Who is theatre-maker Jaha Koo?

South Korean born Jaha Koo is also a music composer and videographer, and he brings each of these elements to bear – along with text and robotics – producing works that sit somewhere between the boundaries of performance and multimedia. 

At the core of much of Koo’s output is an examination of the structural issues faced within contemporary Korean society, but also, more broadly, a look at how the inescapable past continues to affect our lives today, often tragically. 

These themes are certainly present in his latest work, Haribo Kimchi, which he brought to our Purcell Room in May 2025. Ahead of which, we took time to familiarise our self (and yourself) with the man behind the work with a closer look at just who Jaha Koo is.

Although born in South Korea he is no longer based there

After completing his degree in Theatre Studies at the Korean National University of Arts, Koo emigrated to Europe in 2011. Here he undertook a master’s degree at Amsterdam’s DAS Theatre, and has since remained in the lowlands, living between Brussels and Amsterdam, and recently working with Ghent-based arts centre CAMPO.

His exile has led to him questioning his own nationality

As Koo explained in an interview ahead of an appearance at Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival earlier this year, whenever he now returns to Korea he feels as if he is viewed less as a Korean person, and more as ‘an international person with a Korean background’. And yet conversely when in Belgium he senses that Europeans look upon him as ‘distinctly Korean’, as a result Koo asks ‘Am I still Korean? That is my question these days’.

His artistic journey began with music

‘Actually my musical background is longer than my theatre background,’ Koo told New Bloom’s Brian Hioe, adding in a subsequent interview with Philip Bither for Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center that, ‘in high school, being in a band is how I fell in love with the experience of performing live. It is where I felt the most joy’. It was this joy of performing that steered Koo towards theatre, as he told Hioe, ‘I registered for the theatre club in high school. I was really into it because there are many mediums, such as stage work, text, music, and visual arts. And I wanted to become an independent theatre maker, who makes everything himself’.

As a student he found the conventions of ‘traditional’ theatre too constricting

Although Koo had found his ideal creative outlet in theatre-making and performance, he often found the way it was taught to him, or the ways in which he was expected to produce works, to be somewhat restrictive. In his interview with Bither, Koo explained that while studying he found the theatre programme to be’ very conservative in its definitions of approaches to theater. There were a lot of restrictions to what my artist practice could be.’ And similarly, ‘being forced to use the tradition of scripts and theater directing didn’t appeal to me because there wasn’t any innovation in that’.

And so he has set out to determine his own theatrical form

Something he best explained in an interview for Festival TransAmériques, ahead of taking his work The History of Western Theatre in Korea to the festival in 2022. ‘Form is very important to me,’ explained Koo, ‘I’m a theatre creator, but I’m also a musical composer and a videographer. How to handle different artistic languages within my creative work is a question I’m always exploring… I want to invent a new, unique form that will allow me to encompass every facet of my identity [and] since 2014, I’ve set myself the goal of finding a theatrical form that goes beyond a lecture or documentary’.

His work combines multiple mediums

As we mentioned in our introduction, though we’ve described him as a ‘theatre-maker’ Koo’s work involves multiple disciplines, including composition, video and text. As he explained to Bither, ‘my first step is the research that leads to creating the work’s concept and theme. From there, I start to make video and text… it’s more like an equal relationship among different elements of music, video, cinematography, and so forth [and] when I feel ready, I bring everything onto a stage or big space, where I start to fit the puzzle pieces together’.

He cites the visual artist Nam June Paik as a major influence

Nam June Paik (1932 – 2006), a mixed media artist from Seoul, was a member of the international experimental movement, Fluxus, and is considered to be the founder of video art. ‘He was a really big influence,’ Koo told Bither, ‘he is also of the Korean diaspora and grew up in South Korea. When I looked at his artwork, I saw that work can be many things at once. His artistic practice gave me a lot of confidence and inspiration. Although he is a visual artist, Nam June Paik always says ‘I’m not a visual artist, I’m a musician’’.

Much of his work to date has explored the effects of imperialism on South Korean society

That’s particularly the case with Koo’’s Hamartia Trilogy. Taking its name from the Greek term for a tragic error or mistake with significant consequences, all three of the trilogy’s works were conceived by Koo in 2014. The first, 2015’s Lolling & Rolling saw Koo immerse himself in the phenomenon of tongue-tie surgery, an operation performed in South Korea to ease pronunciation of the English tip of the tongue ‘r’. This was followed by Cuckoo (2017), which examined a society under pressure due to far-reaching economic imperialism, with the aid of a talking rice cooker. Whilst the trilogy’s final part, The History of Korean Western Theatre (2020), looked at the impact of theatrical imperialism, and how the impact of the Western canon had impacted autonomous development.

‘Since I address issues in South Korean society which most spectators that I encounter internationally know very little about,’ Koo explained In his interview for Festival TransAmériques,‘I have to include many historical and political elements in my shows. I try to enable an exchange with the audience around this information, a space where knowledge is not transmitted via a learning process but through an artistic experience instead’.

He’s not averse to using conventional items in unusual ways

Yes, we did mention a talking rice cooker in that previous point. As unusual a theatrical device as that may seem it was something of a natural end point to Koo’s desire to explore new means to tell stories and present his works. As he explained to Bither, ‘Within the school, I couldn’t find collaborators. I was alone in the university and couldn’t make my own theater because they never produced solo work. But solo work was what I wanted to make [and so I became] interested in what non-human performers could be on the stage.’

In Cuckoo, that non-human performer was the aforementioned rice cooker, as Koo detailed to Hioe in New Bloom. ‘When I started to make [Cuckoo], I was originally thinking about the social pressure… we are subject to under society. At the same time, as an artist, or as a performer, I was thinking about post-humanism… theatre without human beings.’ Which led Koo to the decidedly non-human rice cooker – both a familiar piece of technology, but also a social identifier. And with the aid of an internationally renowned hacker Koo was able to reprogram the device as a robotic object he could perform with on stage.

His latest work takes you to a typical South Korean street food stall

Or pojangmacha as they’re known on the streets of Koo’s homeland; landmark spots for South Korean night owls. In Haribo Kimchi however, the visitors to the pojangmacha are a little less conventional. An eel, a snail and a gummy bear take it in turns to guide you on a journey both culinary and cultural, that takes in not only the tradition of kimchi and tastes of umami, but also the shame of trying to blend in and the pain of racism. Playing with your senses, and your perception of food, Koo’s piece is a typically hybrid work, featuring text, music, video and robotics.

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