Jaha Koo wins International Ibsen Award in Oslo — SkimNews
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- Jaha Koo won the International Ibsen award in Oslo, taking the 2.5m kroner (£200,000) prize from the Norwegian government; past recipients include Lola Arias, Taylor Mac and Forced Entertainment.
- Haribo Kimchi, his touring show, prepares an onstage banquet for two audience members inside a Korean pojangmacha snack-cart and had its UK premiere at this summer's Edinburgh international festival, with audiences invading the stage for the closing buffet.
- Cuckoo, his earlier show about Korea's late-90s financial crisis and the $58bn IMF rescue, uses three hacked talking Cuckoo-brand rice cookers as co-stars that gripe and sing, addressing 'economic imperialism' including the role of US treasury secretary Robert Rubin.
- Koo's upcoming K-pop project will be his first show where he doesn't perform — the cast will be singers — and will examine fans wielding K-pop as political protest, notably against former President Yoon's 2024 martial law attempt.
- Lolling and Rolling looks at tongue surgery some South Koreans pursue to pronounce the English 'R,' while The History of Korean Western Theatre examines what Koo calls 'theatrical imperialism.'
- A robotic eel co-stars in Haribo Kimchi because, Koo says, eels leave home, travel far, then return before dying — part of his insistence on staging non-human perspectives alongside technology, food and family.
Why it matters: Koo's win — joining past recipients like Lola Arias and backed by the Norwegian government's 2.5m kroner purse — establishes him as a major international voice, with the prize supporting a body of work that fuses Korean food traditions, hacked domestic appliances and robotics into a single theatrical language. His pivot to a performer-free K-pop show, framed around the protests that greeted Yoon's 2024 martial law attempt, extends theatre's reach into pop-culture political organising.
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