Søren Møller and MJ Chung illuminate new musical landscape in Denmark and Asia

I went to an absolutely fascinating MMD (Mercury Musical Developments) talk last night chaired by Neil Marcus with MJ Chung and Søren Møller  talking about the musical theatre in Denmark, Korea, China and Japan.   Jennifer Toksvig was on her laptop making notes of the whole event so I expect you will be able to read up on it properly on the MMD site at a later date.


We all huddled into one of RADA's basement studios and were given a brief incite into these burgeoning musical theatre markets.


Søren Møller is from Fredericia Teater Denmark and the principal at Det Danske Musicalakademi.  The Frederica Teater is putting on plenty of new musicals (some by european writers) as well as new translations of all the well known shows Like Avenue Q, High School Musical and Cabaret.  Stiles and Drew's musical The Three Musketeers was translated into Danish and produced there - much to the writers delight.   


The  theatre is attracting some big names in the musical theatre world to go out and work with them including: Victoria Clark, Stephen Schwartz, Andrew Lippa, Jason Robert Brown, Judy Kuhn, Susan Schulman, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, John Bucchino, Michael John LaChiusa.  Søren explained that every show is produced anew in Denmark, nothing is replicated.  I naturally invited him to our showcase!


MJ Chung, who I know from the BML Workshop, was a font of knowledge about the musical theatre world in Korea, China and Japan.  MJ is a multi-talented person, a translator of all the biggest musicals - from English to Korean as well as having worked as a producer and dramaturg in Korea and the UK.  


MJ has written an ebook called the International Trends in Co-Production Manual with Judith Staines and Sophie Travers.  This is something everyone in the theatre should read.


In Asia, as well as Denmark every european show is translated and a completely new production is created.    There are openings for European writers in Asia, sometimes from the creation stage upwards.


We spent time discussing how very important translators are, especially for lyric translation which can sometimes be extremely difficult with languages like Korean.  


This is the sort of evening that MMD is so brilliant at!

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