The Search for and the Incorporation of the Indigenous Theatrical Elements of Acting in Modern Korean Theatre: From Mask Dance to 'Korean Way of Acting'
Kim. Bang-ock
This article traces the history of acting in modern Korean theatre ...
The Search for and the Incorporation of the Indigenous Theatrical Elements of Acting in Modern Korean Theatre: From Mask Dance to 'Korean Way of Acting'
Kim. Bang-ock
This article traces the history of acting in modern Korean theatre and focuses on its efforts to adopt the indigenous theatrical mode of presentation. The cultural efforts started in the 1970s as part of new theatre movements that attempted to incorporate some elements of traditional Korean performing arts. It also coincided with a paradigm shift that tried to make a break with westernized theatre styles, in general, and western realist acting techniques, in particular.
Ho Kyu and Son Jin-Chaek were primarily responsible for creating a new style of acting based on local dramatic traditions. They founded Minye Theatre and sought to bring its productions closer to the spirit of traditional pansori and mask dances. For this task, they trained their actors and actresses to embody the spirit of cultural consciousness in their performances. Their effort was significant as they continued to discipline them with a sense of mission, that is, a traditionesque approach.
From the 1970s to the 1980s madang emerged as a showcase of Korean folk performance with very explicit contemporary political messages. It sought to establish an indigenous acting philosophy which was different from that of western conventions. In other words, it tried to recapture, by means of such devices as direct audience address, a projecting stage as opposed to the proscenium-based performance spaces, the free-and-easy interaction between performers and audience that characterized madang plays. Today, many of these innovations have become standard practice in the performance of little theatres.
Meanwhile, Yu Duk-Hyung and Ahn Min-Su at the Drama Center and Kim Jung-Ok at Jayu Theatre began to experiment on the basis of western experiences with Asian bodily movements rather than seeking to establish only the Korean style. They claimed that such Asianness in their movements are intrinsic in the Korean body and consequently they tried to represent it in the performances of meditation, impromptu and collective creation.
Oh Tae-Suk too believes that every Korean embodies the Korean structure of feelings in addition to his or her own movements and rhythms. However, in each individual performance, Korean practices and language are considered more important than the abstract concept of movements when they are associated with the process of characterization. He also stresses the importance of practice to speak actor's actual lines based on the traditional rhythm.
Since the early 1990s, Lee Yun-Taek has systematized the Korean way of teaching acting by embracing Korean sound and bodily techniques and also by returning to the way of breathing that can be found in Korean folk performances. The Korean way of movements and breathing, as he describes, result from a natural breathing process that involves the storage and release of air stored in the pelvis.
As such, there have been numerous attempts to adopt the indigenous theatrical mode of presentation. Unfortunately, however, their efforts haven't converged on one direction and such diverse ways of achieving the common goal don't necessarily mean 'progress'. Rather, their efforts can be classified into three distinct categories.
First, the effort to position Korean theatre in an advantageous relation to the traditional has been renewed by those practitioners who cherish the great traditions of local culture such as pansori and mask dances. This group can thus be called diachronic historians who stress, more than anything else, actor's bodily discipline in order to learn indigenous techniques.
Second, there is also a group of people who try to re-establish Korean way of acting on the model of western theatre tradition. This approach necessarily sees local theatre from the global perspectives and consequently there