The Performing Arts Creation Sanctuary: This Year’s New Works, a key platform for gauging the direction of the performing arts at the start of each year, marks its 18th edition. Hosted by the Korea Arts Council, the program will present 34 new works across six genres—drama, original musicals, dance, music, original opera, and traditional arts—over approximately three months starting in January next year, primarily at venues in and around Daehangno, Korea’s representative theater district and the mecca of Korean performing arts, including the ARKO and Daehangno Arts Theater area.
Launched in 2008, the Performing Arts Creation Sanctuary has established itself as a comprehensive incubating program that supports the entire creative process of new performing arts works. The system begins with an open script and project call, followed by staged readings or pilot performances, then progresses to full-scale productions presented as “This Year’s New Works,” and ultimately extends to opportunities for revivals and further circulation. This step-by-step structure distinguishes the program as a sustainable creation-to-distribution model rather than a one-off production platform.
To date, the Performing Arts Creation Sanctuary has brought a total of 366 new works to the stage, functioning as the largest platform for new performing arts productions in Korea. This year’s selected works once again address contemporary questions—such as virtual reality and gender, the climate crisis and surveillance society, democracy and migrant communities—articulated through the distinctive language of each genre.
In the drama category, contemporary questions surrounding memory and loss, women’s lives, and structural violence stand out. Works that move between virtual reality, SF imagination, and documentary approaches explore the boundaries between reality and unreality. Original musicals, drawing on real-life figures, literary classics, and youth narratives, highlight moments of choice and growth, situating personal stories within broader historical and social contexts.
The dance category translates themes such as the climate crisis, surveillance society, and the finiteness of time into the language of the body. Through formal experiments that traverse ballet, contemporary dance, and total theater, the works examine the relationship between humans and non-humans, as well as sensations of violence embedded in everyday life. In music, productions that reconstruct and contemporize genre boundaries—between tradition and modernity, and between music and theater—will take the stage.
Meanwhile, original opera expands historical events and myths into questions relevant to the present day. Narratives in which personal memory intersects with collective history unfold in a multidimensional manner through music. In the traditional arts category, contemporary experimentation continues while maintaining traditional forms, through combinations such as pansori with rock music, and folktales with original theater.
Actor Kim Shin-rok has been appointed as the promotional ambassador for the 18th edition. She stated, “I hope audiences will encounter the most vivid moments of creation through the stages of the Performing Arts Creation Sanctuary.” The performances are scheduled to take place from January through March next year at theaters across the Daehangno area.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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