Cooking is imbued with cultural identities and social beliefs. Cooking is also a moment of fusion and mixing of ingredients in the literal sense and of cultures in the figurative sense. Food and the exploration of identity also feature prominently in the performances of Jaha Koo, a South Korean theatre and music artist based in Belgium.
He has already performed at the Mladi Levi Festival with Cuckoo, in which he explored the history of South Korean society in the company of a rice cooker. This time, in co-production with Bunker, he brings to the stage the so-called “pojangmacha”, the typical Korean fast food stall, where he is joined by an assembly of lost souls – an eel, a snail… and, once again, a rice cooker. They try to find their way between kimchi, the traditional Korean fermented cabbage, Haribo gummy candies, the traditional Western European candy, and national myths, tradition, globalisation and the commercialisation of Korean food, all while trying to offer insights into contemporary societies and the relationships between and within them through the cuisine.

Concept, text, direction, music, sound and video: Jaha Koo
Performance: Gona, Seri, Haribo & Jaha Koo
Dramaturgy: Dries Douibi
Scenography and media operation: Eunkyung Jeong
Artistic advice: Pol Heyvaert
Technical coordination: Korneel Coessens
Technique: Bart Huybrechts, Babette Poncelet
Cuckoo hacking: Idella Craddock
Production coordination: Wim Clapdorp
Production: CAMPO
Co-production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Rideau de Bruxelles, Theater Utrecht, SPRING festival, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Théâtre de la Bastille, Tangente St. Pölten – Festival für Gegenwartskultur, &Espoo theatre, Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel, Sophiensaele, Meet You Festival, Bunker, Ljubljana, National Theatre and Concert Hall Taipei, The Divine Comedy International Theater Festival / Teatr Łaźnia Nowa & Perpodium
With the support of: Taxshelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest & the Flemish Government, Ministrstvo za kulturo Republike Slovenije, Mestna občina Ljubljana
The prototype of the eel was developed as part of Innovation:Lab’s funnel in co-production with Theater Utrecht and creative technologists Adriaan Wormgoor & Willem Vooijs.
Slovenian translation: Tadej Turnšek

Performance is in Korean and English with Slovenian surtitles.

60 minutes

Photo by: Bea Borgers