Lucky Seoul

Welcome to “Lucky Joseon,” 1937!

Shin Hye-suk, owner of Café Minerva and once a famous actress, is saving to fund a film and stage her comeback, while her lover Oh Gi-chan gives up literature to chase a gold-mining venture. But the peace doesn’t last: Hye-suk suffers the humiliation of losing even a supporting role in a radio drama, and Gi-chan gambles away all her money. Tokyo Imperial University graduate Park Hui-su, painter Na Hye-won and café waitress Lee Hui-dong are equally bewildered by a rapidly changing Korea… so why have they all gathered at Café Minerva?

Subtitled “Permit Dance Halls in Gyeongseong,” the play’s theme is direct: even under colonial oppression, Koreans expressed their free will — and resisted — through dance. Forced open by Japan, Korea absorbed Western culture at dizzying speed and fell into confusion; men craved money, honour and heroism, women loved beauty and romance. Lucky Seoul projects that past onto the present so closely that, though the setting and dialogue belong to the 1930s, it feels like a contemporary play.

Through Hye-suk it shows the emptiness of fame; through Gi-chan, the vanity of power; through Hui-dong and Hui-su, the distorted values of modern women and men. Its critique is less a call for change than a lament for the circumstances that forced change upon us — and for the longing for freedom that was the only way out. In the play, “dance” is simply dancing, but it was also their passion for freedom. How are we using our own passion?

Speaking directly to the audience and meeting their eyes, the play gently offers a future in which everyone can dance, laugh and talk freely — and reminds us that the freedom we take for granted is the legacy of our ancestors’ tears.