Date/Place : 2022.06.23.(Thu) / Meeting Room in Jongno-gu
Moderator : Annette Eunkyung Kang(Professor of Chugye University of the Arts (Seoul))
Panelist : Michael McFadden(Vice President of TRW Production, New York)
Panelist : Darren Bell(Director of Forth Wall Live, DLAP GROUP, London)
Panelist : Emma Martin (Emma Martin Arts Marketing, London)

On the morning of June 23, the last day of the Korean Arts Management (KAMS) K-Musical Market 2022, three of its international presenters – Producer Michael McFadden, Vice President of TRW Production (New York); Director Darren Bell, DLAP Group (London); and the founder of U.K.-based Emma Martin Arts Marketing – attended a roundtable to discuss the future of the event. Professor Annette Eunkyung Kang, Chugye University of the Arts (Seoul), a KAMS board member, led the discussion. The following are edited down highlights from their two-hour exchange:

About the current state of Korean musicals

Kang
Thank you for sharing your valuable time. My first question is what is your overall feeling about the event?

McFadden
I am always impressed with the level of talent here. The actors, the singers, the musicians, all of that. I’m always equating it to my first visit 25 year ago and how far it’s come. It’s quite the distance. In terms of the musicals, they are much more classic in terms of the sweeping, romantic British-novel-on-stage kind of approach, which is not where the market is headed for our audiences.

Bell
Yes, I would agree. I think lots of the stuff we’ve seen feels like the U.K. had that in maybe the 90s. It feels a little dated. We expected a lot more pop culture … more Korean stories.

Martin
Michael and I expected to see more Korean stories and Korean narratives. We saw “The Green Coat” and “You and It” yesterday, and they stood out – with elements that you could see being performed somewhere else. You could really buy into the story and see audiences engaging from an international perspective. I think it is also important from an early stage to think about the audience. If international, we want stories told by the people who should tell them – your culture and your history, that really excites us.

Bell
At every business meeting yesterday, I asked every pitch person, "Why are you choosing to write European stories?" I feel they think no one wants to listen to Korean stories. Well, We want to hear stories authentically told by the people they are about. Korean culture - with all the titles on Netflix, the Squid Games, the artists BTS and Black Pink, they have huge international appeal, and people want that.

McFadden
When we talk about Korean stories, we are still talking about human stories. For example, what is it like to live with your family and your parents and grandparents in a small apartment? That's interesting. That's why we were all interested in "Parasite.“

Bell
Also, some of the stuff that we've been pitched(one of the programs in the K-Musical Market) has been very male-oriented as well. We like strong women characters, shows like "SIX(musical)." In fact, most musical theater is geared to strong women, but the shows we have seen or been pitched to have been, male celebrity led, from day one. The first question from the investors was "Who's going to be in it?" That feels very early in the stage to be picking a cast member. Make the piece good first before you start worrying about who is going to be in it.

Martin
That's the kind of longevity element which I think is quite interesting. We were talking to one of the producers yesterday and they were saying, "From a marketing perspective if you've got the right name, you can sell it. You don't have to do the same level of investment and work that you do in the U.K." That's brilliant for a short-term run, but if you want to tour it internationally, then the thought beyond that casting is very important. And I'd like to push back slightly on the idea of a young-male lead being a selling point for a young female audience; female-led stories are perfect for a young female audience. With "SIX" and "Heathers" in the U.K., we are seeing those audiences react really well to women perceived in strong and complex roles. You've got the audience, a beautiful audience who want to see female characters like that. There's a real opportunity to grab, and your audience will go with you.

Bell
Thank you for sharing. What Ms. Martin said is very interesting: how our producers start by casting young-males for star-oriented marketing. How can we overcome this?

McFadden
I think you should start to resolve it by allowing the artists more freedom. If this organization's job is to support and give seed money to ideas, then the organization should push them in that direction.

About Korean Musical Audiences

Martin
Your market is growing. It's really impressive, and I think what you need to start doing now is use data: communicate back with them, learn who they are, where they live, what they do. It's brilliant that you can do this fairly minimal but major marketing activity and they will come. Expand with more targeted activity. The audiences may have been brought there by a name, but they had an experience and they are returning. Allowing yourselves to target them about different shows in different ways will help your market grow and help them try the different shows that you are wanting to explore.

Kang
We lack audience diversity, so that's why our producers are very cautious.

McFadden
When you want to start exploring and expanding, then we are going to have to talk about different ways of marketing, different ways of talking to audiences and what the other selling points around the show are.

About taking risks and trying new things

McFadden
For me, coming out of COVID-19, the Me-Too Movement, Black Lives Matter, the attacks on the Asian community in New York specifically, Broadway producers right now don't want to be called out. That's really the answer. What won the Tony this year? "A Strange Loop." That show has been in development for 10 years. It is about the personal journey of a large, Black, homosexual man, and it became a national hit. If you took that to a producer five years ago, they'd be like "No way." But people are more open and willing to take that kind of risk.

Martin
Audiences are much more complex and interested in the story and in engaging. We've seen that across the globe. It's really crucial not to underestimate that.

Kang
From the perspective of the government, how do you persuade the producers to take more risks?

Bell
In the U.K., there is funding available for diverse stories.

McFadden
Last night we saw a show that felt like Off Broadway. Are there not producers who can minimize exposure and risk - with support from KAMS and the government - to minimize budgetary financing to be able to transfer that show? Off Broadway to Broadway. You need to start mining in this direction somehow.

Bell
It was also interesting that creatives were pitching ideas and shows but also attaching budgets to it. To me that is totally strange because a creative and a writer would never pitch a budget. They would pitch an idea and then it would be up to the producers and investors to make it work financially. I think if the creatives could focus more on the creative and less about the money and let the producers worry about the money, maybe more risks could be taken.

Kang
That is a very wise observation. Pitching sessions should focus on ideas and not budgets.

McFadden
For me, it is more about the results. We need to focus on the play first. We workshop pieces, so even if I think I need LED screens, we don't do LED screens. We go into a room with chairs and blocks, and we work on it for a month or two. In my opinion once that's there, the rest just reveals itself.

About Off Broadway in the US

Kang
I'm very curious about the beginning of Off Broadway.

McFadden
Off Broadway right now doesn't really exist like it did in the 80s and 90s. It got really expensive, so now it's moved to the regional theaters. They're the ones that are partnering with producers and such. But the model wasn't like that 15-20 years ago. The model was a place, so is it possible to create something like that here? A smaller budget, a smaller venue, more freedom, more time

Kang
Market segmentation: Off Broadway and Broadway.

Martin
Absolutely, the market does vary between the two hugely, but there's also a big crossover. And because you have fewer tickets to sell, it's less risk. And you can start selling the feel of the show and what it's about and who it's about. You can talk to your audiences. You can survey them. On a smaller scale you have the opportunity to talk to them more, but when you are trying to fill X-many hundred-thousand seats a night, you're just interested in how the numbers stack up. With the smaller theaters, you can take more time, hopefully.

McFadden
Broadway is for tourists. It's a theme park. It's lost what it was. Wanting to get here is fascinating from this point of view.

Kang
Thank you for your thoughts. If I can just add a little about our "Off Broadway": We have something similar in Daehangno where the KAMS building is located. There are about 170 theaters all in a very small area. Most have about 70 or 80 seats, and they run shows daily: one show for one year. "The Laundry" has been on for about a decade.

Bell
Off Off West End runs are normally six to three months.

Martin
Sometimes four weeks.

Bell
They churn them very quickly. Long-running shows normally don't run there.

McFadden
Go to the evolution of theater history: Theatre of Cruelty, Theatre of the Absurd, all these great Brechtian, whatever the idea is - [small experimental theaters] are where it all started from. If you can start moving things in an interesting way and support that, something will come out of it.

Martin
Absolutely create the work you want to see. It doesn't have to come to the U.K. or Broadway. But for ones that want to come to our countries, I think that's where you'll see the difference in messaging: who's telling the stories and what the stories are. If it resonates with producers like these guys, then we can take it forward.

About support policies

Bell
And some of the best work is not-for-profit. We have a lot of government-funded works that does not allow profits, and that's sometimes some of the best works.

McFadden
But commercial producers can option the piece and bring it to the West End or Broadway.

McFadden
In my humble analysis, you are at the beginning here. It's going to take you a few years to figure this out. You need to have your five- or ten-year plan. The audience, you'll get them there, and you'll inspire the artists to take more risks, but development is not something you can force.

Martin
Absolutely. We've started to invest more and more in growing producers and training producers.

Bell
Would a scheme like 'Stage One' work here? [stageone.uk.com] There is this government funding for young producers to take risks on new works. They are given grants to take on more diverse work and receive training. And they also have the theater tax credit in the U.K. They give back 40 percent of pre-production costs to encourage developing work.

McFadden
In the United States, certain states offer tax credits. So, when we are launching, we can go to New York state and open it there.

Kang
VAT on performance creations is also exempted in Korea.

Bell
That's great. It does help, and an ongoing annual tax credit for every show does really help. That money helps producers take on risks, so a show doesn't have to be commercial. The show could have lost all its money. But by the time it gets its tax credit back, it turns back into profitability … which is true for a lot of shows.

About the overseas expansion of K-Musical

Kang
Our producers are always thinking about how to present themselves in the international market. Do we need some kind of credentials or Westernizing?

McFadden
Honestly, you can't brand it yet because it doesn't exist. You're not there yet. Right now, taking what you have is not the brand.

Bell
I think that's something that we've all agreed on this week. We just haven't seen enough real Korea stories.

Martin
We've seen things that you are putting on. That's important to us to see because then we get an understanding of the market here. … We are just more passionate about the Korean stories because that's what we don't have.
There are fewer companies in the U.K. There's a slightly larger South Asian community. I worked for a company that was British-South Asian. They wrote British-Indian stories. That's what they wanted to talk about because that's who they were. And we had lots of audiences. Yesterday, "You and It" felt like a story that was wanting to be told by those people. And it was lovely. It doesn't have to be historical or traditional dress.

McFadden
There's a myriad of ways to tell your story your way. Sometimes, you just sit in a room with a traditional Korean instrument and you bring in a rock band, and you start riffing, and all of a sudden you've got something you've never heard before. And we go, "Sonically, that's good." Different ingredients that we've not used before. The talent is incredible.

Bell
Your singers are world-class singers. The two lead females in "The Green Coat" are incredible. If we were agents we'd be taking them back with us.

Martin
You've got this amazing thing here - this ball of talent that is about to explode. The creativity is absolutely there. It's just the restrictions on having to cast a certain way and what you are thinking about commercially.

McFadden
We sat in those pitch meetings, and there was a panel of judges up front. And I'm not questioning their insight, but they are looking at it from a very narrow lens. What you are trying to do is say, we want to look through this much bigger lens.

Bell
Each one of those people asked, "Who's going to be in it?" That's got nothing to do with the creative part. You have to believe in the show before the casting. It was a commercially led pitch session, and I think it needs to be more creative led.

Martin
We've seen so much potential and creativity and talent. We just want it released. We just want them to feel the freedom to tell the stories they really care about.

Bell
They shouldn't be allowed to talk about money or set design. The only pitch that felt really personal was the "Mowgli" one because the only reason he was doing it was for his son.

Kang
We are thinking about making a variety of pitches, but we have to give a presentation to the Korean investors.

McFadden
Then, it's always going to be investor led. The audiences are very sophisticated. You have to trust them.

Martin
And that's an amazing opportunity - if you've got people coming time and time again to watch shows. From the standard U.K. perspective, once or two times a year counts as a loyal audience attendee. You've got audiences willing to go again and again. That is a real opportunity because they are engaged.

Kang
They come to the show every time and they even buy the script. They know everything about the show and the cast.

Martin
There is a huge amount of cast album releasing and things like that. Particularly, with new musicals now, like with "SIX" and shows like that, Spotify and Amazon Music were a big part of that. And you've got the audience that's engaged.

McFadden
And most importantly, every play that you develop should be able to happen in a room like this. … Don't talk about the physical production in a pitch. It's not your job. Let's us use our imaginations to. It is a collaborative art form.

On the developmental opinion of K-Musical International Market

Kang
Question Two: What was your favorite part of the K-Musical Market? In terms of practicality for organizing the next event.

Bell
For me, I would think a session from us to you because we have lots of content and ideas too to collaborate on. I don't feel like we've been asked a lot of questions. I think a session like this with creatives and producers would be helpful for them as well.

McFadden
We are spending a lot of time going to see shows. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be experiencing and understanding artists, so we have something to take away and figure out how to work with.

Bell
This sort of discussion we should have every day with producers. We should be talking to the writers and creators about risk taking and not worrying about money.

McFadden
It seems that your organization is trying to develop, and there's freedom in that. But it still feels kind of restrictive; there are a lot of men sitting in the front telling them what it needs to be.

Martin
It was really great when we could read subtitles, but it would be great if could give even more.

McFadden
Give us context.

Bell
And, this may be a cultural thing, but I want them to ask questions. They need to ask difficult questions.

McFadden
You are not in the star business. You are building something new. That's how you have to look at it. You keep trying to equate it back to our audiences. Your audiences only know those kinds of shows. You are trying to find out how to expand the Korean brand. You expand the Korean brand by defining it, and it's going to take a little time. But once you define it, the audience will come. Right now, you have only what you brought over and have adapted from Western culture. You need to take it and own it and find out what that is. That's how you expand this model.

Kang
The people in the Korean musical industry are now aware that KAMS is organizing this event. And also we have some new connections from producers from the U.K. and the States who were invited last year. KAMS are also officially a member of NAMT((National Alliance for Musical Theatre) now, so KAMS will join the New Musical Festival in October in New York. And we are really curious about what audiences in the States and U.K will like.

McFadden
Believe in what you have, and they will come. Don't conflate Broadway with theater. It's about getting on a ride. Certainly, I understand the branding and the end game, but "Strange Loop" took 10 years before it got there. He never thought about going to Broadway, he was hoping to get a regional production out of it. It will just reveal itself.

Bell
Michael made a really good point: Because your organization is so young, you could really make changes and steer the ship in the right way. Our government would never listen to us. It's very refreshing that you're willing to listen and create and mold your relatively new industry.

Kang
I totally agree with your valuable opinions. It's time for Korean producers to move and be brave, and maybe the K-Musical Market could build momentum for the future of our industry. That is your homework and my homework.