(Per)Forming at the Threshold: Diasporic Imagination in Korean American Drama

횡단의 연극, 공연의 정치학: 한국계 미국드라마의 디아스포라적 상상력

Diaspora studies has become one of the fastest growing field in the humanities over the past several decades, and the use of term diaspora has been widening to include almost any population on the move. Diaspora literature not only mirrors but actively incorporates this new notion of diaspora with characters "at the threshold" navigating new territories and identities. Querying how diaspora studies intersects with theatre and performance, this paper attempts to probe how recent Korean American drama parallels and promotes diaspora studies' radical departure from traditional notions of identities and territories. For this purpose, this essay 1) examines theoretical affinities between diaspora studies and performance studies 2) investigates how Sung Rno's plays, Cleveland Raining and wAve, explore and embody multiple and evolving meanings of Korean diaspora on the stage 3) examines how theatre can create the third space that transcends both Korean and American nationalism and 4) speculates possibilities of reframing Asian American Studies as Asian diaspora studies. Korean American characters in Rno's play redirect diasporic identities, as their concern gradually moves from "where I come from" to "where I go to." Instead of remaining in the dark as a mere spectator, both Rno and his characters choose to be 'on' the stage where they can imagine, perform, and realize (however temporarily) "unimaginable community" by confronting their own social, political, and cultural ambivalence. Stage, the threshold between reality and fiction, Korea and America, and past and future, becomes their true 'home' where they incubate and precipitate "nation in transformation" that Yan Haiping argues for as "another transnational."