JULIA RIEW — PERSUASIAN

The musical theater composer and lyricist talks about her Disney-inspired Korean princess musical, Shimcheong: A Folktale.

If Disney is in search of their next Disney Princess, Julia Riew's got it covered. For her senior thesis, the Harvard student and co-founder of the university’s Asian Student Arts Project [ASAP] wrote a musical based on the Korean folktale, The Blind Man’s Daughter.

“It's inspired both by that folktale and by my personal experience growing up in Missouri and then going to Korea for the first time and learning about my identity as someone from a diaspora between two worlds,” says Riew.

After posting a clip of her singing her song “Dive” from Shimcheong: A Folktale in January, Riew went viral on TikTok. Wearing a traditional hanbok and using a “Disney animation” face filter in the video, Riew transforms into Shimcheong. As of May 1, her video has over 1.1 million views on the social media platform.

“I like to make things that are uplifting and help increase empathy, whether that's a Korean story or just a story that helps humanize one another, especially people that are different from us.”

PERSUASIAN: What in particular drew you to the folktale of Shimcheong?

Julia Riew: I liked that it was a story about a girl who goes on an adventure; a lot of Korean folktales are about animals and men. It’s a story about a girl who's looking to return home, and as someone who is still on this journey of trying to find my identity, I felt like that was something I really related to.

PERSUASIAN: Could you tell us more about this cultural balance between your Korean side and your American side?

JR: Yeah, absolutely. So I think growing up, I always saw myself as the “Korean friend” because there weren't that many Korean people growing up in the area. I had this expectation that the first time I went to Korea, I was going to be like everybody else and fit in more than I ever had before. And then when I actually did visit Korea, I remember being surprised at how different I was from everybody and how much of a foreigner I felt there. I think that, in particular, influenced this story that Shimcheong experiences when she goes home for the first time in a very long time.

PERSUASIAN: What was the process like of writing this musical, and what were some of the challenges you faced?

JR: To be honest, it was painstaking because it's such a close-to-home topic. It’s about a girl struggling with her identity and I'm struggling with my identity — I think that made the process very challenging in many ways. Something I was really afraid of was, Is this story Korean enough? Is this just an American story with a Korean lens? Or is this just biologically a Korean story, but really an American story at heart? Or the other way around? Ultimately, I have to realize that that's who I am. I am a Korean person who's also American.

PERSUASIAN: I saw on Instagram that you had a reading of your musical. What was it like to see it come to life?

JR: I mean, my favorite part of any theater process really is collaboration. After such a long time writing this whole musical in a pandemic bubble, and then finally getting to see it come to life with faces and voices, it was so exciting and definitely my favorite part of the process so far.

PERSUASIAN: Nice! I hope to see a full-blown production of your musical sometime soon. So why did you want to become a musical theater composer and lyricist?

JR: I've always been in love with music and theater ever since I was little; theater was my favorite class in elementary school and I started writing music when I was really young. I feel like, in many ways, everything was kind of pointing me and steering me in this direction all along, and my parents really encouraged all three of us — I have two older brothers — to be creative. Whether that was allowing us to take violin lessons, or join choir, or audition for the school play — all of those things contributed to my love for the arts.

PERSUASIAN: I saw on your website that you were initially a pre-med student. When did you realize you wanted to change majors?

JR: So that was the biggest turmoil of my freshman and sophomore year. I came in my freshman year, wanted to study theater and music, and found out there were no other Korean students doing theater. I desperately wanted to fit in, so I switched into pre-med and told myself that it’s because I wanted a practical career.

But then I just kept finding myself back in theater and writing more music. By the time I got to junior year, it turned out I had fulfilled enough requirements to concentrate in music and theater. I knew, at that point, there was nothing that I wanted to do more than write musicals. And so I figured, while I'm young and while I have the opportunity, I might as well do this as much as I can.

PERSUASIAN: Who do you look up to in the theater industry, and what are some of your favorite musicals?

JR: Oh my gosh, so many people. I mean, Alan Menken is my idol. Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.

One of my mentors, Jeanine Tesori, wrote the music for Fun Home and she’s incredible. And my other mentor, Timothy Huang, is one of the only “elders” in the Asian theater space.

In terms of favorite musicals, I'm very basic. My favorite musicals are Wicked and Legally Blonde The Musical.

PERSUASIAN: Speaking of Legally Blonde, could you tell us about the all-Asian production of Legally Blonde The Musical that you and your club, the Asian Student Arts Project, performed last year?

JR: Absolutely. I founded ASAP with my friends Eric Cheng and Chloe Yu in 2018. Our mission is to provide a community and the resources for Asian students on campus to make art, whether they’re first timers or people who've been doing it their entire lives. At the time, there were very few Asian students on campus doing theater. So to be able to see what a long way we've come from doing The East Side — we wrote a whole new musical because there really wasn’t any repertoire for us that we connected with — to now being able to put on Legally Blonde and having a whole cast of Asian students is just so exciting.

Essentially, it is Legally Blonde itself. When we were brainstorming with the board for what project we wanted to put on that semester, we were just throwing out all different kinds of ideas. The thing about Legally Blonde is that it's really a narrative that is usually conceived and imagined as a white narrative — a story about white privilege. We revitalized it and looked at what this story would look like if everyone was Asian.

Riew as Paulette in ASAP’s production of *Legally Blonde The Musical*. Photo by Henry Cerbone

Elle Woods, for example, is a character who moves across the country to a place where she is totally out of her element and feels like she doesn't belong at all, and then she ultimately learns about herself.

That is an experience that so many Asian kids have. To be able to relate to that narrative and reexamine it under that light and just get people excited about Asian artists in theater — it was a combination of a lot of different things.

PERSUASIAN: Very cool! So back to Shimcheong; how did you feel when you found out your musical was going viral on TikTok?

JR: I had definitely hoped people would see it, but it still feels fake. It felt like a dream. It was very unexpected and honestly, very heartwarming because just working on this project for such a long time, I was afraid of how people would react to it — especially the Korean and Korean American community. To receive this positive reaction has been really exciting and validating.

PERSUASIAN: And finally, what do you envision Shimcheong: A Folktale becoming?

JR: So the dream situation is to see it as an animation or a stage musical, and then maybe film the stage musical and do one of those Disney Plus releases, like with Hamilton.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. All images courtesy of Julia Riew.