{"id":923193,"date":"2026-10-10T15:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923193\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T15:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T15:50:09","slug":"jelliness-is-my-life-motto-jackpot-theatre-prize-winner-jaha-koo-on-kimchi-k-pop-and-his-robotic-eel-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/923193\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Jelliness is my life motto\u2019: jackpot theatre prize winner Jaha Koo on kimchi, K-pop and his robotic eel | Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I meet Jaha Koo in Oslo, where he has just been honoured with the prestigious International Ibsen award, I hand him a congratulatory packet of Haribo. The alternative would be a jar of kimchi but one of the many things you learn from Koo\u2019s captivating theatre shows is that air travel and fermented vegetables can be a disastrous combo. When he moved to Berlin from South Korea<\/a> with 10kg of his grandma\u2019s finest kimchi, it became \u201cbloated like a dead whale\u201d and exploded on his balcony. His new neighbours were unimpressed.<\/p>\n

In Koo\u2019s current touring production, Haribo Kimchi<\/a>, he examines how this unlikely fusion of two foods represents his cultural identity. He does so while preparing an onstage banquet for two lucky audience members. Despite spending many years in Europe, where Haribo gummies originated around a century ago, Koo still finds himself considered foremost as Korean by Europeans. But when he returns to his original homeland he is not always seen as Korean either.<\/p>\n

We meet the day after the ceremony for the Ibsen award, founded by the Norwegian government and rewarding the winner with a huge 2.5m kroner (\u00a3200,000). Its past recipients include Lola Arias, Taylor Mac and Forced Entertainment. Koo cheerfully packs away my sweets for the next day\u2019s flight to Belgium, where he is now based, and outlines his life motto of \u201cjelliness\u201d. It was only when he arrived in Europe that he started to eat gummy bears. \u201cWhen you push jelly, it can shrink and change form but after a few seconds, it recovers its shape,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is the same resilience I need to improve when I live outside Korea.\u201d In the show, he explains how the bears\u2019 smiley faces cheer him up when he\u2019s feeling down.<\/p>\n

A kimchi diaspora \u2026 Jaha Koo cooks for theatregoers while he performs at the Edinburgh international festival 2026. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

If Haribo was a new discovery, kimchi \u201cwas there before I was born and it was waiting for me\u201d. As a Korean, he says, it is impossible to think about food without this quintessential side dish and he is part of \u201ca kimchi diaspora\u201d. The exact ingredients may differ around the world, depending on what\u2019s available, but that doesn\u2019t make any recipe inauthentic, he says: \u201cKimchi can be very diverse.\u201d When he prepares the dish in Belgium, it sums up how he is true to his roots yet adapting to a new environment \u2013 \u201ca kind of cultural assimilation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Koo is an artist adept at setting out his stall \u2013 literally so in the case of Haribo Kimchi, where the set is a Korean snack cart called a pojangmacha. It\u2019s a movable feast, typically frequented by hungry customers of all backgrounds and generations \u2013 \u201ckind of like a soul place,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want to find comfort, eat quite humble food.\u201d The roof of Koo\u2019s bar has a Haribo-red glow that is translucent \u2013 a signifier, he suggests, of in-between states, much as the pojangmachas suggest lives in transit. \u201cThey are movable. There is no address. They appear in the evening and then disappear.\u201d He draws a parallel with the country\u2019s pop-up shop culture, which can transform a street over night, and Korea\u2019s rapid pace of change which, viewed from Europe, makes him feel far behind as well as far away.<\/p>\n

A simple kimchi pancake is on the menu for Haribo Kimchi, its aroma filling the room in a show where Koo\u2019s narrative is often sensory \u2013 such as the persimmon fruit trees he remembers from his youth. The theatregoers who take a seat at his bar are first given a somaek, a cocktail made with soju and beer, then several dishes including cold seaweed soup. As you\u2019d expect from the theatrical cookery genre, which has included productions as different as Travis Alabanza\u2019s Burgerz<\/a> and Hannah Khalil\u2019s My English Persian Kitchen<\/a>, each item on the menu has a different emotional resonance \u2013 Koo likens it to a score of carefully chosen compositions. Seaweed, for example, has links with birthday traditions in Korea and with ocean myths.<\/p>\n

A movable feast \u2026 the set for Haribo Kimchi with projected scenes from South Korea. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

That brings us to Koo\u2019s unusual co-star: a robotic eel who slithers around the stage and even delivers a ballad. (A giant gummy bear and a snail break out in song too.) It\u2019s not as random as it sounds \u2013 Koo says he was drawn to the way eels leave their birth home, journey afar, but \u201cthen go back to their home before they die\u201d.<\/p>\n

Haribo Kimchi, designed by Eunkyung Jeong (who is married to Koo) and with dramaturgy by their regular collaborator Dries Douibi, had its UK premiere at this summer\u2019s Edinburgh international festival, where the audience invaded the stage for his end-of-show buffet. It\u2019s not the first time Koo has found that mealtimes can make perfect metaphors for a show. In Korea, he says, \u201cWhen we say hello, we always ask: \u2018Did you have a good meal?\u2019 Korean people call family sikku, which means \u2018people who eat together\u2019.\u201d His earlier production Cuckoo<\/a>, which he revived in Oslo, uses rice cookers as a symbol of both \u201ceconomic imperialism and the pressure upon society\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cuckoo delves into the longterm impact of Korea\u2019s late 90s financial crisis and its neoliberal shift after the International Monetary Fund intervened with a $58bn rescue package. The part played by US treasury secretary Robert Rubin in what Koo calls \u201ceconomic imperialism\u201d is given a catchy electro-pop tune to rival Bo Burnham\u2019s Jeff Bezos<\/a> takedown. Koo describes, in a show as angry and raw as Haribo Kimchi is gentle and warm, a severe spike in unemployment, inequality and isolation \u2013 \u201ca generation without a future\u201d, including an account of his close friend\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

Angry and raw \u2026 Jaha Koo\u2019s Cuckoo, 2019. Photograph: Eunkyung JEONG<\/p>\n

Cuckoo is the name of Korea\u2019s brand of ubiquitous talking rice cookers \u2013 Koo appears on stage with three of them which have been hacked so that they gripe at each other and even sing. Listening to an answerphone message from his father, Koo cradles one cooker as if it\u2019s his own child. The show also has much of the poppy melancholy of Haribo Kimchi and blurs with performance art: in the climax, he tips a mound of rice from the cooker, steam rises, and he feverishly prepares it in portions \u2013 an act of control and division as much as cheffing.<\/p>\n

His other shows take in linguistic colonisation: Lolling and Rolling is about the tongue surgery some South Koreans pursue in order to pronounce the English \u201cR\u201d. The History of Korean Western Theatre<\/a> examines what you could call theatrical imperialism. \u201cI studied at university in Korea and it was quite a conservative environment in terms of what theatre can be,\u201d he says. In this classical western definition of drama, there was no room for a robotic eel or a chatty rice cooker and Koo is intent on putting tech on stage. \u201cWhen we think about our contemporary world, it\u2019s impossible to think and understand only with a human perspective. If we want to understand our time, then we have to think about different perspectives \u2013 nature, animals \u2013 and also technology like robotics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Oslo ceremony speech, Koo duly reflected on the irony of receiving an award named after a canonical figure such as Ibsen: \u201cBut he was also an artist who questioned the theatre and society of his own time.\u201d His next project will grapple with another artform that has become \u201ca force for change\u201d: K-pop<\/a>, whose fans have wielded the genre\u2019s bangers and glow sticks as a form of political protest, notably against former President Yoon\u2019s martial law attempt in 2024. It will be the first of Koo\u2019s shows where he will not perform; the cast will comprise singers. \u201cI want to examine our global society through the lens of K-pop,\u201d he says. \u201cIt has strong power as a new form of pop culture \u2026 On the other hand, the industry has a really dark side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theatre, for Koo, is an arena for us \u201cto think together\u201d he says. \u201cThis kind of solidarity is very important,\u201d he adds. It\u2019s drama as an act of breaking bread with the audience \u2013 or slurping cold seaweed soup.<\/p>\n

Haribo Kimchi<\/a> is touring Europe until 21 November. Chris Wiegand\u2019s trip to Oslo was provided by the International Ibsen award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I meet Jaha Koo in Oslo, where he has just been honoured with the prestigious International Ibsen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-923193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}