Opening Ceremony & premier jour
Our artistic research and surveys of Cafés in South Korea began not in Seoul, but in Busan, the second largest city in the country and the largest port city. Good idea? Certainly when you know that this city also has a museum dedicated to coffee!
PopGraine was invited to the 11th Busan International Comedy Festival for 10 days of festivities. This festival is the first and largest festival dedicated to comedy in Asia. The greatest actors, comedians, and international comedians such as Korea’s most famous artist from Youtube were present. We attended the performances from the opening ceremony alongside the world’s largest festivals. No pressure. This ceremony included excerpts from a number of performances that we were going to be able to attend on the following days, not to mention the number of artists we were going to discover in one evening: Japanese singer Danaka, dancers Painters, the French duo Living Cartoon Duet, Japanese mimes Gabez, Australian Tom Walker and Swiss Circassians Family Circus (Duo Full House). The opening ceremony continued with a buffet that allowed us to discuss with some artists, staff, and some of the international festivals present, the opportunity to network and present our project.
The first show we were able to witness was why we came here: Living Cartoon Duet, a cartoon concert with artists Camille Phelep and Sophie Lavallée, which is played in French, German and English. They take you to Hollywood in the creative sphere of animated films and tell the story of this art that developed during the 1920s and 1930s. In the picture, on the piano and with sound effects, they embody in front of you and bring to life Betty Boop, Walt Disney or Felix the Cat, shown on screen.
Few people in the room for this performance in English, yet a child’s laughter is heard, an irrefutable proof that the live show can break away from language barriers. Discussing this show of European design, with Correens, after the performance was extremely rewarding. Indeed, we concerning the timing between the paintings were absolutely perfect, without length and chained. For our interlocutor, it wasn’t the same, he told us that he had asked the artists to shorten some of the passages to further suit the target audience and even with these cuts, He still felt that there was too much length for them in direct addresses to the public and that viewers might lose track of history quickly, not accustomed to Western stage creations.
The Korean representations that we saw later did indeed agree with his point of view. We’ll develop this later.
Street performances take place around the KNN Theater and the Busan Cinema Center to entertain the public between official performances, a golden opportunity to entertain the younger generation and give them first access to the live performance.
Our day continues with the Japanese mime show Gabez, with MASA and HITOSHI for a performance of The Pictogram Sequence performed at the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The Gabez duo creates a nonverbal performance “Pantomime Comedy”. Artists play different comic characters to make the audience laugh, surprise them, sometimes make them scream. When HITOSHI comes out among the audience to find MASA hiding there, it’s an opportunity for younger people to help him get his act together, while none speak the other’s language 😉 It’s a real physical comedy, fun, for all ages. We’ll all find our own way to appreciate this time.
It is with real pleasure after we discover artists who are extremely close to the public who have come to see them. They come out as soon as the performance is over to take pictures, talk, it’s kind of like the show continues off the stage.
We have a break of 1 hour then between the end of this show and the beginning of the next one. We went on a coffee break and a tour of the BICF premises before returning to the theatre to discuss with the next artist, Tom Walker. He’s rehearsing when we get to the room. We meet a deeply humble Australian artist, full of humor, attentive to what is around him and caring. It offers every arriving spectator something to freshen up (not to forget that there are currently around 36° outside) and snacks. The audience is surprised but touched by the attention. It’s a perfect introduction to make them feel comfortable. His performance Very Very is not allowed to the minor (at least here in Busan), he would probably be discouraged minus 15 years old in Europe, due to some sexual allusions. But what comedian doesn’t have one on his show? Although here, there wouldn’t be words spoken just for gestures since Very Very is a mime show. What is frankly convenient in an international context is that words are not necessary. Yes, it’s a mime show and yet he regularly calls the audience on certain sketches and takes advantage of them to test which one he can freely play without shocking his audience because of cultural differences. A show completely adaptable to the public after all! Black and sarcastic humor is on the way, we laughed a lot, so did the audience.
This first day ended with a Korean BBQ with all the international artistic teams of the day, a real moment of conviviality.
