CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Broadway's KPOP Sets Abrupt Closing Date

Playbill: KPOP has announced that it will play its final Broadway performance December 11. The musical opened at Circle in the Square Theatre November 27 following the beginning of previews October 13. While in previews, the show cancelled multiple matinee performances. As of the final performance, the musical will have played 44 previews and 17 performances.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have heard of KPOP the musical puerley because of tik tok and the stage manager side of that app. I was looking forward to the musical coming to fruition and am disappointed in the way this show feels like it closed practically before it opened. From everything I have heard the costumes, media and most unfortunately the diverse cast and crew was a little too ahead of the 2010 broadway we unfortunately still live in. This whole situation has also reminded me just the amount of power reviews have in the theater, especially when there is money and procedures involved. It is very hard to make art for the sake of art when so much money is required to make a show happen. With millions of dollars on the line is is unfortunate that artists need to compromise their vision and morals to make a show happen or they risk closing like KPOP

Theo

Monica Tran said...

I'm always really surprised when things last, like my mom always used to talk about how she was so surprised that my dad's restaurant back home lasted as long as it did, but I feel like the sentiment can be applied here as well. Its disheartening to hear about a show that puts on original content and stories that don't just fit the traditional broadway theatre show, has to come down. I remember even thinking maybe my mom would like to watch the show and have a better idea of what theatre actually is, sort of haha. It didn't even last that long either! KPOP only had 44 preview performances and 17 regular performances for it's entire run and that's honestly insane to me. The world wasn't ready for a show that had to do with that specific kind of journey of a kpop star. I'm sure it had some universal messages in the show but it doesn't really fit into what theatre is accepted as and it's hard to bridge the two schools of thought but I'm sure someday there will be another great asian story to tell and I'll get to show my parents then.

Owen Sahnow said...

That’s super unfortunate that this show is closing so abruptly. I was really hoping to go see it over winter break when I went through New York - If only to support Major Curda who graduated two years ago from CMU and this was his adult Broadway debut. It looks like he played flounder in the little mermaid, but I think that was a tour and not a broadway show. I could be wrong. It seems so wrong when a show had more previews than actual performances. This is also probably not public information, but I’d be curious to see what the budget was and how much was actually made as income. Millions of dollars were probably lost by this producer. The other weird thing about this story is that the show closed so abruptly with no warning. I haven’t read the review, but I don’t think I’m going to bother now that I know I won’t be able to see the show. I usually like to go see the show without reading reviews first.