Korean American Student Association (KASA) hosted “Reply 1988” this past Saturday on Mar. 1, a show that contained both traditional and modern Korean performances, secretary Emily Chen said.
The title of the show “Reply 1988” is based on a famous Korean drama that covered past Korean family life in a nostalgic light, and the officers thought the retro theme would be unique, Chen said.
“It was our plan to do something different from other shows,” Chen said. “So we saw other schools doing a Korean show, but they were doing K-Pop theme – really modern – and we wanted to do something really traditional, especially with wanting to focus on traditional dances. We wanted the show to be themed as cultural and more traditional.”
One of the highlights of the show was including performances from other schools, namely Independence High and John F. Kennedy High, Chen said.
“It was simple contacting them because me and Sua (KASA President) have friends that are officers for those schools and clubs,” Chen said. “The trouble came near the show day, where three clubs canceled the day before the show, (…) making it really hard because we had to rewrite the script at the last minute.”
The band “Headspace” performed in the show, consisting of two guitarists Adrian Marquez and Brody Kalel, bass player Joseph Yim, and drummist Alexandro Marquez, Adrian Marquez said. The band was given roughly 10 minutes to perform, he added.
“We had originals that we wanted to do and some of them didn’t work out because we weren’t able to get it down right away,” Adrian Marquez said. “I think most of the covers that we did were just songs that we liked and songs that we knew were a good time.”
Junior Johnathan Nguyen was an audio technician and helped backstage for the show despite joining the production just 5 days before show day, he said. In the six days he spent helping out, Nguyen averaged 3 1/2 hours per day after school and then roughly 9 am to 9 pm on the day of the show, he added.
“There wasn’t that many props for backstage to move compared to Lunar Show with pianos,” Nguyen said. “It was just moving the actors into the spots that they needed to be, and there was an issue with finding the HDMI cable for the projector, but we eventually found it.”
The band members enjoyed the event and enjoyed watching the other dances and performances, Adrian Marquez said.
“It was pretty good, a lot of dancing, which is what you would expect at these shows,” Adrian Marquez said. “But I really enjoyed the performances.”