'One day, Lotte World Tower will be a ruin' — a director and actor on civilization's twilight [Interview]

"Everything is good. But the future is so much better."

A blacksmith murmurs those words like a song. The country he stands in looks dark, ragged and rank. The world calls its people "monsters." Yet they live in the most radiant happiness on earth. Anupam Tripathi, 38, who plays the blacksmith in the opera "The Third War," calls the line his favorite in the entire script.

The director who wrote it, however, stands on the opposite end of that sentiment. Park Bon, 39, is a Korean-German writer and director who has built his career primarily in the European theater scene; in 2023 he received the Anna Seghers Prize, one of Germany's most prestigious literary awards.

"In Germany, where I grew up, what we all have in common is that none of us can picture a bright future," Park said. "We think the present is terrible and the future will be even worse."

The two people who made this production together see the landscape of the future in starkly different ways, and "The Third War" weaves its story through that gap. Someone sees hope; someone stares into despair. Whether the future ahead is utopia or dystopia remains unknowable. The opera runs Friday and Saturday at Arko Arts Theater's main stage in Daehangno, Seoul. It is a co-production of the Asia Culture Center and the Seoul Performing Arts Festival. After two years of research, the work had its world premiere at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju last May. Composer Ben Roesler, a longtime collaborator of Park's, joined forces with world-renowned soprano Lim Sun-hye and veteran actor Kang Ae-sim.

Meeting with Park and Tripathi ahead of the performances at Artists' House in Daehangno, the two said: "What binds us is fear, but what ultimately moves us forward is the empathy and understanding we feel for one another's pain."

The work deals with war, but it does not recreate its carnage. There are no gunshots, no bloodshed. Instead, it traces a "psychological catastrophe" in which three nations in a fictional world — where magic and science uneasily coexist — come to define one another as enemies through misunderstanding and anxiety.

Park had a reason for reaching for war as his subject. He sees the world today as "a place where everything is polarized." In real life, differing opinions fracture relationships in an endless cycle of division; online, those divisions are amplified further, as people drift inside algorithms tailored precisely to their own desires.

"Algorithms select and serve us what we crave — the highlights that deliver an instant dopamine hit," Park said. "But it's not just cute cats. There's far more bad news: wars, bombs, dying children, Donald Trump, the climate crisis, the end of the world. Whether you're far right or far left, whatever your views, I came to believe that what ultimately binds us all is fear."

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the sense that a major war could return to Europe has been reawakened. Park sees that anxiety as a silent terror "on the tip of everyone's tongue, yet something no one can bring themselves to say aloud." He titled the work "The Third War" rather than "World War III" deliberately, to leave room for the audience's own imagination. "I wanted a slightly abstract fiction," he said. "It's not World War III — but I wanted the title to make you think of it."

On what "the third war" actually means, he remained guarded. "I still can't tell you," Park said with a laugh. "Because I don't want to bring it into existence by putting it into words." Tripathi offered his own reading: "This work is about what we should think about war. I think that comes down to empathy." For the actor, "The Third War" operates on a far more layered level.

"War isn't only in Europe — it can exist in Korea, in India, inside a person," Tripathi said. "As a foreign actor living and working in Korea, I carry my own kind of war within me. The work holds fear, yes, but it also asks how we overcome it, how people from across the world can meet and talk, and how we move forward and grow. Those questions hit very close to home for me."

Three nations are arranged on stage beneath what the production calls "civilization's clock." There is the Land of Wizards, a civilization that has passed its peak and is in decline; the Land of Humans, one that has reached its apex; and the Land of Foreigners, one still on its way up. Park described the framework as "the result of observing the world." Real countries serve as specific inspirations for each, though fantasy elements are layered on top.

The Land of Wizards began as a place Park had long idealized. "The whole world watches that country's films and knows the names of its actors and musicians. Everyone wants to go there. It was like a magical place — like Disney." Today's reality is different. Mass shootings, drug crises and reckless political leaders dominate global headlines. "The magical place I always looked up to is now crumbling," Park said. The Land of Humans drew its inspiration from Korea. "It has everything, yet somehow people seem worn out, and happiness feels out of reach," he said.

The Land of Foreigners was built from a gaze. "In Europe and in Korea alike, there is a condescending, stereotyping way of looking at foreigners," Park said — and he placed that gaze directly on stage. "In fantasy works like 'The Lord of the Rings,' there are less-civilized monsters. They don't go to university; they don't have private jets. They are blacksmiths, hunters, warriors," he said. "I wanted to abstract, through fantasy, the way we look at foreigners."

The Land of Foreigners is populated by actual foreign actors. While everyone in the production speaks Korean, the people of that land occasionally speak a newly invented language — a fictional tongue deliberately constructed with rough plosives and fricatives to evoke alienation and threat. "When a few foreigners on a bus talk loudly in their own language, you feel vaguely threatened because you don't understand them," Park said. "I wanted to design the language we fear." Tripathi's favorite word in the invented language is "eunmahle." His character's name is "Krkrv." Yet the director ultimately turns this world entirely on its head, infusing it with the energy he absorbed while traveling through India and Vietnam.

"There were people who moved forward imagining that the future would be brighter than the present," Park said. "That imagination made them enjoy even the beating of their hearts, the act of breathing — simply being alive."

The central figure holding the Land of Foreigners together is Anupam Tripathi, known to global audiences for playing migrant worker Ali in "Squid Game." The director's first instruction to him was simple: "Show me a happy family." Tripathi laughed recalling it. "Whatever I say or do, I'm trying to express happiness," he said. To inhabit the blacksmith, he wrestled with how to shape the body of someone who sustains life at the very bottom of civilization. The role demands physical theater, so he explored what he called "animal movement."

"I practiced by thinking of city rats," Tripathi said. "The gesture of crouching low, surviving, then gradually revealing your presence — I also thought about the instincts of a bird of prey, like an eagle."

Playing a maker of weapons also meant enduring the weight of hand-forged iron implements with every muscle in his body. "All three nations are laboring," he said. "But it's worth asking which people society actually places in the category of 'worker.'"

Humanity and history have cycled through rise and fall across the ages, and power has always proven fleeting. "I've only lived on this planet for a few decades, but when I look at history it feels like a clock," Park said. "One civilization rises and then falls, and somewhere else something new rises — and then falls again."

"Egypt had its pyramids, Cambodia its Angkor Wat, South America its ruins — none of them command great power today, but they left behind monuments that prove their former glory. They remain as evidence of how important those places once were. Someday, Seoul's Lotte World Tower may become a ruin that bears witness to its own era."

"The Third War" follows the dystopian patterns that history has confirmed and countless works have explored. Yet there was a reason the director had to build this world anyway. His gaze may rest on dystopia, but his heart points toward utopia.

"A mobile phone is a remarkable piece of technology, a feat of engineering, proof of human intelligence," Park said. "But the way we use it makes us miserable. At first glance, the world before civilization's peak looks dark and ugly and dirty and foul-smelling — but when you look closer, those people are unbelievably happy. I wanted to create a world where you actually look forward to being alive on this planet. I missed that feeling, and I believe we need it if we are going to accomplish anything."

Tripathi already carries that feeling. As a foreign actor working in Korea, he consistently looks for hope and holds onto it. "I think more and more productions will feature foreign characters," he said. "We are growing in number, we are doing well, and we are working with joy. I dream of the day when a foreign actor is sitting at every awards ceremony."

"The road ahead, which I haven't yet seen, may be dark," Tripathi said. "But why should I be the one to block the light before it even arrives? I can choose the brighter side."

The happiest scene in "The Third War" is filled with a song created using AI. The characters later realize that happiness was not real. Park composed the piece using ChatGPT. "I wanted to see whether AI could compose an opera aria," he said. The idea came from watching the flood of AI-generated videos online. "The people in AI-generated videos and images are smiling to a frightening degree — they look so happy," he said. "I thought 'being too happy' was excellent inspiration for theater. When something looks too happy, we stop believing it."

The Gwangju world premiere earlier this year caught the director completely off guard. He had expected the work to resonate more with European audiences, but throughout the house, people were quietly weeping. "It wasn't a sadness faced alone — it was a sadness shared together in one space," he said. "Hundreds of people felt the same emotion at the same moment and understood one another without a word. That is the catharsis only theater can give."

"If the defining emotion of our era had been joy, I would have made a very joyful play," Park said. "I didn't choose fear. Fear was already there among us. I don't want to plant fear in people's hearts — I want everyone to feel understood, and to shake it off together."