Julia Riew's Korean Folktale Musical DIVE to be Developed at American Repertory Theater

American Repertory Theater will develop Julia Riew's musical Dive, previously known as Shimcheong: A Folktale. Stop Kiss playwright Diana Son and Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus join Fred Ebb Award winner Riew on the expanding creative team that will center Asian-American voices.

Audiences are encouraged to follow the show's development including exclusive behind-the-scenes content, new music, and updates on Riew's TikTok and Instagram channels: @juliariew. An A.R.T. world premiere production in a future season will be announced at a later date.

Dive tells the story of a brave young woman who falls into the depths of the ocean while trying to save her father and her journey towards self-actualization and home. The musical is a contemporary adaptation of the Korean folktale Shimcheong (The Blind Man's Daughter) and is inspired by Riew's own journey as a third-generation Korean-American woman.

Riew's passion for the project and for broadening representation in musical theater have resonated around the world. Content Riew shared from Shimcheong (now Dive) on TikTok in early 2022 has garnered a following of over 124,000 users, over 2.8 million likes, and over 16 million streams. She has performed selections from Dive at the Korean American Community Foundation and the US Embassy & Consulate in Seoul, Korea, and been covered by The Associated Press, CNN and NBC. Hundreds of fans have created and shared videos of themselves performing "Dive" solo or as a duet with Riew, and others have created and shared artwork inspired by the project.

Riew's and A.R.T.'s collaboration began in 2019. After members of A.R.T.'s Artistic team saw The East Side, an original musical Riew wrote and co-directed, the theater commissioned her to write the family-oriented shows Thumbelina: A Little Musical, which premiered at the Loeb Drama Center in December 2019, and Jack and the Beanstalk: A Musical Adventure, which was released digitally along with a cast album by A.R.T. in December 2020. Riew also served as the Music & Dramaturgy Assistant for A.R.T.'s 2021 production of WILD: A Musical Becoming and as a stage management assistant on A.R.T.'s 2019 production of Gloria: A Life directed by Diane Paulus.

Riew began developing Dive as her senior thesis project as an undergraduate student at Harvard, and A.R.T. Director of Artistic Programs & Dramaturg Ryan McKittrick served as her thesis advisor. Shortly after graduating, Riew performed the title song from the show at A.R.T.'s annual gala in June 2022.

"Dive is the musical that I wish I could've seen as a child-one for all ages that grapples with themes of identity, friendship, love, and belonging, " says Riew. "With this adaptation, Diana, Diane and I intend to give Shimcheong's character a new sense of agency and to create opportunities for actresses in a variety of roles. I couldn't be more excited to develop this piece at the American Repertory Theater, which has grown to be my theatrical home. I'm grateful for the guidance of the incredible artists at A.R.T., and I'm beyond thrilled to embark on this adventure with Diane-a director with unparalleled vision-and the brilliant Diana Son: two great inspirations to me as fellow female, Asian-American theater-makers."

"Julia Riew is an extraordinary artist with an enormous heart and a transformative vision," says Paulus. "Dive speaks directly to the A.R.T.'s mission to expand the boundaries of theater, bringing to our stages a story that has not been seen or heard in American musical theater. I am thrilled to be working with Julia and Diana, and to be a part of this all female Asian-American team."

Songs from Dive will be performed live on Thursday, April 27 at Studio 54 as part of Riew's New York City solo concert debut, The Dive!. Tickets and more information are at available at 54below.com/events/the-dive-the-songs-of-julia-riew-feat-claire-kwon-and-natalie-choo.

Mabel Hsu at HarperCollins Children's has acquired, in a pre-empt, Shimcheong. Pitched as a Korean princess story inspired by the author's own life and The Blind Man's Daughter folktale, this middle grade novel is a royal fantasy with princesses, family secrets, and dueling kingdoms-all with a female-centered narrative. Publication is slated for Fall 2025; Cindy Uh at CAA brokered the deal for North American rights.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

JULIA RIEW

(she/her) is a Korean-American composer, lyricist, librettist, and writer from St. Louis currently based in New York City. She is primarily known for her musical Dive (previously known as Shimcheong: A Folktale), which has amassed over 124,000 followers online, 2.8 million likes, and over 16 million streams on an animated music video of its titular song in Korea. Julia graduated from Harvard University in May 2022 and is in her first year of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Since graduating, she has been named the 2022 Fred Ebb Award winner, Playbill's Featured Songwriter of the Month, A Woman to Watch on Broadway, and the recipient of the 2022 Harvardwood Artist Launch Fellowship under the mentorship of composer Laurence O'Keefe (Legally Blonde, Heathers). Julia was the inaugural recipient of the Musicians United for Social Equity (MUSE) Linda Twine Scholarship (2021), a member of the first MUSE One-on-One Mentorship Program (2021/22) (mentor: Jeanine Tesori), and a member of the inaugural Maestra Music Mentorship Program (2020/21) (mentor: Deborah Wicks La Puma).

At Harvard, she co-founded the Harvard College Asian Student Arts Project (ASAP), a club created to provide the resources and community for Asian student artists, and was the recipient of the 2020 Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Musical Theater Prize. Her original work has been featured at the American Repertory Theater, Harvard University's Farkas Hall and Agassiz Theater, The UNC-Greensboro School of Theater, Nora Theater Company at Central Square Theater, The Harvard Art Lab, University of Missouri, The Community Music School of Webster University, and John Burroughs High School. Julia's original musical writing and co-writing credits include: Alice's Wonderland, an original musical co-written by J Quinton Johnson (Hamilton), Jack and the Beanstalk: A Musical Adventure (A.R.T., 2020), Thumbelina: A Little Musical (A.R.T., 2019), The East Side (Farkas Hall, 2018), and Hitched: The First-Year Musical (Agassiz Theater, 2018).

Diana Son

(she/her) is a second generation Korean American, Emmy-nominated writer/producer for television and an award-winning playwright. Diana is currently an Executive Producer for Amazon TV's upcoming adaptation of Butterfly based on the graphic novel by Arash Amel starring Daniel Dae Kim.

Previously, she was an Executive Producer of the NatGeo series Genius: Aretha, was co-showrunner and Executive Producer of Season 1 of the Netflix series Thirteen Reasons Why, and was Emmy-nominated twice as Co-Executive Producer of ABC's American Crime. Diana created and was showrunner of the pilot Love is a Four-Letter Word for NBC directed by George Tillman. She has also been a writer/producer for a number of series including Dirty John, Southland, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Do No Harm and started her TV career as a staff writer for The West Wing. Diana has also written many pilots for HBO, HBO Max, Apple, Amazon, ABC, CBS, NBC, and A&E.

Diana is also the author of the plays Stop Kiss and Satellites, which premiered at The Public Theater, as well as BOY, Fishes, and R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman). Diana received the John Gassner Playwriting Prize and the Berilla Kerr Award for playwriting for Stop Kiss, which was extended at The Public three times and was awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Best New York Production. Stop Kiss has been subsequently produced at hundreds of theaters nationally and abroad, and has been translated into a number of different languages including Hungarian, Japanese, and Korean. Diana's plays have been produced at La Jolla Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Delaware Theatre Company, BRAVA, New Georges, and many others.

Diana has been the recipient of an NEA/TCG residency grant at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and a Brooks Atkinson Fellowship at The National Theatre in London. She was Program Chair of the Dramatists Guild Foundation's Playwriting Fellowship program from 2013 - 2019 and is proud to have nurtured the voices of 35 gifted playwrights during that time, some of whom have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes and Susan Smith Blackburn Awards and be produced on Broadway and at theaters across the country.

Diane Paulus

(she/her) is the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. At A.R.T. she has directed productions of 1776 (currently on US National Tour), WILD: A Musical Becoming, Gloria: A Life, Jagged Little Pill (currently on US National Tour), ExtraOrdinary, The White Card, In the Body of the World, Waitress, Crossing, Finding Neverland, Witness Uganda, Pippin (Tony Award, Best Revival and Best Director), The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (Tony Award, Best Revival; NAACP Award, Best Direction), Prometheus Bound, Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera, Best of Both Worlds, The Donkey Show.

Broadway credits include Jagged Little Pill; Waitress; Pippin (Tony Awards for Best Revival and Best Director); Finding Neverland; The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (Tony Award for Best Revival, NAACP Award for Best Direction); and HAIR (Tony Award for Best Revival). Her West End credits include Waitress and HAIR. Her off-Broadway credits include Gloria: A Life at the Daryl Roth Theatre; In the Body of the World (Drama League nomination) at Manhattan Theatre Club; and Invisible Thread at Second Stage. Other work includes Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna, Invisible Thread at Second Stage, and The Public Theater's Tony Award-winning revival of HAIR on Broadway and London's West End. As an opera director, her credits include The Magic Flute, the complete Monteverdi cycle, and the trio of Mozart-Da Ponte operas.

She is Professor of the Practice of Theater in Harvard University's English Department and Department of Theater, Dance & Media. She was selected for Boston Magazine's 2022, 2020, and 2018 lists of Boston's 100 most influential people, the 2014 Time 100, Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and as one of Variety's "Trailblazing Women in Entertainment for 2014."

ABOUT AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University is a leading force in the American theater, producing groundbreaking work that is driven by risk-taking and passionate inquiry. A.R.T. was founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by Robert Woodruff. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director in 2008 and co-leads the theater in partnership with Executive Director Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., who began his tenure in 2022.

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