• DHH

Jaha Koo (South Korea / Belgium)

An economic disaster and its ripple effects are conveyed in an onstage performance by the artist and some very special companions: a group of talking rice cookers.

Please note: The curtain time for the performance on Wednesday, February 5th was incorrectly published in our program guide. All performances are at 8PM.

Jaha Koo folds 20 years of South Korean history into this bittersweet narrative. An economic disaster and its ripple effects are conveyed in an onstage performance by the artist and some very special companions: a group of talking rice cookers. Re-programmed to speak, these devices serve as a token of Jaha’s alienation and a metaphor for the most absurd, most comical aspects of the recent past.

“Cuckoo is an educational and philosophical treasure, with hilarious banter between rice cookers… It masterfully balances the personal and the worldwide, the human and the inanimate, creating a unique pressure-cooked theatrical feast.”

—Montreal Theatre Hub

Cuckoo is a dialogue, a confessional, even a documentary of sorts. Jaha sits with his electronic friends, and together they discuss the catastrophic market crash of 1997 and subsequent national phenomena, including unemployment, depression and suicide among the youth. The subject matter is dark, but there’s rich comedy in the wry observations, the personal revelations and, of course, the basic concept itself. This is an account of deep malaise in which the storyteller(s!) demonstrate enough wit and creativity to suggest that there is, against the odds, hope for the future.