PHOTO FLASH: Hero Meets the Press

The award-winning Korean musical Hero: The Musical held a press conference on Monday, August 1 at the Korean Cultural Center. The show will make its American debut at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, August 23-September 3.

With book and lyrics by A Reum Han, music by Sang Joon Oh, and orchestration by Peter Casey, Hero: The Musical tells the epic story of activist An Chunggun who sacrificed his life in the fight to preserve Korean independence and attain peace in Asia. The piece premiered in Seoul in 2009 and won all the major awards in the annual Korean musical theater award ceremonies including Best Musical.

Participants in the conference, which also included performances of selections from the musical, included director Ho Jin Yun, actors Sung Hwa Jeong (An Chuggun) and Sang Eun Lee (Sorhui), producer Leonard Soloway, Mark Heiser, managing director of the Koch Theater, production supervisor Chuck Giles, and Woosung Lee, director of the Korean Cultural Center.

Soloway said he expected American audiences to enjoy the show (which will be presented with supertitles), which he said is in the style of “long-running Broadway musicals like Phantom of the Opera. Ho Jin Yun and Giles also talked about the enormous scale of the show, including its unusual use of projection design mixed with three-dimensional scenery. The show will also feature a life-sized train on stage.

Ho Jin Yun also noted that “the show’s patriotic storyline will be particularly touching for Korean-Americans who are far from their homeland.”

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