Eternal Labor - 2026 Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival

 

 

Audience Information

[Notice] 

- This performance is suitable for ages 7 and up.

- Seating in unreserved and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

- The performance runs approximately 120 minutes(no intermission).

- Purchased tickets cannot be cancelled, exchanged, or refunded on the day of the event.

- Ticket collection is limited to the ticket holder. If someone else is collecting the ticket on your behalf, we kindly ask for your cooperation in verifying the ticket holder’s information.

- The performance includes a smoking scene using herbal cigarettes. Smoke may be produced, but the ingredients are harmless to the human body.

[Accessibility] 

- Mary Hall Small Theatre is located on the second floor of Mary Hall (Building M), Sogang University, 35 Baekbeom-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul.

- There is no elevator in the building, making wheelchair access difficult. During the festival, we will prepare one manual wheelchair and arrange for two staff members to assist visitors with mobility support. Please note that physical contact may be necessary during this assistance. 

- Korean, Japanese, English subtitles will be provided for all performances.

- Assigned seating may be provided depending on the need for captioning or wheelchair seating.

- Accessibility inquiries: Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival KakaoTalk Channel @smtf

Tickets

Ticket: KRW 35,000

- SMTF Supporter Discount: KRW 25,000 (KRW 10,000 discount, proof of supporter membership required)

- Early Bird (booked between 6–20 August): KRW 28,000 (KRW 7,000 discount)

- Youth Discount (born in or after 1997): KRW 20,000 (proof of birth year required)

 

Introduction

 

영원한 노동 エターナル・レイバー

Eternal Labor

オル太 OLTA

2026.09.18.(Fri) - 09.20.(Sun) | Fri 20:00, Sat 18:00, Sun 15:00

Mary Hall Small Theater

 

[Introduction]

“It’s like we’re bugs. That’s right. We are. Laborers are bugs. Once you say it, it becomes real.”

OLTA’s latest work dives deep into the ideological currents that flow from modernity to the present.

OLTA’s latest work, Eternal Labor, poses deeper questions about the ideologies that connect the modern era with contemporary times, a topic the collective has explored since GHOST OF MODERN (2013), which traced negative legacies throughout the world. After wide-ranging research in the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula, this collective now portrays the divisions and continuity between the era of the Japanese Empire and today, and the labor and exploitation that took place behind the scenes during economic development, projected onto the bodies of contemporary women. Focusing on issues within society such as women who have been objectified, bodies that can become pregnant, sexual discrimination, and power structures, the collective zeros in on what is at the root of labor that is devoid of meaning and lifestyles of consumerism through both an exhibition and a performance, as well as through the timeless and universal multilayered perspective and humor that is OLTA’s hallmark.

[Company | オル太 OLTA]

OLTA is a multidisciplinary collective founded in 2009. Their work, ranging from agriculture to installations, explores the nature of collective identity in today's world while reinterpreting the meaning of community, ceremony, folklore, historical events, and the specificity of land and space. Their fieldwork looks at marginalized communities within society as well as labour, history, and customs that are liable to be overlooked. Bringing together art and theatre, their performance work interweaves elements including text, art, people, space, light, sound, and video. The five members of OLTA—Inoue Toru, Saito Takafumi, Hasegawa Yoshiro, Meguninja, and Jang-Chi—have in recent years held many interdisciplinary performances at art festivals, theatres, and museums both in Japan and internationally. Through audience involvement, they create experiences that blur the lines between the quotidian and the historic, real and fiction, genders, and countries, all with rebellious play.

[Credits]

Script : Meguninja | Direction : Jang-Chi | Cast : Ando Tomoko, Inoue Toru, Oyama Kaoruko, Saito Takafumi, Chong Ami, Mikajiri Keigo, Meguninja | Stage Design : Hasegawa Yoshiro | Costume & Illustration : Inoue Toru | Props : Saito Takafumi | Sound Design : Inoue Toru, Masuda Yoshiki | Lighting : Fujimoto Takayuki (Kinsei R&D) | Sound : Masuda Yoshiki | Video : Shibata Kazuhide | Stage Manager : Moriyama Marie | Korean Transition : Ishikawa Juri | English Translation : Ota kei | Production Coordinator : Shimizu Satomi | Research Support : Mojiko Art Platform, Tantan Village

Supported by : Japan Creator Support Fund; The Saison Foundation

Premiere : Aichi Triennale 2025

This performance is presented as part of IN TRANSIT - A performing arts project spanning different cultures, organized by precog co.,LTD. with the support of the Japan Creator Support Fund.

[In Conversation with the Festival]

Where does the present come from? Things we believed were long finished wear different faces as they intertwine with today. The present bodies continue to live on, bearing the traces of old structures and systems, labor and desire. 

This work pierces through imperial histories, contemporary labor, consumption, and the female body. It overlaps the structures that have persisted across different eras and geographies onto the present. The past is not reenacted, but it carries on under different names within the sensations and movements that remain active today.

The festival joins in this sense of reading structures that extend beyond borders. It brings back questions of labor and power that linger with us, asking how times presumed past continue to pass through our present.

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2026 서울변방연극제

首爾邊緣戲劇節

ソウル・マージナル・シアター・フェスティバル

Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival

“흩어져, 모든 것이 엉키는 가운데”

Scatter, as All Things Entangle

The 2026 Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival imagines encounters between different temporalities. From the margins, we question other movements that reveal cycles and interweavings, and the processes of transformation that oscillate between the defined and the undefined.

2026.09.02. - 09.20.

Presented by Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival http://smtfestival.com

Supported by Arts Council Korea