To the Ends of the Earth / 땅끝까지, a new play that ran last month at Jack, was directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant ’21 and starred Yeena Sung ’20. Sami Pyne ’20 served as the show’s producer, and Taeeun Yeo ’23 worked as a community outreach consultant.
Written by playwright and librettist Jeesun Choi and supported by the New Georges Supported Productions program, the play focused on a shifting relationship between two women described as “strangers—perhaps a mother and daughter, best friends, or even rivals” whose conversations fluctuate between conversation, confession, and argument.
Exuent noted the strength of the performances and Oliphant’s use of light and movement to provide a framework for the abstract and metaphorical text. Critic Loren Noveck commented on the consistent idea throughout the play of “both the specificity of the Korean diaspora and its push-pull of national and personal identity but also, on a larger level, the impossibility of living in the world at all, of making decisions and choices when every fork in the road shuts off pathways to another life. There are certain commonalities to the stories told here—immigration or children of immigrants; the jealousies and tribulations of female adolescence—but overall there’s also a sense of loss."
A graduate of the Directing concentration, Oliphant is a director whose work has been seen at Clubbed Thumb, Ars Nova, PlayCo, Ensemble Stage Theatre, and Harvard TDM. The associate director of Hadestown, he is a 2021/2022 Drama League Fellow and 2020/2021 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow.
Sung graduated from the Acting program and has appeared in theatre, film, and television, including the acclaimed independent film Happy Cleaners (2019) and the television show Younger on Paramount +. She has performed in productions at Theatre for a New City, ETW, and was in the off-Broadway musical Comfort Women directed by Dimo Kim.
Pyne is a graduate of the Theatre Management & Producing program and is a Fellow of WP Theater's 2022-2024 Producers Lab. She has produced work at Signature Theatre, 600 Highwaymen, Clubbed Thumb, The Martin E. Segal Center, and is a co-producer of the recently revived 2023 Under the Radar Festival.
Yeo is a graduate of the Theatre Management & Producing program. She writes about Broadway for The Musical and has worked at Signature Theatre and Korean Cultural Center New York.
