of Jerry, this American consultant who was encouraging the K-pop artist to do things that were in many ways harmful to who they were, hiding who they were in order to appeal to America. At the end of the show, the realization was that actually the best way to appeal to America is just that the K-pop artists be fully themselves; they don’t need to cross over to us, we need to cross over to them. In 2017, that was a really powerful message, but since we did the show, K-pop has crossed over.”

Added Park, “Through the pandemic, there was this reckoning. Asian Americans and people of color started grappling with their own identity; it was so important to us to honor as much authenticity as we can for K-pop and Korean pop culture, so our focus kind of shifted, which meant the story had to change. Instead of asking, why hasn’t K-pop crossed over into the U.S., we started to go into what is the experience of being a K-pop star? What is the joy and exhilaration, but also the sacrifice?”

Still, with out the animating drama of crossover, audiences for the brand new KPOP—each Okay-pop diehards and the uninitiated—could also be confused about what they’re supposed to remove from the present. Here’s the place the critiques of Jesse Green and others, nonetheless pointed or problematic, aren’t completely unfounded. By making such adjustments, one might argue that the KPOP workforce turned some of the singular, progressive, and genre-bending triptych theatrical productions of the final 25 years into some of the conventional, bare-bones, and sanitized productions of the post-pandemic period. Instead of exhibiting the rot beneath the glowing ruby, this model of KPOP solely covers it up with extra valuable gems; the sharp, subversive edges of the unique had been dulled and smoothed down or fully obscured, and the darker extremities explored in 2017 trimmed away.

I believe the artistic workforce made the wrong assumption that as a result of Okay-pop has exploded within the U.S., Americans are likewise aware of South Korean customs and tradition, which couldn’t be farther from the reality. You would by no means guess from KPOP that South Korea has one of many highest suicide charges amongst OECD member nations, with a 2016 examine discovering that 30 % of South Koreans endure from psychological sickness, although solely half search remedy. Or that within the final 5 years, there have been a string of notable suicides within the Seoul music trade, together with songwriter-producer Kim Jonghyun of Shinee, barrier-breaking trade insurgent Sulli of f(x), and actress-singer Goo Hara of Kara. Imagine the facility of a script during which the animosity between F8 members and hapa newcomer Brad arose partially as a result of the band member he changed had dedicated an act of self-harm as a substitute of merely being mysteriously fired. Or, given Okay-pop’s pattern of queer-baiting, its litany of “skinship” performances from acts like NU’EST, VIXX and OnlyOneOf, having an brazenly queer member of F8 would have definitely added nuance. Imagine what that might have carried out for songs like “Han Guk Nom (Korean Man)” and conversations round Asian masculinity in South Korea’s typically conservative Christian society. (John Yi’s commanding, laugh-out-loud efficiency as F8’s smoldering Danny, for instance, could be an apparent selection for this storyline.) This wouldn’t solely have honored the queer artists who’ve penned among the style’s largest hits, however the LGBTQIA+ artists who penned KPOP itself.

All of this isn’t to say that the brand new KPOP didn’t make enhancements. Park Sun-young, recognized internationally as Luna, offers a nuanced carried out as MwE, and the truth that Luna’s personal profession trajectory bears putting similarities to MwE’s provides a layer of meta-authenticity that wasn’t part of the 2017 Off-Broadway run. Following a 2006 look on the Seoul Broadcasting System actuality TV present Truth Game, Luna was scouted by the powerhouse label SM Entertainment prior to creating her debut as the principle vocalist and lead dancer of South Korean hipster lady group f(x), alongside Victoria, Amber, Krystal, and Sulli in 2009. The quintet earned essential and industrial success domestically and internationally, changing into the primary Okay-pop act to carry out at SXSW. And along with her function in KPOP, Luna is the primary Okay-pop idol to have a number one function on Broadway.

That’s not the one historic first marked by KPOP: It’s additionally the primary Korean-centric musical with Korean, Korean American, and AAPI illustration (on- and offstage) to grace the Great White Way, and solely the third Broadway musical to focus on Asian American heritage with Asian Americans in each the forged and the artistic workforce. Helen Park makes historical past as the primary Asian American lady composer of a Broadway musical, and solely the sixth Asian composer ever. And Luna isn’t the one one making her Broadway debut; so is your entire forged. That locations quite a lot of undue stress on a present like this, leaving little room for error—ironic for a present about artists striving for perfection.

Phoenix

So why is the present closing? A sentiment shared amongst trade observers and theatregoers is that the advertising and marketing workforce backing KPOP simply didn’t make sufficient of an effort to focus on up to date fans of the Okay-pop style. The producers appear to have hoped these followers could be attracted by the Okay-pop recording stars within the forged, however there’s a fallacy on this logic: The idol trade cycles by performers cursorily, in order that there’s not sufficient collective reminiscence for that to translate to tickets gross sales or merchandise (one other theme and plot level within the authentic Off-Broadway manufacturing that’s all however absent this time round).

“I, among others, believe that the reason that the show is financially failing is 100 percent the marketing and outreach—or lack thereof,” Seonjae Kim wrote to me a day earlier than KPOP introduced its closing. “Our social media endeavors have essentially been non-existent, and when they are, they are low-effort and fail to utilize even the most basic of algorithm principles. The people in charge fail to respond to emails promptly, if at all. There are numerous accounts of cast and team members reaching out with impressive personal connections and promotional opportunities that go unanswered. There has been zero strategy and innovation on how to market this incredibly non-traditional show to non-traditional audiences.”

She continued, “Amidst the sadness, it’s been a real pleasure to see that our houses do not look like a typical Broadway-going audience: so many young folks, AAPI folks, folks carrying signs for their favorite K-pop star in the show. I personally am in dismay that the hard work of so many artists of color might go unseen by more of the world because of the ignorance and incompetence of a few people.”   

A day earlier than the information of the closing broke, producers introduced that Sony Masterworks Broadway will launch a forged album of the present on Feb. 24, 2023, with document producer Harvey Mason Jr. (one half of the manufacturing duo The Underdogs), a veteran hitmaker who has been very outstanding within the Okay-pop scene, on the helm alongside music director Sujin Kim-Ramsey. The present’s mix of energy ballads, reggaetón, glow-in-the-dark EDM, nu-disco, progressive home, techno, hip-hop, entice, and Korean wave dance-pop ought to make it probably the most anticipated forged album of the season. It will undoubtedly introduce the present to many extra people who might see it throughout its quick run. And who is aware of? It might even give KPOP an opportunity at a second life or a future remount, given its huge enchantment to younger audiences and Okay-pop followers. If that does occur, future producers will hopefully have realized that the present wants one thing greater than the same old advertising and marketing method and word-of-mouth.

For now, its creators are celebrating the second whereas it lasts.

“There is something still inherently radical about this cast, these bodies, inhabiting this story, on this stage, especially out of an unbelievably difficult set of years for everyone and for everyone in very different ways,” mentioned director Teddy Bergman from his Brooklyn house as he ready for an emergency rehearsal. “There’s a tremendous amount of joy on that stage, and I think experiences of collective joy and stories of redemption and hard-won strength and release are necessary public rituals at this moment in time.”

In a brand new essay for Playbill, Helen Park shares a narrative about her personal younger son that demonstrates a method the present is a success, irrespective of its box-office numbers.

“He told me he wanted to be in KPOP when he grows up, ‘if it still exists,’” she writes. “He could be too younger to understand the importance and the rarity of this, however he noticed himself represented onstage, loud and proud, flawed and complex. He noticed himself represented as absolutely human, on the Great White Way. That’s the second I felt like I should have carried out one thing proper.

“I see audiences like my son every night, young and old. I see how their eyes light up as they see themselves represented in the form of superstars. Perhaps for some of them, they’re superheroes.”

Marcus Scott is a New York-based playwright, musical author and journalist. He’s written for Architectural Digest, Time Out New York, The Brooklyn Rail, Elle, Essence, Out and Playbill, amongst different publications.

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