Kim Ji-hoon on his theater debut

by javabeans

Aw, I love how dorky Kim Ji-hoon looks here in a promo for his theater debut role, which is such a contrast to his usual image (which is closer to the cool and professional Won Kang-ha he played in Wish Upon a Star).

Kim just made his theater debut in University of Laughs, and gave a recent interview with a reporter of DongA news. The play is based on the original by Koki Mitani and deals with issues of censorship and artistic expression; Kim plays a writer, following in the footsteps of comedic actor Bong Tae-kyu, who was in the role before him. His character cowers, acts servile, and endures insults at the hands of the censor from whom he is trying to pass inspection of his script.

In the interview, Kim laughs and says that one upside of theater versus television is that while his face comes out in extreme close-up shots in the latter, acting on the stage is like a “full shot” and therefore there are fewer things to worry about. What he’s more concerned about are his shoulders, not his face — he’s playing a character who is always cringing, which means his shoulders are always hunched. He’d gotten comments from the director that the writer was looking too confident.

Also, in contrast to drama acting, here the biggest challenge is the script. In a drama operating in the live-shoot system, there’s no such thing as a polished, completed script — as the drama progresses, they come out page by page as they are written, and the actors are only able to memorize five or six pages at a time. However, the play’s script is complete from the start, and requires him to know it well enough to be able to recite upon command. With a laugh, Kim says, “I was good at cramming in my school days.”

Asked what the one thing he’d like to tell audiences who came to see “actor Kim Ji-hoon,” he says, “It’s an extremely fun and well-woven play. To be honest, I’m not an actor who looks like the typical writer, but even so, you’ll be able to see me making the role mine. Even audiences who have seen it before will be able to sense a different flavor if they come to see it again. That’s my promise. If you come, I promise that you won’t remember that you’ve seen it before!”

The play just kicked off on the 24th and is currently running.

Via DongA

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