The 20th ASSITEJ KOREA Winter Festival, Seoul & K-PANY (Korea International Performing Arts Network for Youth) were held in from 3rd to 14th January, 2024.
ASSITEJ Korea opened 2024 with our annual Winter Festival and presented nine exciting and varied performances for young audiences from 3rd to 14th January. We also hosted the Korean International Performing Arts Network for Youth (K-PANY) during the festival.
Shadow Factory<Puppet Theatre-The Rabbit & the Turtle> Creative Organization Sungchanpa<Eoduksini>
The K-PANY 2024 was renamed from K-PAP and comprised of a wider range of programs to build an organic and continuous network of information sharing and future collaboration. Seventeen delegates from 13 countries spent five days in Seoul, watching Korea’s representative performances and interacting through a diverse program of networking and talk programs such as a roundtable, a participatory program and a pitch & sharing program.
2024 K-PANY was started as overseas delegates and Korean artists greeted each other through the drawings of their belongings of the live drawing performance, “Thinguniverse,”
Under the festival theme of ‘Coexistence’, the participatory program “Moving a Forest Board Game” triggered a discussion on the ‘climate crisis’ discourse. Participants explored different ways to picture the future of a fictional city in 2050 and policy discussions to adapt and prepare for climate crisis.
K-PANY Opening Program Participatory Program <Moving a Forest Board Game>
Choreographer Neongcool Park, Korean traditional vocal artist Eojin Seo, Visual artist Hyewon Park, and director of Bamboo Theatre, Turmunk Batchuluun from Mongolia introduced their works in progress, and participants shared their feedback step by step in a unique way.
With the theme of ‘Nature in Children, Children in Nature’, the roundtable looked at the new future of children and youth theater after the pandemic. Nature, children and theatre were discussed not only in the context of environmental issues such as the climate crisis, but also from the philosophical perspective of human civilization, where children are fundamentally nature.
Roundtable <Nature in Children, Children in Nature> Pitching & Sharing <Creative Seed Platform>
K-PANY concluded with a performance where the delegates erased their belongings drawn reminding them that although K-PANY 2024 ends, the future connections between the delegates and Korean professionals will be endless. The delegates erased the drawings by themselves and ended K-PANY 2024 with the promise of future connection.
In addition, ASSITEJ Korea hosted the 32nd Seoul Children’s Theatre Awards during its Winter Festival. Seoul Children’s Awards has a history of rewarding performances that have contributed to the growth and development of TYA in Korea. This year seven performances have made the list and “Wait!” of Sunlight Playground won the Grand Prize. “Wait” is a lying-down play that makes the screen burst with playfulness. The high energy of the lying-down actors and the bumpy texture of the corrugated cardboard combine to make a delicate and emotional world within the screen. It was acclaimed as a beautiful portrayal of the innocence of childhood for adults, and stimulated endless imagination for children.
