Sports dramas and entertainment programs based on various sports topics, such as soccer, baseball, basketball, weightlifting, and badminton, have dominated broadcasters for several years, and sports winds are blowing in the performance world as well. Popular sports such as soccer and baseball as well as fencing, taekwondo and handball will be implemented on stage.
‘Baseball King, Marlins!’ ⓒ Live
‘Baseball King, Marlins!’, which opened on the 5th at the Busan Civic Center Grand Theater, is based on baseball as the title suggests. The work depicts the dreams and passions, conflicts and reconciliation, growth and friendship of young players through the process of writing a new legend in the national little baseball world, starting with Busan, the hometown of the little baseball team Marines, which was last in its ten thousand years.
Producer Kang Byung-won, who planned the work, said, “’Baseball King, Marines’ is a local cultural content in Busan. I decided to make it a family musical because I thought youth baseball would be more fun than adult baseball. In a situation where there are not many purely creative family musicals, I hope that ‘Baseball King, Marines’ will find many audiences.”
Following baseball, taekwondo is also put on the stage. The musical ‘Taekwon, Fly Up’, which is about to open at the Woori Financial Art Hall in Seoul on the 14th, is a work that depicts the growth story of promising Taekwondo players against the background of the Taekwondo department of the imaginary Korea Physical Education High School. At the time of its premiere, it received favorable reviews for its musical music and taekwondo skills in a thrilling performance. Following the premiere last year, this is the second season. Following the premiere, director Kim Myung-hun, who directed Season 2, said, “We plan to reinforce the entire story by more delicately modifying the process of conflict and reconciliation between the characters.” I will show you a performance.”
On the 27th of this month, the handball-themed play ‘Another Summer’ is also preparing to meet the audience at CJ Azit Daehak-ro in Seoul. This work, which will be put on the stage again two years after its premiere in 2021, embodies the anxiety and fear, division and hallucinations of growing adolescents on stage with poetic lines, symbols, and sensory images against the backdrop of a handball court. The development borrowed from the handball game method, the movements and choreography based on handball movements, and the special appearances of past and current handball players add to the dynamism.
Play ‘Pass’ ⓒTheatre San
In August, football is put on the stage. The play ‘Pass’, which opens on August 4 at Mary Hall of Sogang University in Seoul, depicts the story of young people’s dreams and love hidden behind history, based on the last Gyeongpyeong University football match in 1946. Also, from September 12, the musical ‘Biederstant’, which will be performed at the Dream Art Center in Seoul, is based on fencing. Set in Germany in 1938, it tells the story of five boys who want to become the best fencers. The two works also received favorable reviews at the time of their premiere last year, and met the audience again through a reenactment.
The reason why the sports material craze is blowing in the performance world is not very different from the reason for the popularity of broadcasters. This is because each sport itself has a long history and contains dramatic elements so that it is called a ‘drama without a script’. In the past, there were works such as ‘Judo Boy’ and ‘I’m going to you at the speed of light’, but industry insiders analyze that the number of sports introduction performances has increased rapidly in the last 1-2 years.
Unlike in the past, the atmosphere has grown even in terms of scale. In fact, one of the reasons why sports materials were not actively utilized in the performance world is that the limited space of the stage is a constraint to express the most important ‘dynamic’ in sports. For example, in the case of ball games such as baseball and soccer, you have to throw the ball far or show vividness while kicking it, but on stage, such directing is virtually impossible.
So, recently, technical power such as processing this dynamic with an LED screen is being borrowed, but there is still an evaluation that it is not enough to capture all the dynamics. In the ‘Tennis Showdown Scene’ in the musical ‘Death Note’, which was recently introduced as a new production by OD Company, a court was made using LEDs, and the court moved three-dimensionally, showing an editing effect reminiscent of a movie, as if maximizing dynamics. Others say that it is necessary to go beyond replacing it with a stage, and to make innovative use and transformation of the stage.
2023-07-09 06:47:16
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