9 Korean works heading to Avignon Festival 2026

Artists speak during a press conference on upcoming Avignon Festival in Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

Korea’s contemporary theater and dance are set to take center stage at one of the world’s most influential performing arts festivals this summer.

Poster for the 80th Avignon Festival / Courtesy of Avignon Festival

At a press conference in Seoul, the Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS) introduced nine Korean productions invited to the French festival, which has chosen Korean as its official “guest language” for 2026 — the first time an Asian language and a single national language have been given that status in the program’s history.

“The decision to make Korean the guest language of this year’s Festival d’Avignon is a well-deserved recognition of the poetic power of the Korean language as well as the dynamism, creativity and diversity of contemporary Korean theater,” said Pierre Morcos, conseiller for cultural cooperation at the French Embassy in Seoul. “There is already great anticipation among French audiences,” he added.

KAMS President Kim Jang-ho said the large-scale invitation reflects growing global interest in Korean-language contemporary performances.

“It proves that the creativity and diversity of contemporary performing arts created on the basis of the Korean language are drawing international attention, and that Korean artists’ remarkable capacity and contemporary sensibility are being meaningfully acknowledged around the world,” Kim said.

The Avignon Festival, scheduled to be up from July 4 to 25 this year in and around the southern French city, draws some 130,000 spectators each year and presents hundreds of performances across theater, dance and multidisciplinary arts.

Here are brief introductions to the nine Korean projects invited to the official program.

Lee Jin-yeob's "MULJIL" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'MULJIL' by Lee Jin-yeob

Inspired by Jeju’s haenyeo, or female divers, “MULJIL” stages four figures — a factory worker, a pregnant woman, a transgender person and a woman seeking to change her appearance — to explore different forms of vulnerability under social pressure. Their suspended bodies evoke the line between life and death and echo the experiences of refugees at sea, inviting reflection on shared resilience and solidarity.

Lee Kyung-sung's "Island Story" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'Island Story' by Lee Kyung-sung

Set on Jeju Island, “Island Story” confronts the traumatic legacy of the April 3 Uprising and Massacre, one of the most tragic episodes in modern Korean history. Onstage, Jeju’s landscapes are reconstructed through testimonies of victims and descendants, transforming silenced private grief into shared public memory and reactivating long-buried voices in the present.

Her Sung-im's "1 Degree Celsius" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'1 Degree Celsius' by Her Sung-im

Choreographer Her Sung-im’s “1 Degree Celsius” sets the stage inside the climate crisis, asking how art can prompt action on environmental change. Performed by seven dancers, it builds from the basic act of walking into a driving choreography on the boundary between nature and the city, set to electronic music that makes the crisis felt in physical terms.

Liquid Sound's "KIN: Yeonhee Project I" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'KIN: Yeonhee Project I' by Liquid Sound

Drawing on “yeonhee” — a traditional form of entertainment that combines dance, circus and percussion — Liquid Sound’s “KIN: Yeonhee Project I” breaks down and reassembles Korean folk performance. Using minimal sets, bold costumes and high-energy movement, it blends fixed traditional gestures with experimental ideas to turn long-held forms into a contemporary, sensorial journey.

Koo Ja-ha's "Cuckoo" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'Cuckoo' by Koo Ja-ha

Taking its title from the popular Korean rice cooker brand, “Cuckoo” begins with the solitary sound of a cooker announcing that the rice is ready to explore isolation, helplessness and the scars of the late-1990s Asian financial crisis and IMF bailout. Through imagined conversations with three rice cookers, playwright-director Koo Ja-ha weaves together personal stories and political context, examining economic materialism and the longing for family and stability, symbolized by a single small chair onstage.

Koo Ja-ha's "The History of Korean Western Theater" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'The History of Korean Western Theatre' by Koo Ja-ha

Marking 100 years of modern Korean theater, the work asks why Western influence — and figures like William Shakespeare — still dominates while space for distinctly Korean traditions has narrowed. As the final part of Koo’s trilogy, it probes self-censorship and cracks in modern Confucian values, revisiting the past to show its impact on people’s lives today and to question what kind of future can be offered to the next generation.

Koo Ja-ha's "Haribo Kimchi" Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'Haribo Kimchi' by Koo Ja-ha

In “Haribo Kimchi,” Koo stages a hybrid performance that combines language, music, video and robotics at a late-night Seoul street stall. Eel, snails and other eccentric figures trade poignant and surreal stories, while details like the taste of seaweed soup, the rhythm of chopping onions and the sound of mushrooms on the grill turn Korean food into a point of departure for exploring cultural paradoxes and quiet introspection.

Han Kang / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'Oiseau – I Do Not Bid You Farewell' by Han Kang, Julie Deliquet, Isabelle Huppert and Lee Hye-young

Director Julie Deliquet presents a staged reading of “Oiseau,” the opening chapter of Han Kang’s 2021 novel “I Do Not Bid You Farewell,” which returns to Jeju’s violent past through fiction. Performed by Isabelle Huppert and Lee Hye-young, the piece follows a woman who travels to Jeju to care for a friend’s white parrot and gradually discovers the family’s entanglement in state violence, threading together themes of historical trauma, human vulnerability and a stubborn belief in life across Korean and French.

Lee Ja-ram's "Snow, snow, snow" / Courtesy of Korea Arts Management Service

'Snow, snow, snow' by Lee Ja-ram

Pansori creator and singer Lee Ja-ram turns Leo Tolstoy’s “Master and Man” into a solo pansori piece performed with only a folding fan. Leading audiences through the snowbound journey of a greedy merchant and his servant, she updates the classic from a contemporary perspective, heightening the tensions between desire, anxiety and responsibility and using the rhythmic narrative of pansori to ask pointed questions about human nature and moral choice.