Ant Stopped (2025)
멈춘 개미
Mini-opera; monodrama for soprano and ensemble
Composition and stage direction by JungAh Lee
Text by Yeonwoo Jung
Duration : c. 22′
Funded by Arts Council Korea
Premiered July 5, 2025, Dream Forest Arts Center
Composer’s Preface
The mini-opera Ant Stopped is inspired by I-Chae, a character from Korean writer Yeonwoo Jung’s short story A Genealogy of a Certain Screen. I-Chae is sensitive and easily startled. After her death, she comes to watch the daily lives of others behind a screen, seeing everything with an omniscient viewpoint. She follows the lead of someone next to her who constantly laughs and mocks whatever appears on the screen. Her own way of looking gradually becomes tinged with similar mockery and cynicism. Still, unexpected moments stir up old emotions she hadn’t anticipated.
I-Chae slowly realizes that seeing isn’t just passive observation, but also can be a form of connection and engagement with the world.
In the original text, the “ant column story” appears as a childhood episode where I-Chae first becomes aware of how she looks at the world. I felt this short scene captured not only I-Chae’s inner world but also the key point of the entire story. Ant Stopped draws on this ant metaphor and carries the belief that attention and respect for individual existence, values we tend to overlook, can be the thread that helps us begin again.
We are all the ones who pick up ants, turn them around, drop them, or crush them. We are also the small ant that gets left behind, stopped in the middle of the column. This work suggests that our engagement with the world shouldn’t stop at observation and judgment, but should develop into a way of seeing others as whole beings. In a world full of anxiety, perhaps we can turn our attention to people who move through life like ants, and quietly focus on the one who has stopped.
JungAh Lee 