• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.23
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• pp.127-165
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• 2011

This paper focuses on the specificities and semantic meaning of Mikhail Bulgakov's metadrama White Guard and The Flight. The standard conception of metadrama is to purposefully break the dramatic illusion and make bare a playwright's self-consciousness of the theatrical art itself. With the use of the metadrama Bulgakov expressed the essentials of ugly reality, which he couldn't accept as a valuable truth. In this respect, Bulgakov's metadrama becomes at once a window, from which he views the external world in the theatrical vision, and a mirror, in which his political and existential stance as a playwright is reflected. In White Guard Bulgakov described the already theatricalized reality through several instances of 'play-within-play'. In The Flight, composed of eight pieces of dream, a life turned out to be a less solid and less firm reality than dream. Continuously demolishing the cognitive wall between reality and illusion, Bulgakov leads spectators to have a reflective view on the reality. Allowing more powerful demonstrativeness for a play-within-play than for a play-within-play, Bulgakov elevates a metadramatic technique to the level of thematic structure.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.133-143
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• 2019

When writing historical dramas, there was an argument that restoring the language of the times was the responsibility of the playwright, but no full-scale research was done. There was no collaborative study between playwrights and Korean Language scholars. So far, many playwrights have considered it the responsibility of Korean Language scholars to discover and restore language. However, it is a medium that can easily meet the public like a play or movie, and it should have a great responsibility for creation. Language changes with time, so restoring the language of the time in plays and scenarios can lead to difficulties in communicating with modern audiences. However, the change of language according to the times means that it captures the social image and fashion of the time Therefore, language restoration in historical dream means that scenes and backgrounds can be described more realistically. Restore of language is not just necessary to improve the creative environment; it should be understood as the responsibility of the artist to meet the ability of the audience to understand the language of the times already learned. The playwright who writes the historical drama should not only learn the grammar of the background era, but also find out the lost pronunciation and the changed vocabulary so that he can use various dialogues.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.129-147
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• 2008

Since the beginning of her dramatic career, Suzan-Lori Parks has considered digging up and restoring African-American history buried under the dominant white Anglo-Saxon history as her mission as a playwright. In Red Letter Plays, she attempts what Deborah Geis called "canon-critique" by taking canonical work by Nathaniel Hawthorne and casting an African-American character as the main character and describing her oppression as an African-American female. This paper argues that Suzan-Lori Parks accuses the oppressive social system by restoring and representing the history of sexual, economic, and racial exploitation that African-American females had to suffer through the dominant image of body and blood. Parks had to rewrite the history of black female characters on their bodies and in the blood because their bodies have been the ultimate object of revulsion and attraction in the perspective of white male. While abhorring and despising Hester La Negrita's abject body, male characters in In the Blood nonetheless not only exploit her sexually and economically but also impregnate her. Hester resorts to her only means of revolting against this oppressive system; she kills her most beloved son and writes "A" on the floor with his blood. Likewise, Hester Smith in Fucking A, who wears "A" on her bosom like Hester Prynne, which in this case means "abortionist," "saves" her son from the hunters by slitting his throat. Abundant graphic and sensational images written on black female body and in the blood are Parks's dramatic strategy to rewrite the forgotten and hidden history of black women's history.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.248-273
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• 2019

This research was studied in regard to theatre perspective and the directing methods of the 'Theater Duke Georg II.', the ruler of the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen in modern Germany, in his contemporary context based on the Meininger Principle. He was a theatre-cultural politician, producer and a regisseur, who used theatre as purposive media to arbitrate domestic and international reality and enhance national prestige. Especially as a regisseur, he established directing principles and methods which was performing the original texts representing playwright's perspective targeting to creat theatre as synthesis of the arts at Meningen Company. It was innovative thing itself which was that his directing art was accompanied by new theatrical aesthetics, practical principles, and staged process. He established independence and originality of directing which was breakthrough of modern stage-director's theatre. Furthermore he layed a foundation for the development of the modern and contemporary director's theatre.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.180-187
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• 2021

This thesis explores the place and role of a performer's action from a perspective of a director and playwright David Mamet's concept for performer training. This thesis takes inspiration from the idea of Mamet's simple and practical investigation specifically in text-based approach with a performer's bodily function on stage. For Mamet, the writings and practices of many different body-centered training are not rooted in the principle and nature of acting/performance. Reconsidering complicated approaches particularly psychological-oriented theory, practice, and assumption draw on several practitioners takes us beyond the field of visible and/or outer appearance of a performer which in turn leads the performer's body to be as abstract therefore not to being in the moment on stage. Arming the points, we argue that whatever disciplines and/or methods necessarily need to meet the principles and demands of acting/performance/theatre to connect to the materials, an action/objective given by a specific playwright which the performer must inhabit through his/her body. Out of the context, any 'method' serves no purpose. That is, the mechanics of an action is an extension of addressing what a performer's specific needs which shifts his/her body to respond appropriately to the theatrical demands. Taking this argument further, we claim that the purpose of performer training should not be understood as learning and improving techniques or skills for his/her self-perfection. The research finding shows that this resembles to the phenomenon that the visible very often precedes the invisible where the performer's body lose a clarity with no more chance to happen and/or change the event(s). Rather, it is a process of learning what/how to learn which in turn brings us back to the central question of why we do training for what purpose in this contemporary era. Exploring and answering these questions is not only a way to employ the key materials applicable to the theatrical demands but also to achieve the identify as a professional performer/doer on stage.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.539-565
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• 2009

T. S. Eliot attempted the combining of the liturgy of Anglican Church and a drama in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and created a modern verse drama which comes most close to the regular tragedy like Greek tragedy today. Eliot chose the drama to deliver his religious insight because of its ritualistic origin and its potentiality to deliver a dramatic world which can contain a complete order. The central theme of this play is the martyrdom. The dramatic action of killing the archbishop Thomas Beckett in this play, however, is not treated as important event enough to be a dramatic climax. He is portrayed as a witness to the reality of God's will rather than a man who wills to give up his own life for any religious belief or cause. In Eliot, a martyr is nothing but "a witness" in its ancient sense. This paper purposes to review the language of this play. The various and new meters and rhythms of the language of this play function enough to bring its playwright to encounter 'the real audience' in 'a living theatre'. The interactions between different verbal models also play a big role to make this play a living theatre. Eliot found the poetry which crosses the various classes and levels of the tastes of audience is the most useful poetry. And the poetry of this play proves as the very thing which intensifies the theme of the play and gives the most powerful force to the play. Especially Eliot's poetry succeeds smost in the various and free meters of chorus, which makes Eliot the first playwright since Aeschylus, who could bring the chorus to undertake the function of extending the dramatic action of the play into the universal meaning. In the theatre the real audience identifies themselves with chorus. And the chorus leads the audience to respond to peace which passeth understanding beyond words and sounds of this play, which is the desired response in Eliot's conception of drama.

• American Studies
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.67-96
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• 2021

The Canadian public broadcaster CBC had successfully aired a sitcom centered on a Korean immigrant family from 2016 to 2021. The show is based on the play Kim's Convenience written by a Korean-Canadian playwright Ins Choi. This study explores literary features of Kim's Convenience that accounts for its popularity; three elements of the show play crucial roles in maintaining the balance between specificity and universality. First, Choi deploys a Korean immigrant story in the form of comedy. Second, the main plot revolves around an ordinary family with generational strains that ends in reconciliation. Third. the Kims are depicted more as an archetypical family than a stereotypically Asian one. By closely interweaving these elements, Choi induces the audience to find commonalities from the show, and racial specificities of the Kim's family become "spicy" attractions of the play.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.503-515
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• 2018

This paper reevaluates the influence and value of Shakespeare inherent in the history of music, focusing on the works of playwright William Shakespeare who have had an absolute influence on the history of music and various musical works derived from his work. To consider ways referred to the original work of Shakespeare, and at the same time to analyze the different musical pieces with his same material, and also about the musical implementation according to theatrical devices provided by Shakespeare through the four aspects of 'Shakespeare's musical descriptions and texts', 'Configuration model and its variants', 'Portrayal of person and human character' and 'Genre diversity and Creative possibility'.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.117-132
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• 2007

Playwright Eugene O'Neill's expressionistic text-based approach to The Emperor Jones, with an emphasis on fixity, was at odds with African American actor Charles Gilpin's improvisational performance technique, stressing rupture, spontaneity, and discontinuity. The contemporary avant-garde performance troupe The Wooster Group likewise produces subversive and interrogative forms of identity in performing the play, which challenge the normative approach to gender, race, and an imagined orientation. The historical foundation of subversion and destabilization laid by O'Neill and Gilpin were manifold in the Wooster Group's production of The Emperor Jones, and not only formed a backdrop to it but also played a central role in the group's representation of race and even gender on the stage. In this essay, I use O'Neill's play, The Emperor Jones, a crucial example of racialized fantasies of identification, to explore how the modernist stage through the performances of Gilpin and The Wooster Group constructed racialized subjects of both its performers and audiences. Gilpin and the Wooster Group's strategies each shared a similar complexity in the portrayal of black identity in performance. Offering an examination of how ideologies of race and gender overlap in The Emperor Jones, I hope to show how each performance signifies a range of subversions and differences simultaneously and sometimes oppositionally that needs to be explored both holistically and in detail to offer a fuller picture of these remarkable attempts. Through this approach, I examine Gilpin's creative adaptations of O'Neill's text and illuminate how it is that the Wooster Group's appropriative use of blackface in their performance has come to gain critical acceptance.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.147-156
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• 2013

It is almost impossible to keep the exact documentations of veterans' works due to the fastidious and convoluted nature of this particular field. The histrorical recordings of Korean Theater in general has been improved due to growing educations of staffs and actors through theatre associated universities But the need of preserving the recordings of veteran actors has not been recognized enough, therefore their precious assets has been lost, which is such a regretful truth. However, with the necessity in mind, the following study is focused on Gil-ho Kim, an actor, playwright, director, and his works on 'Namdo-Mokpo-Plays'. Comparisons will be made, focusing on these plays, between his life as an actor and the meaning of documenting a veteran actor's assets.