2019 UMTF kicks off with Teatr Biuro Podrozy’s ‘Macbeth’

The 2019 Uijeongbu Music Theatre Festival kicks off Friday with Teatr Biuro Podrozy’s “Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?”

Starting with the Polish theater company’s reinvention of “Macbeth” on Friday, the 18th UMTF will feature some 40 productions from May 10-19, coming to a close with Geoff Sobelle’s “Home.”

“Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?” returns to Uijeongbu 10 years after it was first performed at the festival in 2009. An outdoor spectacle, it makes extensive use of fire, stilts, motorbikes and music.

This visually rich production, which recalls the Shakespearean tragedy without relying much on the text of the Bard’s original play, will be performed May 10 and 11.

Three other foreign productions will be shown at the festival: La Cordonnerie’s “Snow White or the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” Gravity & Other Myths’ “Backbone” and Sobelle’s “Home.” 

“Home,” the work of Obie Award-winning theater artist Sobelle, premiered in 2017 and will be performed May 18 and 19.

An imaginative, absurdist piece of entertainment that explores the relationship between the notions of house and home, the 105-minute-long “Home” unfolds in a two-story house setting. Incorporating dance, illusion, live music and homespun engineering, the production shows the variety of social, political, personal and aesthetic forces that surround the structures people inhabit.

Local theater company Hakchon Theater’s “Line 1,” a Korean adaptation of German musical “Linie 1” by Volker Ludwig, founder of the Grips theater in Berlin, will be reintroduced at the festival.

“The Little Musician,” a family-friendly performance from another Seoul-based company, Brush Theatre, premiered in 2016 at the Asia Culture Center and made its debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018.

The UMTF is an annual performing arts festival that has taken place every May since 2002.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)