Jaha Koo teams up with Hana, Duri, and Seri in Cuckoo (photo by Radovan Dranga)
CUCKOO
Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC)
251 Fulton St.
January 16-18, $78-$82
pacnyc.org
utrfest.org
On its website, the Korean appliance and electronics company known as Cuckoo explains that it “hopes to continue to reach diverse audiences and captivate them with products that make life simpler.”
For nearly eight years, South Korean artist Jaha Koo has been reaching diverse audiences and captivating them with his inventive play Cuckoo, in which he traces the last twenty years of Korean history with the help of three talkative Cuckoo rice cookers, Hana, Duri, and Seri, to guide him out of the isolation, or golibmuwon, that he is experiencing.
Cuckoo, which debuted in 2017, is the middle section of Koo’s Hamartia Trilogy, which began with Lolling and Rolling in 2015 and concluded with The History of Korean Western Theatre in 2020.
“Conceptually, it focuses on how the inescapable past tragically affects our lives today,” the forty-year-old Koo says about the the three works in total.
Koo is now bringing the fifty-five-minute Cuckoo to PAC NYC for four shows January 16–18 as part of the Under the Radar festival; the 7:00 performance on January 17 will be followed by a discussion moderated by South Korean playwright Hansol Jung, whose daring works include Wolf Play and Merry Me.
Koo is responsible for the concept, direction, music, text, and video and performs with the cookers; the Cuckoo hacking is by Idella Craddock, with scenography and media operation by Eunkyung Jeong.
In case Cuckoo makes you hungry, Cuckoo the company promises, “Whether you enjoy sticky rice, soft grains, or the ability to whip up an array of dishes with minimal effort — we’ve got a rice cooker to meet any need!”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]