Video = Official YouTube channel of Koo Jaha

Domestic theater plays and art performances from July 4-25 will take center stage at the Avignon Festival of France.

The event's organizing committee on April 8 said this in releasing the lineup of the upcoming 80th edition of the festival.

Korean is the official invited language of this year's gala, which highlights the arts and culture of the selected tongue. This is also the first official invitation of Korean works in 28 years since the "Desires of Asia" project in 1998, the first for an Asian tongue and the first from a monoethnic country.

For the festival, nine domestic works will be showcased.

A staged reading of the novel "We Do Not Part" by Nobel laureate writer Han Kang is scheduled at the Cour d'Honneur, a leading venue of the Avignon Festival. This collaborative work between the event and the Seoul Performing Arts Festival will feature actors Isabelle Huppert of France and Lee Hye-young of Korea, and will also be staged at the Seoul event in October.

Also on the schedule are three works by Koo Jaha, a Europe-based theater maker who last month became the first Asian to win the International Ibsen Award of Norway. Visitors can see his works "Cuckoo," "The History of Korean Western Theatre" and "Haribo Kimchi," which form his "Hamartia" trilogy.

Other featured works are "Muljil," an audience-participation performance based on the lives of haenyeo, or female sea divers on Jeju Island; "Island Story," a story about the Jeju April 3 Incident; and "1 Degree Celsius " a performance themed on the climate crisis.

Kim Jang-ho (second from left), president of the Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS), on July 22, 2025, discusses performing arts in Korea along with the Avignon Festival's artistic director Tiago Rodrigues (left) and representatives from the Seoul Performing Arts Festival in Avignon, France. (KAMS)

The Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS) in July last year signed an agreement with the Avignon Festival's organizing committee to serve as the official partner organization for the invited language program for Korean.

On why Korean is an official invited language at this year's festival, the event's artistic director Tiago Rodrigues said at the time Korean was picked, "The key criteria for selection is the rich creativity and diversity of performing arts based on that language," praising the contemporary dynamism and expansiveness of Korean performing arts.

During the festival, KAMS will organize an exchange platform to attract about 50 performing arts professionals, programmers and critics from around the world to explore possibilities for cooperation, joint production and distribution with Korean artists.

The organization will also support residency and training programs for young artists. Two people took part each in 2024 and last year, with four scheduled to do so this year.

caudouin@korea.kr