'Creative Stage-New Works' Festival Warms Up Korea This Winter
Creatrip Team
2 months ago
The Korea Arts & Culture Education Service's flagship support program, the 'Creative Stage–New Works' festival (공연예술창작산실), runs annually in January–March to showcase newly created performing arts across six genres. Now in its 18th year with a 6.5 billion won budget, the festival will present 34 new works—7 plays, 7 original musicals, 8 dance pieces, 5 music works, 2 original operas, and 5 traditional arts—selected for contemporaneity, diversity, excellence and experimentation. Themes include virtual reality, gender, personal choice and growth, climate crisis and surveillance, democracy’s history, and migration and community, explored through each genre’s language. The program began in 2008 as a theater/musical 'Creation Factory' and was expanded and unified under the Korea Arts Council (예술위) in 2014; staging the festival in the performance off-season aims to boost visibility. A new second-stage production support, piloted last year, now fully funds repertoire development and nationwide distribution of acclaimed premieres. Actor Kim Shin-rok (김신록) was appointed festival ambassador and will promote the festival through June; she is active on stage and screen and praised the program’s process-focused support that enables experimentation and risk-taking for artists while acting as a curator for audiences.
