Lee Jaram brings pansori 'Snow, Snow, Snow' home after acclaimed run in Avignon

Pansori performer Lee Jaram will return to Seoul in October with “Snow, Snow, Snow,” her contemporary reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s “Master and Man,” following a sold-out run and standing ovations at this July's Festival d’Avignon in France.

The two-night production will be staged Oct. 23 and 24 at LG Arts Center Seoul’s LG Signature Hall in southwestern Seoul's Magok area. It will be the first large-scale performance in Seoul, following its 2025 premiere at the center’s smaller stage.

Written, composed and performed by Lee, “Snow, Snow, Snow” follows Vasili, a merchant who becomes lost in a blizzard while pursuing a profitable forest deal with his servant Nikita. Lee transforms Tolstoy’s 1895 short story into a one-person pansori epic, moving among the merchant, servant, horse, dog, narrator and the snowstorm itself with a fan, voice and the percussion accompaniment of gosu, or drummer, Lee Jun-hyoung.

In France, its four performances from July 17 to 22 sold out, with people reportedly lining up outside in hope of securing returned tickets and joining the performance. Audiences accompanied the performances by providing "chuimsae," a set of spectator exclamations traditional to pansori, as well as creating the sound of a snowstorm.

French critics responded with unusual fervor for the Korean-language production, which was presented with French and English subtitles. Le Monde called Lee “the burning presence of pansori,” while Liberation wrote that she “captured the entire audience with a single glance.” Telerama called her the most exciting discovery among the festival’s Korean-language program, saying she brought Vasili, Nikita and their horse to life with only a fan and her storytelling ability.

Lee said the Avignon audiences’ readiness to participate distinguished the performances from previous ones.

“French audiences know nothing about either Korea or pansori, so they do not have preconceived ideas about pansori,” Lee said at a press conference Tuesday in Seoul. “They are surprised by the beauty of the art and then ask, ‘What on earth is pansori?’”

At home, however, she often feels she must confront the preconceptions some audiences hold of pansori as an old-fashioned art of “folding screens, straw mats, topknots and gat (traditional men's hat).”

“I have to say, ‘No, that’s not it. Come here and see,’ and make the effort to bring them in,” she said. “But once people see it, they say ‘pansori is fun,’ and they come back.”

For Lee, the appeal of pansori lies in its ability to make an audience’s imagination part of the performance. The art form’s intimate exchange between performer and spectators, she said, turns a lone singer’s storytelling into a shared act of creation.

“The power unique to pansori is the meeting of imaginations,” she said. “I use the power of imagination continuously on stage, but it happens by taking in the audience’s imagination as fuel. Something happens during those two hours that is difficult to put into words, and then we part.”

Lee said she did not choose Western literary classics because they are Western. Rather, she has found distance useful when adapting works for a form that intensifies emotion and brings stories close to the body.

“Pansori has a way of pulling even a faraway story very close,” Lee said. “It can make a distant story feel immediate and raw.”

Adapting Korean modern or contemporary fiction, she said, can make recent pain or social events feel “too much” in pansori’s emotionally amplified language, she explained. For now, she is drawn to older, more distant stories that can meet contemporary audiences without overwhelming them.

The Seoul return will retain the production’s stripped-down core while expanding its visual scale. Director Park Ji-hye and scenographer Yeo Shin-dong will use light and fog to build a wider, deeper snowscape in the the venue.

“Snow, Snow, Snow” will be staged Oct. 23 and 24 at LG Arts Center Seoul.