Seoul Performing Arts Festival promises new perspectives in October

The 2024 Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF) will be held from Oct. 3 to 27 in multiple venues across Seoul.

A scene from ″The Museum″ by Bashar Murkus [KOREA ARTS MANAGEMENT SERVICE]

The 2024 Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF) will be held from Oct. 3 to 27 in multiple venues across Seoul.

The SPAF is an annual arts festival first held in 2001. This year’s festival is hosted by the Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS), a subsidiary under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

This year's SPAF will touch upon topics of gender, disability, technology and more through the mediums of theater, dance and more. Works from the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific region that were previously difficult to access in Korea will be featured in the festival, according to KAMS.

This year the festival will be held at the LG Arts Center Seoul in Gangseo District, western Seoul; the National Theatre of Korea in Jung District, central Seoul; and three venues in Jongno District, central Seoul — Arko & Daehakro Arts Theater, Theater Quad, Arts Korea Lab.

Major works that will be exhibited include the opera “Woman at Point Zero,” the play “The Museum” and the dance performance “Scored in Silence.”

A still of ″Scored in Silence″ by dance performer Chisato Minamimura [KOREA ARTS MANAGEMENT SERVICE]

“Woman at Point Zero” is based on a 1977 novel of the same name by Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi and will be performed by Belgium theater troupe LOD muziektheater. The novel details the life of a murderer, who tells her story before being executed.

“The Museum” is a play written by Palestinian playwright and director Bashar Murkus, who also leads the independent Palestinian theater collective Khashabi Ensemble in Haifa, Israel. The play explores themes of violence, terrorism and the banality of evil through a "dangerous dialogue" that happens between two men in a museum.

“Scored in Silence” is a dance performance by Chisato Minamimura, a deaf artist, that depicts deaf people who survived the atomic bomb. The performance features historical self-reflection and experimental visual arts.

The festival is built around the theme of “a new perspective,” according to Kyu Choi, art director of the SPAF. The audience will be faced with perspectives ranging from “highly individualistic narratives” to “social, cultural and political” ones derived from “sensory experiences.”

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [kim.minyoung5@joongang.co.kr]