Ivy set for Broadway debut in CHICAGO after six South Korean seasons

South Korean singer-actor Ivy is scheduled to make her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in CHICAGO at the Ambassador Theatre on 17 August 2026, beginning a limited engagement that runs through 6 September. The opening matters as more than a first Broadway credit: Ivy has already played Roxie across six South Korean seasons and nearly 600 performances, bringing extensive experience in the role to a new stage and language.

The casting was already public before this curtain-up. Broadway.com reported Ivy‘s appointment on 9 June, while its 17 August report focused on the scheduled commencement of performances. The official CHICAGO website separately confirms the Ambassador Theatre booking and its dates. For eastern Australian readers, the scheduled New York evening performance falls on 18 August local time.

Ivy first played Roxie in South Korea in 2012 and returned to the part over six seasons through 2024. Broadway.com and Yonhap place her cumulative total at nearly 600 performances, rather than an audited exact figure. Broadway.com and Playbill also report that she received the 2012 Korean Musical Award for Best New Actress for the role. The award and the scale of her subsequent appearances establish the depth of her connection to Roxie before her arrival on Broadway.

For Broadway audiences, this will be a debut with an unusually long performance history behind it. Ivy is joining the New York company, but she is not approaching Roxie’s music, text and stage demands as a first-time performer. The shift lies in the production, market and language. Her Korean record supplies the role authority; the audition and tutoring show the additional work required to carry it into a Broadway engagement.

The path to New York nevertheless required a new audition and extensive language preparation. According to Yonhap, Ivy said at a 23 June 2026 press conference in Seoul that she had declined an earlier opportunity about four years before because she was concerned about performing in English. She later completed a year-long audition process for this Broadway engagement, rather than moving directly from her Korean success into the New York company. This sequence helps explain the roughly four-year interval between the earlier opportunity and the present booking. Her record in South Korea did not remove the need to return to the language challenge and pass a fresh assessment over an extended period.

Her audition material included Funny Honey and a Roxie monologue, testing both sung and spoken performance. Ivy also said she worked with nine tutors on English and pronunciation. Familiarity with the score and character did not remove the need for close work on speech and delivery. The contrast in timing is sharp: a year of auditions and extensive tutoring preceded a booking covering 21 calendar days. That compressed run makes the preparation central to the story of an experienced Roxie taking the role into another language and theatre market.

Ivy‘s career extends well beyond this one part. Alongside her recording work, Broadway.com lists musical-theatre credits including MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL, AIDA, WICKED, GHOST THE MUSICAL, JEKYLL & HYDE, URINETOWN, DRACULA and KISS ME, KATE. The list provides useful context for a performer sometimes introduced principally through pop music. In this case, Broadway debut denotes a new professional platform, not the beginning of a musical-theatre career. Her repeated returns to CHICAGO sit within that wider stage practice rather than standing as an isolated crossover credit. The Broadway booking extends an existing musical-theatre career into New York.

The engagement also carries a specific representation claim. Korea JoongAng Daily identifies Ivy as the first Korean performer to lead CHICAGO on Broadway. Because that distinction was not independently stated by the production in the material available for this report, it remains attributed to the newspaper. Its scope is CHICAGO rather than Korean participation on Broadway generally. At the Seoul press conference, Ivy also expressed the hope that American audiences would engage with Korean musical-theatre performers, placing the debut within a wider cross-market ambition.

Ivy joins the revival of CHICAGO in its 30th year on Broadway. The revival, which dates to 1996, is directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Ann Reinking. Its book is by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The official website describes the revival as Broadway’s longest-running American musical, wording that gives the longevity claim a precise category rather than presenting CHICAGO as the longest-running Broadway production of any kind. Ivy‘s short booking therefore arrives within a production whose current Broadway life is measured in decades.

The engagement remains scheduled to conclude on 6 September. The official production calendar lists Reece Weaver as the next Roxie Hart, beginning on 7 September. That handover is the next confirmed milestone after Ivy‘s scheduled Broadway curtain-up and fixes a clear endpoint for a debut built on more than a decade with the role.