The Magic Zoo

An original children’s musical, imagined and sung with Korean sensibility

In a dream, Eomji and Deolleong-i go on a picnic to the zoo. Watching the cranes dance, they hear about the Black Bird — the sorcerer who has cast a spell on the cranes. To save them, the children brave the Land of Shadows, the Land of Flowers, the Land of Wind and the Land of Ice before reaching the Land of Cranes, where the grandfather crane gives them a magic spring and a golden feather to break the spell and defeat the sorcerer.

The Magic Zoo was Arirang’s first original children’s musical. In 1992 it won Best Production, Best Director and Best Actor at the 1st Seoul Children’s Theatre Awards organised by ASSITEJ, opening a new chapter for Korean children’s theatre.

At the time, children’s theatre barely existed within Arirang’s repertoire or the wider national-theatre movement, which made the production all the more notable. Concerned that commercial children’s theatre was dominated by careless adaptations of foreign fairy tales and cartoons far removed from Korean children’s lives, the whole company developed the piece collectively after a children’s theatre workshop in the winter of 1991.

Respecting the craft of children’s theatre, the show wove in Korean traditional rhythms, dance and samul-nori while using puppetry, shadow play, actors carrying puppets and live acting to hold young audiences’ attention. By widening both the subject matter and the audience of national theatre, and by sharing Korean sensibilities with children, it was a significant achievement.