현대공연학이론의 주요쟁점과 미디어테크놀로지 연극-'라이브니스'이론과 우스터그룹의 <햄릿>을 중심으로

Abstract

This study explores a problematic issue that has been disputed in performance studies with regards to media technology: “liveness”-related media technology theater forms. This exploration is based on the following assumptions. First, media technology currently saturates our entire socio-cultural system. Accordingly, second, mediatized forms and live performance will inevitably intermingle. Third, even though audiences are accustomed to different kinds of media forms in their daily lives, they desire to see and to experience liveness in theatrical productions. Fourth, although live theater can use media technology forms, it preserves its own status as a live performance. These premises call for further examination of the concepts of ‘liveness’ and ‘media technology’. As a first step in this examination, I reconsider theories of live performance that were explored by Peggy Phelan, Philip Auslander, and Matthew Reason. Phelan views liveness as the originality or the ontology of live performance. In contrast, Auslander suggests that this view no longer has any utility in explaining contemporary performances because liveness can also manifest itself in mediated forms such as television images. In relation to Phelan's and Auslander's views, Reason approaches liveness somewhat differently, concerning himself instead with how audiences construct their experience of live theater through language. This theoretical discussion leads to a more precise understanding of the following: the ontology of live performance, the contributions and aesthetic value of media technology in live performance, and the desires and ideologies of audiences. Building on this discussion in the second part of the study, I analyze the Wooster group's production <Hamlet>. This production recently generated controversy among American theater critics because it uses various media technologies and early televised theatrical material preserved on ‘theatrofilm’. My critical analysis of this production develops and extends the preceding theoretical discussion of the concept of ‘liveness’. Although many critics have praised the startling creativity and amusing novelty of <Hamlet>, they also worry that media technology might strip live performance of its originality. But I propose a different perspective. Reputed to be the final theater troop of the American avant-garde, the Wooster Group intends to highlight problematic issues and to create anxieties in the areas of performance studies, theatrical criticism, and stagecraft. We should therefore analyze the theatrical forms used in <Hamlet>in conjunction with critics' reactions to and evaluations of them. This approach enables us to define specific prospects and criteria for media technology theater as a new form and style. In addition, through this examination of the Wooster group's <Hamlet> and its critical reception, the utility of liveness discourse will be demonstrated. In sum, this research provides an in-depth analysis of various innovative theatrical forms that have recently been tried out in Korean theater, and it suggests promising future directions for theater professionals who intend to experiment with new theatrical forms that incorporate media technology.