Haribo Kimchi

Multisensory and playful performance serves personal stories marinated in sweet-and-sour melancholy.

South Korean theatre practitioner and composer Jaha Koo featured at the & Fest - Focus Ghent festival in the spring of 2024. Then, the performers on stage were three coded rice cookers. Now, Koo sets up a pojangmacha, a South Korean street food tent, on stage.

The sounds of simmering seaweed soup and frying kimchi pancakes are combined with razor sharp observations about food as a constituent part of identity, and as comfort and a haven for those in exile.

Intimate and absurdist anecdotes about a snail, a gummy bear, and an eel delve into the time of a great famine in South Korea, and reflect on migration, the humiliations of trying to fit in elsewhere, and homesickness. Food is a relatable and shared language that can illuminate societal structures as well as the conflicts and paradoxes that define cultural dislocations.

In this exceptional performance, Koo combines music, cutting-edge video, and robotic performers and pairs them with cozy chatter and a culinary journey. Simultaneously, without fanfare, he permanently transforms our understanding of food.