There are some familiar storylines in a new musical opening on Broadway — a singer and her relationship with the mentor who guided her; a newcomer trying to find his place; young women chasing their dreams.
But they've never sounded quite like this.
The global sensation that is Korean pop music is coming to centre stage in KPOP, opening on Sunday at the Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway.
With an almost entirely Asian American and Asian cast, many of whom are making their Broadway debut, the musical is set as a backstage look at some K-pop performers as they get ready for their debut show in New York City. Conflicts break out and get resolved, ending in a concert-like performance.
The show's Broadway arrival has been a long time coming for playwright Jason Kim, who first conceived of a play around K-pop about a decade ago and staged an off-Broadway version in 2017, with music and lyrics composed by Helen Park and Max Vernon.
Born in South Korea, Kim came to the US as a child, settling with his family in the Midwest. K-pop has been a fixture in his life, as have Korean television dramas. He also loved musical theatre, especially shows such as A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls where the story is about what's happening behind the scenes.
“I love backstage shows," he said. “Is there fighting going on in-between everybody? Do they all love each other? These are the questions that I asked myself."
In the initial stage version of the show, Kim was introducing the machine of K-pop to an American audience largely unfamiliar with it; five years later, it's been rewritten for a world where K-pop musical heavy-hitters including BTS and Blackpink are pop-chart mainstays, amid a slew of other Korean entertainment in movies and television such as Squid Game becoming more popular in the US as well.
Back then, America “didn’t really know what K-pop was, and so there was a lot of explaining that I had to do".
"This time around, I didn’t have to really take the stance of having to apologise for anything or having to explain anything, and just let the story unfold," said Kim, a writer in television and film.
He called the timing “really serendipitous".
“It’s been really profound and moving actually to watch the world shift in this way."
A Broadway musical showcasing the sounds of K-pop is a sign of how “the US is finally catching up with what was already going on around the world", said Robert Ji-Song Ku, an associate professor of Asian American studies at Binghamton University.
K-pop has been growing in popularity globally for the past 20 years, even though other attempts to break into the American market over the years haven't met with the same success until recently, he said.
“If there's a spectrum of universality, K-pop is engineered to be as universal as possible," he said.
Casting the show took about two years, Kim said, with open calls both in the US and South Korea. Some of those in the show have K-pop backgrounds, including Luna, a former member of the group f(x), who plays the central character of Mwe, a singer who has spent years working toward her dreams and has come to a crossroads.
It's a step forward for Asian American representation on Broadway, which matters a great deal to Kim.
“That talent exists, and they just need a platform," he said. “So it was really important to me to put these Asian people on stage and see them not playing the typical roles that they play, but playing rock stars, playing pop stars, dancing their faces off and acting their faces off and just being spectacular."
For her part, Park called the experience an honour.
“K-pop and Broadway have both been my passion for a long time; K-pop has been like comfort food for me, and Broadway was my seemingly unattainable dream, given there haven’t been many Asian composers, let alone Asian female composers that I can see and dream to be like,” she said. “To be able to bring something that feels like home to me, to my dream stage, Broadway, feels like the most miraculous gift that I’ll cherish for a lifetime.”
Kim said it was also important that the show includes some Korean interspersed with English, both in the songs and the dialogue.
It's “a way to be really authentic to the experience of K-pop idols and Korean people", Kim said, pointing out that “when I speak to my mom, I’m switching back and forth all the time, depending on what we’re talking about".
“The design of the bilingual nature of the show was very intentional."
Clearly, a musical built around K-pop has a built-in base of potential audience members. But Kim says there's something for everyone, even those who have never heard a K-pop tune.
“Hopefully if we do our jobs right, you’re watching a fun musical with a bunch of great K-pop songs," he said. “But really what you’re getting as you leave the theatre is a universal story.
South Korean culture showcase launches in Dubai, including a mini BTS concert — in pictures
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An immersive art exhibition called Korea: Cubically Imagined is being held at the Art Centre at Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. All photos: Pawan Singh / The National -
The Korea Creative Content Agency and the Korean Cultural Centre in the UAE teamed up to bring the event to life -
The exhibition is a combination of K-culture and realistic immersive technology showing various aspects of the nation's flourishing entertainment industry -
The exhibition includes a experience of BTS's show titled Permission to Dance on Stage — Las Vegas -
Footage of the concert, which was held in April, has been converted into realistic content for the exhibition -
The BTS members light up the virtual stage -
It also included a VR screening of famous scenes from the film Parasite -
It includes immersive games -
Fans can enjoy a virtual experience at the exhibition -
Surreal works on display -
The beach stretches infinitely through mirrors with sound and visual effects created by multimedia arts -
Relaxed auroras converge with rushing ocean waves -
The audience can experience a relaxing but rejuvenating sightseeing trip through the four seasons of Mount Geumgang -
The bustling streets and skyscrapers of Seoul, the capital of South Korea
