Arts Council Korea
As the new year begins, ‘18th Performing Arts Creation Studio: New Works of the Year’ (hereafter, the festival), the largest and most genre-diverse new performing arts festival in the country, raises the curtain.
‘18th Performing Arts Creation Studio’ comprises six genresplay, original musical, dance, music, original opera, and traditional artsand 34 new works, of which eight are revealed first in the initial lineup.
The announced works will meet audiences starting in January 2026 at venues across the Daehangno area of Seoul, including Arko Arts Theater and Daehangno Arts Theater. They range from original musicals reinterpreting popular source material and the lives of real people, to plays that borrow virtual reality and first-person game formats, dances that render the time of individuals and of humanity through bodily language against backdrops of virtual beings and future timeframes, and even traditional arts and original opera that contemporize historical events and folktales.
■ Original Musicals: Reinterpretations of popular source material and real people
Arts Council Korea
In the original musical category, works based on popular source material and real figures take their places.
Based on writer Lee Hyun's bestselling children's story, ‘Blue Lion Wanini’ runs from January 3 to 25 at the Nowon Culture and Arts Center Grand Hall. Set against a survival-of-the-fittest world, it tells a coming-of-age story about the meaning of living as oneself and the value of coexistence.
‘James Byron Dean’ will be staged at Theater On from January 9 to March 1. Using as a motif the five minutes before James Dean's fatal crash in 1955, it delivers a message of consolation through a journey that retraces memories of life.
Set in 1993, ‘The Glory and Disgrace of the Librarian of A Girls High School’> runs from January 27 to April 26 at Link Art Center Dream, Dream Hall 2, delicately portraying the emotions, relationships, and growth of high school girls centered on the space of a library.
Arts Council Korea
■ Theater and Dance: Human time drawn through science-fiction imagination and the language of the body
In the theater and dance categories, questions about human existence, time, and evolution are explored through experimental forms.
The play ‘Pool (POOL)’ runs from January 10 to 18 at the Daehangno Arts Theater Small Theater. Set in a future where memory-erasure technology has become commonplace, it traces human choices in the face of loss within a structure that borrows a first-person game format.
The dance work ‘Eventually INTIME’ is presented from January 9 to 11 at the Arko Arts Theater Grand Theater, expressing, through bodily language, relationships that fade within finite time and a yearning for restoration. Then, the work performed from January 24 to 25 at the Daehangno Arts Theater Grand Theater expands narratives of human evolution and mass extinction around a virtual being.
■ Traditional Arts and Original Opera: Contemporary reconfigurations of historical records and folklore
In the traditional arts and original opera categories, works that recompose history and folktales in contemporary ways take the stage.
The traditional arts piece ‘Ssanghyangsu’, a Korean traditional music fantasy, is performed January 16 to 17 at the Daehangno Arts Theater Grand Theater, unfurling an imagination that connects past and future based on an 800-year-old tale.
During the same period, the original opera ‘2.28’ goes on stage at the Arko Arts Theater Grand Theater. Taking as its subject the 2·28 Democracy Movement that occurred in Daegu in 1960, it reexamines the meaning of freedom and justice through the solidarity of high school students.
The 18th Performing Arts Creation Studio is a flagship performing arts support program of Arts Council Korea that provides step-by-step support across the entire creative process, from production to distribution. Beginning with the eight works in this first lineup, a total of 34 new works will take the stage in sequence through March. Performance schedules and ticketing information can be found through the festival official website and social media.
