Table Reading for ‘COMIC-CAL’
Date and Time: 13:40~15:40, September 17th, 2018
Place: KAKAO Imagination Center on 10th Floor at the Contents Korea Lab
Director: Jung-Hwa Choo
Cast: Ji-Hui Kim, Ye-Seul Son, Sun-Keun Lee, Ji-Seung Cho, Jung-Sub Yoon
‘COMIC-CAL’ on the season 3 of GLOCAL MUSICAL LIVE is a fantasy musical which moves in and out of the real world and webtoon. The webtoon characters in ‘COMIC-CAL’ takes their auditions just like reality and feel discriminated by each specification. This table reading was also on the lead of director Choo, and the cast Ji-Hui Kim, Ye-Seol Son, Ji-Seung Cho, Jung-Sub Yoon participated. The specific situations and professional vocabularies on the background of webtoon did not so persuasive to the audiences who do not enjoy webtoon. Even one of the casts didn’t even recognize what the word ‘THUMBNAIL’ was. There were many opinions that the work has lack of settings about fantasy in webtoon world, even if it was necessary for the ordinary audiences who do not enjoy webtoons to make them feel general sympathy.
But the fact that this work dealt with a subject, webtoon which was famous to young people recently was interesting. Director Choo evaluated, “It has a unique subject, dialogues are alive, and so the conversation itself is interesting.” However, she said, “Soo-Jin Bae (high-school student, a.k.a. the keyboard worrier on the comment window of webtoon) looks so scary and violent because of her behavior to lead and attack people’s opinions. (I don’t know how she’s been exposed on the stage)” The character Soo-Jin Bae has been purified such her violence because she retrieved webtoonist Han-Do’s right, however director Choo took warning about her behavior to kill or save one’s life with the text comment.
Jung-Sub Yoon said, “The purpose of this work will be much clearer if the characteristics of webtoon or scrolling stand out.” He also commented that the insane (freaky) factor of this work is not so effective now, and said, “It needs to be much more insane and freaky because this challenges to the unique genre.” Actress Ji-Hye Kim also pointed out that the subject is interesting but the genre is not so clear and said, “I am just wondering if this is comedy or the work to delivery any messages.” Byoung-Won Kang, CEO of LIVE stated his different view about the fact that subject is interesting. Kang said, “I am not sure whether I could watch this with fun even if this kind of freaky / insane comedy drama is not my style.” And he added, “I am sorry to feel that it would be much funny if it parodied with familiar webtoon characters to us. So I don’t quite feel funny because the episode on the webtoon world is just explained by word and voice.”
‘COMIC-CAL’ has its own webtoon characters with their origins, and they are casted on the work through auditions. And the webtoonist Han-Do Cho in reality has lost his work to Hyoung-Jun Choi by plagiarism right before his debut. There were many opinions that people can hardly understand the connection between reality and webtoon world. Director Choo said, “I don’t quite understand why the character in webtoon Yeo-Joo was heart-broken when she was casted on the romance drama.” Actor Ji-Seoung Cho also said, “There is a scene which characters choose works by discussing at the same time that the characters act by writer’s writing coming up, but the connection between reality and webtoon world is not so clear.”
The writer Yoo-Sun Oh explained those two worlds’ connection, “Those are linked each other.” Her explanation meant that the writer’s occupation or thoughts could influence the webtoon world, and the writer makes his decision according to the decision of characters in webtoon world. Nevertheless of Oh’s explanations, there still exists somewhat unclear connection between the two world. Director Byoung-Sung Park of the MUSICAL questioned, “Nam-Joo in webtoon world takes her audition for being casted on another work, then it means that the character in webtoon world could be casted on another writer’s another work. If so, is the face of that character changed on another work? If not, can the character be casted on the two other works at the same time?” And he said that the most important mission for this work is to make the structure of these two worlds easy to understand and simple.
Professor Soo-Young Kim at DONG-KOOK University said, “I thought the characters inside of their writer’s mind were challenging for their roles, but if not, audiences might not be able to easily understand.” Kim also said, “It is regretful that the treatment was too light even if Soo-Jin’s role to establish justice maybe affected with similarity. I hope you to consider how to overcome the gap of consumers of webtoon and that of musical.” The point is that it was just funny instead of constructing somewhat deeper view of world and contents.