Honors student Juno Snider ’27, and Sheri Anderson, senior specialist professor and director of theatre arts in the Music and Theatre Arts Department, have been invited to present their paper at the Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea.
The paper, “‘A Space Where Traditionally They Were Not Welcome:’ A Study of KPOP: the Musical,” explores the premature closing of the Broadway run of “KPOP: The Musical.” The 2017 off-Broadway run of “KPOP: The Musical” was a groundbreaking event in the history of AAPI theatre. It was an Asian American story being told by an Asian American creative team, and featuring an entire cast of persons of color, 17 out of 18 of whom were of Asian descent. The production was both a critical and commercial success, selling out its entire run and winning Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical, and Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. However, when the show transferred to Broadway, it closed only 17 performances after opening. This paper investigates what went wrong, and to what extent race may have been a contributing factor in the show’s premature closing.
The Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of the role of the arts in society. It is a place for critical engagement, examination, and experimentation, developing ideas that connect the arts to their contexts in the world – on stage, in studios and theaters, in classrooms, in museums and galleries, on the streets and in communities.