'Birot' reshapes pace of theater over time

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Kim Myung-hwa

The author is a playwright and director. 

“Jellyfish,” a play about love and self-determination among people with developmental disabilities, recently won a Baeksang Arts Award after earlier receiving the Dong-A Theater Award in 2025.

The consecutive honors marked a turning point for disability theater, long treated as a marginal genre in Korea. They reflected not only growing public awareness of people with disabilities but also a broader advance in the artistic quality of such productions. The achievement owed much to disabled performers, nondisabled production staff who collaborated with them, financial support and the mature writing of British playwright Ben Weatherill.

That is why another production, “Birotdoeda” (roughly meaning “to begin,” “to originate” or “to emerge from something”), written by Kim Ji-su and directed by Kang Ye-seul for the disabled theater company Aein, carried a different kind of resonance. Written by a Korean playwright with disabilities and performed entirely by disabled actors, the play guided audiences with an unusually calm rhythm built around the idea of rest.

The stage is set inside “Birot,” a guesthouse operated by disabled people and open only to disabled guests. Visitors can choose furniture suited to their own physical needs, including size and height. Audience members seated close to the stage are also invited to choose chairs according to their preferences. Respect for difference and open accessibility appear to form the central theme of the production.

The breathing of the guesthouse, surrounded by nature, unfolds slowly. The first half of the play, performed by actors whose speech and movement are deliberately unhurried, demands patience from the audience. Gradually, however, the production draws viewers into moments of quiet peace: drinking coffee, reading tarot cards and sitting silently together on a wooden platform.

Within that stillness, movements often overlooked in ordinary life begin to stand out. The near-struggle of transferring from a wheelchair onto the platform, trembling hands stacking Jenga blocks and even the conducting of Brahms by an actor with a brain lesion disability revealed each performer’s effort, physical path and presence. The scenes were deeply beautiful.

Aein has now spent 19 years as a disabled theater company. Its achievements were not the product of sudden success but of long companionship, patience and shared endurance.

Rather than asking audiences to admire disability from a distance, the production quietly reshaped the pace at which the audience watched and listened. By slowing everyday gestures and conversations, it challenged conventional ideas about efficiency, fluency and theatrical tension.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.