‘Strange Country Dad’... Musical R&D Busan Youth Take the Lead

Aspiring Artists - Musical Company Presents First R&D Musical

December 13-14 at Busan Buk-gu Culture and Arts Center Performance

The musical company ‘Daart’ produced the musical ‘Strange Country Dad,’ which was performed at the Jayu Small Theater in Seoul Arts Center in February 2024, and it will make its new debut in Busan after R&D.

Renewed as the musical ‘Appa, Nara-ui, Isanghan’ (Dad, Country, Strange), this performance is a ‘Busan-originated R&D musical’ presented through a 10-month research and development collaboration between Daart and Dongseo University IFS (on-campus virtual company) Dongseo Musical Entertainment.

Poster of Strange Dad in the Strange Country renewed as 'Dad, Country's, Strange'.

The musical ‘Appa, Nara-ui, Isanghan,’ which tells the story of ‘Juyeong,’ a daughter who does not give up her dream of becoming a fairy tale writer despite difficult realities, and her father ‘Byeongsam,’ who suddenly has brain cancer metastasis and mistakenly believes himself to be 19 years old, is a powerful work that was selected for the 2016 Korea Creative Content Agency Story Writer Debut Program and won the 2021 Creation Workshop New Musical of the Year award. It is a warm story that delivers emotion by portraying a father given a terminal diagnosis and a dramatic time travel through which they come to understand each other, reflecting on the meaning of family.

After the performance at the Arts Center in February 2024, Daart’s creative team and Dongseo Musical Entertainment’s producer team gathered to begin research and development of the work, and it was reborn as a piece that newly expresses the original’s emotion. It will be presented to audiences at the Buk-gu Cultural and Arts Center in Busan from December 13 to 14.

To this end, Dongseo University and Daart signed an MOU regarding research and development of the work and musical talent cultivation, concentrating all support for production.

In particular, members of ‘Dongseo Musical Entertainment,’ created through the Korea Arts Council’s preliminary artist field connection support project, participated to foster a cultural ecosystem led by local young artists and to establish a system for making Busan a city of new musical R&D in the future.

Professor Yoon Tae-sik of Dongseo University’s Musical Entertainment Department, who directed the musical, expressed his affection for the work, calling it “a family musical full of emotion, tears, and laughter.” Professor Oh Se-jun, the producer, explained the background of the R&D in Busan, saying, “The work features beautiful memories of the protagonist in Busan throughout the piece,” and added, “It will become a work that actors from Busan must perform in the future.”

In December, when the year comes to a close, the musical ‘Appa, Nara-ui, Isanghan,’ which offers a warm time to reflect on the importance and love of family, will be performed at the Buk-gu Cultural and Arts Center in Busan from December 13 to 14.