Daegu Dreams of Becoming Asia’s Edinburgh
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
A total of 24 foreign and local musicals will hit the stage at the 3rd Daegu International Musical Festival (DIMF) from June 15 to July 6.
The 22-day event will offer official invitational performances, the DIMF Grantee Premiere Homegrown Musicals, the DIMF College Students' Musical Festival, the DIMF Fringe Festival, an academic conference and other side events at 10 venues around the city.
``We've carefully selected various musicals with artistry and popularity for this year's invitations to attract all generations to enjoy the musicals,'' Kang Shin Sung-il, director of the DIMF, said in a press conference.
The opening performance, ``Metro Street'' will go on stage from June 14 to 21 at the Daegu Opera House. In the Australian family musical, Matthew Robinson, the playwright and composer, will appear, along with other actors. Robinson won the Pratt Prize for Musical Theater.
Russian classic ``Poor Liza'' will take the stage as the closing musical after being officially invited by the Avignon Festival on its well-received world tour. It will be on stage at Suseong Artpia from July 2 to 5.
The organizers said that this year's opening and closing works are from various countries to reaffirm the festival's identity.
``To form an art market in the host city and introduce unknown performances but with artistic values to the audience through the festival, we have chosen the opening and closing performances from various countries,'' Bae Sung-hyuk, executive committee chairman, said.
Won Jong-won, a musical critic, said that the festival has contributed to improving the quality of the local industry as a whole.
``The local musical market has been expanding in size in recent years, but how many producers are trying to improve the quality? The festival is designed to not only boost the local musical industry but also discover the potential values of the new works,'' he said.
The critic said that although the official invitation works might be unknown to people, the festival's duty is to discover the works in the early stages and complete them as the professional productions with the help of producers both at home and abroad.
``As the Edinburgh Festival did for `Nanta' and `Jump,' we can make the festival the cradle for supporting preliminary but new and experimental productions and fostering their new potentials,'' Won said.
Five homegrown musicals ― ``Special Letter,'' ``Sinmoongo-The Petition Drum,'' ``Moon River,'' ``Tango'' and ``Stealing for Love'' ― which have been supported by the festival, will be shown to the public.
```My Scary Girl' was put on stage at last year's festival as a test run and after revising it several times following a trial performance at the festival, the musical was completed and finally became a successful musical. That's the reason why the festival is striving to nurture the homegrown musicals,'' Bae said.
Bae said that as the organization signed an agreement with the New York Musical Festival (NYMF) in February, it will serve as a bridge to help homegrown musicals go on stage in NYMF.
For the local official invitations, ``Grand Chase,'' ``Gomoryung in Rain,'' ``Mr. Joh,'' ``Sing, Sing, Sing'' and ``Soul Mate'' will take part in the festival.
Also, for the independent participants, ``The Three Musketeers'' will take the stage at Keimyung Art Center from June 26 to 28 and ``Rainbow Fish'' will be on stage at Daegu Cultural Center for Students from July 2 to 5.
Also, the festival will hold a side event for actor Nam Kyung-joo at the musical concert ``All That Musical'' on June 22.
The festival is also to hold the DIMF College Students Musical Festival from June 15 to July 6. Nine groups, comprising seven Korean and two international, will take part in the festival.
The Musical Awards ― including Musical of the Year and Best Actor ― will be held at the closing ceremony on July 6 at Keimyung Art Center.
The DIMF is the only exclusive international musical festival in Korea, which aims to develop musical theater into an industry in the city.
Daegu boasts decent theaters with more than 1,000 seats and more than 46 musical-related departments at 27 universities in the region. It has the second largest ticket sales for musicals after Seoul.
The Daegu event has firmly established itself as an art market for novel and diverse musicals for producers. The festival also been positioned as an open stage for many gifted artists and as an amusement ground for the audience.