KPOP

KPOP the musical made its way to Broadway following rave reviews from its 2017 performances at the off-Broadway Ars Nova theatre, located in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.

The original show first performed in September, 2017 and ran for seven months. The show was created by artists who have little-to-no past experience working on any production on The Great White Way.

Even though the production team may lack Broadway exposure, they were still able to deliver a cohesive storyline that captured the mood of the moment. The musical was written by the South Korean film writer and director Jason Kim and many of his movie techniques have found their way into the show.

Show Receives Development Help From a Variety of Sources

Some NYC based theatre companies including the Woodshed Collective and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, helped out in the development of the show in their respective fields.

Teddy Bergman is the director of KPOP and he is the only person who has worked on any Broadway show before. Bergman previously performed in the Peter and the Starcatcher, which appeared at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 2012. He played the supporting role of Fighting Prawn.

Music and lyrics for this show were written and designed both by Helen Park and Max Vernon. Vernon has worked on previous Off-Broadway shows, like The View UpStairs, and has been described as an equal mix of “bohemia and Broadway”.

Show Fell Victim to the Pandemic

KPOP was in its production phase during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic and was the first Broadway show to host its casting auditions virtually, through online video calls. Although this process reportedly worked well, it would be quite some time before any of the actors would be on Broadway.

Pre-Broadway Engagement Cancelled

The special pre-Broadway engagement of KPOP, The Musical, that was originally scheduled for December 2021-January 2022 at The Anthem in D.C., was cancelled by the producing partners due to pandemic-related logistical challenges with bringing the production to D.C.

Show Producers Call New York Times Review "Racist"

The New York Times is standing by its critical Broadway review of KPOP after producers of the flashy Broadway musical accused it of dripping with “casual racism.”

KPOP Show producers Tim Forbes and Joey Parnes responded to Broadway theatre critic Jesse Green’s review, calling it racist and they demanded an apology.

The show producers stated: “Mr. Green’s choice of words to critique a work created by primarily by API artists plays to harmful stereotypes and the historic infantilization of Asian people in media, immediately devaluing and diminishing them,”

Green stated in his review that the musical’s lighting design was “squint-inducing,” which the show producers called a “harmful stereotype.”

Producers Accuse Jesse Green of Being White Supremacist

The producers added: “That Green doesn’t like this genre is his prerogative as a critic, but he appears to deny their very legitimacy as part of a Broadway musical, an implicit assertion of traditional white cultural supremacy.”

Show producers seem to claim the New York Times critic is a now white supremacist.

‘KPOP’ Sets Closing Notice After Only 17 Performances & 44 Previews

Despite generating considerable excitement among K-pop fans, the musical has not drawn big audiences – or at least audiences paying top dollar for tickets.

In its final week, the show, which received mixed reviews from audiences and critics, grossed just $126,493, and although 72% of the venue’s seats were filled, the average ticket price was a tiny $32. Producers were giving away most of the tickets to papering services in an attempt to gain some traction on the Great White Way.

The financial running costs of this show were in excess of $850,000 per week and investors balked at the losses that were anticipated for its total run that was expected to run to at least Feb 2, 2023. If the show had continued, financial losses could have been over $8.4 Million based on the current sales numbers.