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The Healing Power of K-Dramas: Why We Love to Cry · Lydia Nicole's Acting Smarter Now Podcast

• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We live in kind of a celebrity driven world, right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if our expectations are to be a celebrity, like of course you're not going to succeed.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's like one in a million that succeeds at the level of celebrity.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that's the only people we see as we see succeeding most of the time.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So like hardly anyone at the marsh is going to succeed to the level of what I call Hollywood or whatever you want to call it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But why is you know rethinking that?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of that, if that's your goal, that's kind of like a goal of becoming a gold medalist, which actually you have more control over than becoming a Hollywood success story, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming a gold medalist with your skill.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have more control over that, even than Hollywood, right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I would suggest that you look at how you feel about that and maybe just let go.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let go of that.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Another gift that you give to artists at the marsh is that you have made it as a breeding ground for new performers and new performances.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that is that's a gift.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's a gift because you just talked about um the culture is all about celebrities.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: But celebrities aren't born, they're made.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they're made because people invest in them, because someone believes in their talent, believes in their ability, gives them the opportunity to develop.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And what better way to develop than in theater to get your your chops to learn to use your body and your voice, to learn storytelling, to learn how to work the audience, because there's something to be said about theater that you cannot get in film or television.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: That one-to-one, you wanted to see Spaulding Gray up close and personal.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm with you, girl.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: I when I go see theater, I want to be right up under their nose.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: I remember uh going to see Al Pacino, he spit on me.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, he was he was talking in the spit.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: I went, Oh my god, I've never washed my face.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Al Pacino spit on me.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And just seeing theater live, and I'll share this little story about solo theater because I got to see Elaine Stritch do At the Liberty.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she was here at the Almondsen, and I went with Robert to go see her.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: We went opening night.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I don't know what this and I was so mesmerized by her.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: I went every night for a week because they had back uh at that time the almond sin had like$25 seats.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you could go, you could get online the night of the show, and and if you were one of the first five or first 10, you could get a ticket to go in.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I went every night to watch this 80-year-old woman be brilliant on stage, be present on stage, give everything she had on stage.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: She taught, she was teaching how to be on stage as a one-person show.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I had seen a lot of one-person shows, but she was it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And what she gave to the audience, I feel, is that doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter what illnesses, because she was full-blown diabetic.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: She had to have shots every day.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she had damaged her body, but you never knew it when she got on stage.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: And theater takes you into a whole different world.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: We need theater.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people have gotten a little crazy with social media, but we need live theater, and you give that to us.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to say thank you for that, because it is needed in our culture, especially right now with all the turmoil that's going on and all the uncertainty.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: We need a place to go to watch and to laugh and cry and enjoy and reflect and do all those things that only theater gives you.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Only theater gives you because you breathe with the audience, you're you're together with the audience.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh I and I will say this other thing about the marsh.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: You guys have the best audiences.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to say that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: I will say this about K-dramas.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: They they can be soapy, but they can also be very emotional.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're watching and you're just, oh my God, oh my god.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I cried so, you know, there are a few that I've cried so much, and then and they're unpredictable sometimes.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes you have the main character die or be killed, and you go, wait a minute, that's not how it's supposed to go.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like that one which was about the guy who is in the hair, the airs, the the other, the bad guy, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The other one who falls in love with the the girl.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um he did he did a role.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe he was the same actor where he gets a brain tumor.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's a pop k pop star, right?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: He gets a brain tumor.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Kim Wu-bin.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Kim Wu-bin, yes.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: What uh that that what was the name of that one with where he gets the uncontrollably fond?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Did you cry?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't, I can't even watch it again.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even think of watching it again.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was so horrifyingly emotional.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and the actress base Susie.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, they the two of them.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: I cried and I cried and I cried.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I will go back, like Goblin is the guardian, is the one I will go back to because I am so impressed at how they connect different genres.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a romance, it's historical, it's uh about immortality.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: It also is uh a little bit of of sci-fi, a little bit of romance, a little suspense for it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's got everything, but it works.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: The script really works, and they just do such a marvelous job.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's that other one.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now what I've been doing is like I'm starting to, so A, I tried to learn, I'm trying to learn Korean, although I haven't done anything since last August because of the play, and I haven't gotten back to it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: We gotta go to we gotta go to the Bu San Festival in October.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So just let's set it up because yes, so we should talk about it because I think I might have found a dog sitter, which is my biggest problem.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's this K-drama book.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know about this K-drama book?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was a Korean student who did her PhD, and this is her dissertation, and she published the book.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been like, you know, because I'm desperately, you want to find out what's good ones.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really hard to tell, especially by the titles, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like uncontrollably fun.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you think it would be so heart-wrenching?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't ever think it was so heart-wrenching.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, but so I've been one of before I luckily talked to you about them, I was trying to find good ones.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go through the book and see what she suggested.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think she should just, the book should just be as her suggestions more than anything else.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But one of them, and I'm trying to, what's the name of it?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote was the most one that stayed with her the most.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I watched it, and it it stayed pretty much stay with me the most.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's and the thing about it is what I've been listening to lately, is because I like to sing these emotional songs, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so there's 20 episodes, I think.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in each episode, I don't know if it's when a character appears or a certain feeling appears, they play a snippet of a specific song, and I was like, I love the song.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love the song.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they have some of the best songs in those shows.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this one just got me so much that I actually, and I hate to do errands, and that by that is to Google and figure out what the song is.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, I found it, and I have been singing it in Korean ever since.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's a freaking five-minute long song, over five minutes in Korean.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand it, and it's really hard to learn something like by syllables where you have no idea what they mean.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's so the the song of Snowflower, it's old and it's a little bit schmalty.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Steve, have you watched I'm sorry, I love you?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: That was the most heart-wrenching K-drama I have ever seen.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm and I know it was kind of it's old, it's a really, it's an older one.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and I know that it was a little smalty in some ways.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But oh my God, but that's you know, that I can't believe how it stayed with me.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: They not only stay with you, but the characters stay with you.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you feel like you know them in a different way than watching, you know, when I'm watching American television, I very rarely do I go, I love that character, that character, and I bond.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: But for some reason, Korean shows, those characters I bond with, I go, oh my God, oh my god, I need to know this person.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is it in the Korean culture between the K-pop and the K-drama?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it about this culture that is putting out this kind of is it that because we don't know the language, we get sucked in to the story and we we see it with we see it without judgment.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, where when we're looking at American TV, we're I don't know about you, but I can get very judgmental.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that actor, oh, what is that actor doing?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: But when I'm watching international projects, I don't always do that if they're if they're good.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: I get sucked in.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like in it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: It my imagination goes.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like reading a good book, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're reading a good book, your imagination is just going, and and you want to share it with everybody.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: You you've read this great novel and you just want to tell.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And when Mary did this, oh my god, I really couldn't believe that Mary would do this.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: How could she do this?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and that's how the K drive, like sometimes I I want to, my daughter gets tired of me because I go, Well, in this K-drama, she said, Okay, could you just get to what happened?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need the story, just tell me, but I have to tell you, and that's another thing.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Watching K-dramas, there's not a lot of people I can talk to about it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, but I love that you have found K-dramas.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I love that it is keeping you company and it's making life a little easier as you go through your griefing and your transition and recovering your artist self in a different way.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I love that that you have the theaters and they're your day job and you do what you need to do.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I what I love the most about you, Stephanie, is that you keep your art going and you are a testimony for artists out there who have lost their their will or or lost their way as an artist and took that nine to five job or took that that gig that is paying them money to live or survive, but they lost their joy because they can't be the artist.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and there's a lot to be said about you know, whether you have a day job or not, to keep refilling your creative well.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you you're writing operas, you're you're having photo exhibits, you're doing all these things, that's gonna give you a long life because art feeds us.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, art is art is medicine.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and as artists, we give it out, but then there are times we gotta take it in.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: We have to have the the medicine for ourselves.