• Title/Summary/Keyword: Alternative Theatre

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Creating Theatrical Contents Out of Stage Adaptation of Dongrae-yaru (동래야류의 무대적 수용에 의한 연극 콘텐츠 창출)

  • Lee, Ki-Ho
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.165-175
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    • 2011
  • The purpose of this research is to investigate the possibility of creating new theatrical contents by performance anthropological approach. Today's traditional performing arts are historically descended and developed in the forms of Ahk, Hee, and Geuk. Among those, Dongrae-yaru is a traditional mask dance, handed down in Dongrae, Pusan and appointed as the 18th intangible cultural asset. Its performance is carried out in the juxtaposition of Ahk, Hee, and Geuk. Korean theatre in the 21st century seems going back to realism after going through post-modern cultural phenomenons. However, the quest for alternative theatre is raised higher than ever. As a part of this strive, this paper asserts the traditional performing arts should be investigated as an alternative and new theatrical form. Among those traditional performing arts, Dongrae-yaru is selected for its well balanced combination of Ahk, Hee, and Geuk. The study examines in depth how each element of Ahk, Hee, and Geuk, they are expressed in forms of folk music, refined dance, jest, satire, wit. Its investigation on the stage adaptation provides the possibility for the new style and codification as the new theatre contents.

Weaving the realities with video in multi-media theatre centering on Schaubuhne's Hamlet and Lenea de Sombra's Amarillo (멀티미디어 공연에서 비디오를 활용한 리얼리티 구축하기 - 샤우뷔네의 <햄릿>과 리니아 드 솜브라의 <아마릴로>를 중심으로 -)

  • Choi, Young-Joo
    • Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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    • no.53
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    • pp.167-202
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    • 2014
  • When video composes mise-en-scene during the performance, it reflects the aspect of contemporary image culture, where the individual as creator joins in the image culture through the device of cell phone and computer remediating the former video technology. It also closely related with the contemporary theatre culture in which 1960's and 1970's video art was weaved into the contemporary performance theatre. With these cultural background, theatre practitioners regarded media-friendly mise-en-scene as an alternative facing the cultural landscape the linear representational narrative did not correspond to the present culture. Nonetheless, it can not be ignored that video in the performance theatre is remediating its historical function: to criticize the social reality. to enrich the aesthetic or emotional reality. I focused video in the performance theatre could feature the object with the image by realizing the realtime relay, emphasizing the situation within the frame, and strengthening the reality by alluding the object as a gesutre. So I explored its two historical manuel. First, video recorded the spot, communicated the information, and arose the audience's recognition of the object to its critical function. Second, video in performance theatre could redistribute perceptual way according to the editing method like as close up, slow motion, multiple perspective, montage and collage, and transformation of the image to the aesthetic function. Reminding the historical function of video in contemporary performance theatre, I analyzed two shows, Schaubuhne's Hamlet and Lenea de Sombra's Amarillo which were introduced to Korean audiences during the 2010 Seoul Theatre Olympics. It is known to us that Ostermeir found real social reality as a text and made the play the context. In this, he used video as a vehicle to penetrate the social reality through the hero's perspective. It is also noteworthy that Ostermeir understood Hamlet's dilemma as these days' young generation's propensity. They delayed action while being involved in image culture. Besides his use of video in the piece revitalized the aesthetic function of video by hypermedial perceptual method. Amarillo combined documentary theatre method with installation, physical theatre, and video relay on the spot, and activated aesthetic function with the intermediality, its interacting co-relationship between the media. In this performance theatre, video has recorded and pursued the absent presence of the real people who died or lost in the desert. At the same time it fantasized the emotional aspect of the people at the moment of their death, which would be opaque or non prominent otherwise. As a conclusion, I found the video in contemporary performance theatre visualized the rupture between the media and perform their intermediality. It attempted to disturb the transparent immediacy to invoke the spectator's perception to the theatrical situation, to open its emotional and spiritual aspect, and to remind the realities as with Schaubuhne's Hamlet and Lenea de Sombra's Amarillo.

The Approaches of Cultural Studies to Theatre -The Limits of Theory Application- (연극에 대한 문화연구적 접근 -'이론' 도입의 한계를 중심으로-)

  • Kim, Yongn Soo
    • Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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    • no.40
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    • pp.307-344
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    • 2010
  • Cultural Studies built on the critical mind of New Left exposes the relationship between culture and power, and investigates how this relationship develops the cultural convention. It has achieved the new perspective that could make us to think culture and art in terms of political correctness. However, the critical voices against the theoretical premises of Cultural Studies have been increased as its heyday in 1980s was nearly over. For instance, Terry Eagleton, a former Marxist literary critic, declared in 2003 that the golden age of cultural theory is long past. This essay, therefore, intends to show the weak foundations on which the approaches of cultural studies to theatre rest and to clarify the general problem of their introduction to theatre studies. The approach of cultural studies to theatre takes the form of 'top-down inquiry' as it applies a theory to a particular play or historical period. In other word, from the theory the writer moves to the particular case. The result is not an inquiry but rather a demonstration. This circularity can destroy the point of serious intellectual investigation as the theory dictates answers. The goal-oriented narrow viewpoint as a logical consequence of 'top-down inquiry' makes the researcher to favor the plays or the parts of a play that are proper to test a theory. As a result it loses the fair judgment on the artistic value of a play, and brings about the misinterpretation. The interpreter-oriented reading is the other defect of cultural studies as it disregards the inherent meaning of the text, distorting a play. The approach of cultural studies also consists of a conventionality as it arrives at a stereotyped interpretation by using certain conventions of reasoning and rhetoric. The cultural theories are fundamentally the 'outside theories' that seek to explain not theatre but the very broad features of society and politics. Consequently their application to theatre risks the destructive criticism, disregarding the inherent experience of theatre. Most of, if not all, cultural theories, furthermore, are proven to be lack of empirical basis. The alternative method to them is a 'cognitive science' that proves scientifically our mind being influenced by bodily experience. The application of cultural materialism to Shakespeare's is one of the cases that reveal the limits of cultural studies. Jonathan Dollimore and Water Cohen provide a kind of 'canonical study' in this application that is imitated by the succeeding researchers. As a result the interpretation of has been flooded with repetitive critical remarks, revealing the problem of 'top-down inquiry' and conventional reasoning. Cultural Studies is antipodal to theatre in some respect. It is interested chiefly in the social and political reality while theatre aims to create the fiction world. The theatre studies, therefore, may have to risk the danger of destroying its own base when it adopts cultural studies uncritically. The different stance between theatre and cultural theories also occurs from the opposition of humanism vs. antihumanism. We have to introduce cultural theories selectively and properly not to destroy the inherent experience and domain of theatre.

Representation and Re-presentation in the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor (환영과 현실의 경계에 서다 - <비엘로폴, 비엘로폴>을 중심으로 본 타데우즈 칸토르의 연극 미학)

  • Sohn, Wonjung
    • Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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    • no.49
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    • pp.75-100
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    • 2013
  • An on-going creative process was the major principle of Kantor's artistic endeavors. Kantor's emphasis on process grew out of his frustration with the experience of creation being isolated from the audience in the present time, during the moments of encounter. At the same time, however, Kantor was always aware of the fact that the first night of each and every performance that he made was the last point of his creative intervention. Despite being performed live in the present time, Kantor saw theatre essentially as an end product. This does not mean that Kantor abandoned the concept of on-going process, for process was for the artist a means to reject the idea of a finished work of art and to denounce the feeling of satisfaction derived from the traditional denouement in representational theatre. For him, theatre that dominated his time isolated the audience from the art work and the artist, and from this perspective his continual emphasis on process should be understood as an aesthetic principle in order to open up and expand the dimension of art into the realm of the spectator so that the experiences of both the artist and spectator may coexist. The heaviest barrier that separated the artist and his work from its audience was the creative structure that governed Western art. In theatre it was the dramatic structure that was the main object of his series of severe challenges. Not only did it fail to represent reality but it distorted reality, creating nothing but artificial illusion. Under this condition, all that was permitted to the audience was mirages. However, Kantor never completely discarded illusion from his theatre. The point for him was always to created a circumstance where the illusory reality of drama comes to exist within the dimensions of our reality. It was Kantor's belief that instead of a total denial of illusion, his theatre should strategically accommodate illusion which comes from reality. And, the aim of Kantor's theatrical experiments was to invite the audience into this ambience and transform the experience of his audience into a much more participatory one. This paper traces the ways in which Kantor transgressed the dominating conventions of representational, literary theatre, and how such attempts induced an alternative mode of spectatorship. The study will begin from an investigation into Kantor's attitude towards illusion and reality, and then move onto a closer inspection of how he spatially and dramaturgically materialized his concepts on stage, giving special focus on Wielopole, Wielopole.

A Study on Traditional Ideology and the 'Tradition' of the Theatre company Minye in 1970s (1970년대 전통 이념과 극단 민예극장의 '전통')

  • Kim, Ki-Ran
    • Journal of Popular Narrative
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    • v.26 no.3
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    • pp.45-86
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    • 2020
  • In this article, the "modernization of the tradition" constructed on the cultural politics and the way in which it appropriated in the korean theatre in the 1970s were analyzed. It is trying to reveal its implications. It is also a work to critically review the aspects of self-censorship in the korean theatre in the 70s. To that end, we looked at the theatre company Minye Theatre, which preoccupied the traditional discussions in the 1970s by creating national dramas. Until now, the evaluation of the theatre company Minye Theatre in the 1970s has focused on the achievement on the directing of Heo Gyu, who promoted the succession and transformation of tradition. However, the traditional ideology constructed in the state-led cultural politics in the 70s and the way in which it was operated cannot be evaluated only in terms of artistic achievement. The ideology of tradition is selected according to the selective criteria of the subject to appropriate tradition. What's important is that certain objects are excluded, discarded, re-elected, re-interpreted and re-recognized in the selection process of selected traditional ideology. This is the situation in the '70s, when tradition was constantly re-recognized amid differences between the decadent and the disorder that were then designated as non-cultural, and led to a new way of appropriate. The nation-led traditional discussion of the '70s legalized the tradition with stable values, one of the its way was the national literary and artistic support. Under the banner of modernization of tradition, theatre company Minye preoccupied the discussions on the tradition and presented folk drama as a new theatre. As an alternative to the crisis of korean theatre at the time, the Minye chose the method of inheriting and transforming tradition. It is noteworthy that Heo Gyu, the representative director of the theatre company Minye, recognized the succession and transformation of traditional performance as both a calling and an experiment. For Heo Gyu, tradition was accepted as an irresistible stable value and an unquestionable calling, and as a result, his performance, filled with excessive traditional practices, became overambitious, especially when it failed to reflect the present-here reality, the repeated use of traditional expression tools resulted in skilled craftsmanship, not artistic creation. The traditional ideology of the 70s unfolds in a new aspect of appropriation in the 80s. In 1986, Son Jin-Cheok, Kim Seong-nyeo, and Yoon Mun-sik, who were key members of the theatre company Minye Theatre, left the theatre to create the theatre company Michu, and secured popularity through Madangnori(popular folk yard theatre). Son Jin-Cheok's Madangnori is overbearing through satire and humor. It gained popularity by criticizing and mocking state power. On the other hand, not only the form of traditional performance, but also the university-centered Madanggeuk movement, which appropriated on the spirit of resistance from the people to its traditional values, has rapidly grown. In the field of traditional discussions of the 70s, Madanggeuk was self-born through appropriation in which the spirit of resistance of the people is used as a traditional value. Madanggeuk as well as Michu that achieved the popularization of Madangnori cannot be discussed solely by the artistic achievement of the modernization of tradition. Critics of korean theatre in response to state-led traditional discussions in the 70s was focused only on the qualitative achievement of performing arts based on artistry. I am very sorry for that. As a result, the popular resistance of the Madanggeuk and the Madangnori were established in the 'difference' with the traditions of the theatre company Minye Theatre. Theatre company Minye Theatre was an opportunity for the modernization of tradition, but the fact that it did not continuously produce significant differences. This is the meaning and limitation of the "tradition" of the theatre company Minye Theatre in the history of korean theatre in the 1970s.

A Study on the Direction of the Elderly Theatre in Aged Society: Around the 'Hoechun Circus' in Dangjin (고령사회 노인연극의 지향점 고찰: 당진시 '회춘유랑단'을 중심으로)

  • Oh, Panjin
    • 한국노년학
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    • v.40 no.2
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    • pp.359-377
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    • 2020
  • The purpose of this study is to examine the direction of the elderly theatre by analyzing an example of the elderly theatre program which is attempted in a way of the welfare of senior citizens in terms of cultural support. To this end, the 'Hoechun Circus' composed of elderly women in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, was investigated and analyzed. Research methods uses a case study, performance theory, and peer review strategies to increase the validity of the study. The results of the study are as follows: Firstly, the elderly women intended to communicate with children and adolescents through performance; Secondly, they wanted to communicate with other physically uncomfortable elderly people; Thirdly, they also attempted to communicate with young or middle-aged as well as all residents; Fourthly, they experienced a new genre of theatre to identify themselves in a different ways and enhance their sense of accomplishment and spent their old age pleasantly and informally. Based on these findings, the following suggestions were made. First, we should expand the theatre programs of senior citizens which benchmark the 'Hoechun Circus'. Second, various cases of elderly theater should be studied and policy research to support such elderly theatre is necessary. Besides, educational courses to train elderly theatre experts should also be developed. Third, it should also seek ways for the program to move beyond regional limits and interact with organizations at home and abroad. Fourth, there is room to explore new ways in the field of theater therapy, and the development of sociodrama or psychodrama programs can be an alternative.

The Effects of Forum Theatre Instruction Utilizing Smart Devices on enhancing Social Skills (스마트 기기를 활용한 포럼연극 수업이 사회성 향상에 미치는 효과)

  • Kim, Sun-Hee
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.10 no.11
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    • pp.275-282
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    • 2019
  • Social Skills are one of the most important competency for student who live in the future Society. The purpose of this study is to propose a Forum Theatre Instruction utilizing smart devices as an alternative teaching and learning methods for enhancing the social skills of students, and to examine the effect of this instruction on the improvement of it. In order to achieve the purpose, the class was designed based on the 'Procedural Instructional Model for FTI using Digital Media', and the effectiveness of it was verified using 'SSIS'. FTI can be composed of six classes, and results of paired t-test showed that it was effective in enhancing students' social skills. Reflecting the interview results of the participant, the further requirements for improvement and efficient use of FTI were suggested.

Lost in Cultural Studies: Searching for an Exit in Drama/Theatre/Performance Studies (문화연구에서 길을 잃다: 한 드라마 연구자의 출구 찾기)

  • Choi, Sung Hee
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.21
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    • pp.189-211
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    • 2010
  • The purpose of this paper is to 1)examine the current state of cultural studies in Korea with a focus on recent discourses about its 'crisis' and 2)attempt to find some ways out of these dilemmas in drama/theatre/performance studies. As Raymond Williams redefined 'culture' as 'a whole way of life,' performance studies has expanded the boundary of 'performance' from traditional performing arts onto almost everything that can be studied and analyzed 'as' performance. Performance is not only the final product on display but a whole process that includes training, workshop, and rehearsal of culture. According to Richard Schechner, workshop and rehearsal are the most critical and creative 'liminal' phases that allow traditional knowledge and alternative challenges to coexist in conflict and intentionally delay the final decision by putting itself in a perpetual process. From this view, this essay attempts to find an-no matter how limited and temporary-answer to or a possible exit from political and theoretical aporias of cultural studies.

An Exploration of a Way for Contemporary Actor Training/Acting: A Perspective from Denis Diderot and Tadashi Suzuki's Concepts

  • Son, Bong-Hee
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.58-63
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    • 2021
  • This research aims to reconsider the necessity of an alternative way(s) for contemporary actor training and acting in discussing and articulating Diderot and Suzuki's concepts and approaches for acting/training. First of all, the physical body, assumed and conceptualized by Diderot is beyond our control by means of a type of radical body/mind dualism, and is based on the concept that body and mind are separate. In contrast, Suzuki's notion of acting/training is raised by his concern about the role of an actor's body in the constitution of an actor's bodily experience against the imitation of the West-oriented theatre/acting/training. The descriptions of the two theatre artists' notion of acting/training gives us insight into the place and role of contemporary theatre as a practical root to encounter and communicate between a doer and a spectator where an actor's body must appropriately be attuned and cultivated towards the cultivation of bodily attributes which are foundation but usually neglected by actors/directors/practitioners particularly in Korea. Especially, misunderstanding of a specific training sources/approaches, namely 'scientific system' and the 'method' have taken us away from the potential possibilities of the lived oneness. Here, the 'possibility' refers to the primary bodily functions within a specific context or being in the here and now rather than attempting to copying, imitating and/or adapting a specific cultural source(s)/approaches/techniques as we have faced with through the previous century. We reconsider and argue that a potential way to correspond the nature of theatre/acting/training is that how to meet the demand of contemporary spectators which in turn intensifies an actor's stability, sustainability and hopefully professional identity in this contemporary era.

Epic Theatre Reexamined from the Viewpoint of Cognitive Science (인지과학의 관점에서 본 서사극 이론)

  • Kim, Yongsoo
    • Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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    • no.49
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    • pp.133-169
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    • 2013
  • Reexamining Brecht's theoretical hypotheses in terms of cognitive science, this essay arrived at several temporary interpretations. Cognitive science implies that empathy can precede the rational understanding in Verfremdungseffekt. The spectator tends to simulate the unfamiliar incident and character and feels the consequential embodied emotion that leads to the cognitive understanding. The similar situation can be found in social gestus. According to cognitive science, gesture(social gestus) is simulated in the mirror-neuron of spectator, arousing consequently the embodied emotion that triggers the succeeding understanding. The spectator apts to experience and feel physically the moving gesture before decoding it as a social signification. Brecht's intention that attempts to reveal the duality of actor and character by eliminating the fourth wall is negated by cognitive science. According to the theory of conceptual blending, the spectator under the eliminated fourth wall mixes actor and character, and simulates this blending image so that he experiences it imaginatively. As such, another kind of illusion can be formed when a fourth wall is collapsed. Meanwhile, the critical thinking of spectator Brecht wanted can be hard to occur during the performance. It is necessary for the spectator to recollect the bygone dialogue and action in terms of social context as if he presses the pause, stopping the playback while watching a play in video. In this respect the social meaning Brecht intended can be achieved more effectively by the stop motion like tableau. It would not only give the time for the spectator to consider the implied social signification, but also make him possible to decode a semiotic meaning as if interpreting a still picture. Or it can be delivered by the dialogue that expresses the playwright's critical judgement. In this case, the subject of critical thinking is not the spectator but the author. The alternative explanation that the cognitive science suggests illuminates theoretically the reasons why Brecht's theory fails to be realized in practice. In a sense, Brecht's theory is nothing but a theoretical hypothesis. It takes the premise that the emotion hinders the rational thinking, understanding emotion and reason oppositively like Plato. This assumption is negated easily by the recent cognitive science that sees the reason as a by-product of physical experience including emotion. The rational understanding, in this sense, begins from the embodied emotion. As such the cognitive science denies the dichotomy of emotion and reason that Brecht adopted. The theoretical hypothesis of cognitive science makes us recognize again the importance of bodily experience in theatre. In theatre the spectator tends to experience physically before decoding the intellectual meaning. The spectator Brecht wanted, therefore, is far from the reality. The spectator usually experiences and reacts physically before decoding the meaning critically. Thus Brecht's intention can be realized by the embodied emotion resulted from simulation. This tentative interpretation suggests that we need to pay more attention to the empirical study of spectatorship, not remaining in a speculative study.