Introduction

A theater for productions of creative plays

The Namsan Arts Center’s Drama Center is Korea’s first modern private theater built in 1962 and Korea’s oldest theater for plays that still exist. Since its reopening in September 2009, the theater has expanded the scope of Korean theater through co-productions with private theater companies, with the goal of establishing itself as the theater for public productions of creative plays.
It is a convertible theater with about 480 seats that wrap around the stage in a semicircle. A combination of a proscenium arch and an apron stage allows a variety of experiments and staging.

Image of Namsan Arts Center

A theater mainly used for creative work premieres and producing modern plays

  • The season programs at Namsan Arts Center run according to premieres of creative works in modern theater at home and abroad. They include ‘communication and impressive stages’ for contemporary audiences through brave and refined stage aesthetics by selecting creative new plays.
  • Namsan Arts Center has made efforts to go beyond the role of a simple theater, to become a place where creative works are produced. It made its debut to function as a center for creating plays. Besides the season programs, Namsan Arts Center helps develop new plays and revitalize producing functions through diverse methods to recognize and single out promising writers and foster them by introducing new works written by young writers and by standing behind new emerging writers.

Contemporary theater where the audience can feel the pulse of time

  • Namsan Arts Center is a peculiar theater where the next generation’s play styles, artists and the audience can meet one another through novel planning developed especially for a play-producing theater. It functions as an incubator for future-oriented performance art which plans to set the stage for young artists’ challenges and experiments.

Theater where various experiments can be tried

  • The Drama Center is a fascinating space whose stage structure combines a proscenium stage and a thrust stage. Unlike general theaters — standardized with a proscenium stage — new stage experiments and dramatic expressions ranging from fantasy to reality can be tested. The tiered seats around the stage can be arranged differently in accordance with the expansion of the stage space. That’s why the boundary between the seats and the stage can be broken down and made into one so the theater itself can become a stage, the audience and the stage can have very close intimacy.

Major business

The Season Program of Namsan Arts Center

  • Namsan Arts Center, which has tried to differentiate theaters through developing producing functions and a unique repertory, is a theater whose priority is set on producing mid-sized theater plays.
  • This way, it can secure diversity in the commercialization of Korean performance art and in the play market environment centered on small theater plays. Namsan Arts Center has made efforts to reflect contemporaneousness in the topic or style of its plays which are produced throughout its seasonal program. That’s why art does not wish to isolate itself from the society it took root, but, at the same time, desires to express itself in a creative new style.

Programs to support play writers

  • Drafts Please is a permanent contribution system which was planned to pick out and foster new play writers and their writing. The system helps anyone who wishes to be a playwright, rather than simply wishing to apply for scripts for the purpose of producing them into plays. The writer can develop his/her writing by contributing to the system and receiving feedback from professionals. The system selects the best examples from submitted works and helps showcase them or produce them into narrative performances. Applicants can write a draft for a creative play and the intention for the writing and email them in. There are no limitations on the number of applications or career experience, leaving opportunities open for young writers who have the dream of art.
  • Namsan Play Festival is a program in which the writings selected from Drafts Please and unpublished new writings by young writers recognized by Namsan Arts Center make their debut in a narrative performance style. The narrative performances introduce new scripts to those in the performance industry so that they have an opportunity to take into consideration the possibility of producing them into plays. In addition, promising writers can have an opportunity to experience the process of having a new work is put onstage. The Namsan Play Festival wishes to serve as a good chance for planners, producers and those in the performance industry who desire to find high quality works to meet new writings. Besides, Namsan Arts Center holds writers’ lectures and workshops to pick out good writings and to pave the way to freely discuss play creation.

 

Location

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
Map Data
Map data ©2018 SK telecom
 
 
Map DataMap data ©2018 SK telecom
Map data ©2018 SK telecom
 
 
 
 
Map
Satellite

Address

  • 138 Sopa-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul

For more information, call

  • +82-2-758-2150