Three Lear Productions in early 2000s’ Korean Cultural Landscape

Abstract

Korea’s, cultural modernization was influenced by westernization after the Korean war. Since the 1960s, Shakespeare’s plays, with their literary and theatrical fabrics, appealed to the Korean audience more than any other plays. Accordingly, Korean directors tried to prove their theatrical imagination with productions of Shakespeare. Generally speaking, they created Shakespeare productions in two different ways. One way was by appropriating the rich Korean traditional folk culture for their productions. This phenomenon was accompanied by the national cultural agenda from the late 1970s to the 1980s to recover Korean identity through traditional folk culture. Still many directors continue to use traditional folk culture in their productions, but they intend to cultivate it primarily for the theatrical style rather than for the cultural identity. Once they turned their interest to fuse the cultures, they rediscovered folk cultures as fertile theatrical resources. These days, intercultural amalgamations frequently happen frequently to in Shakespearean productions. The other way tended to destroy the original plot and to breathe in the current Korean social reality. Korean directors did not hesitate to cut the words, transpose the scenes, and subvert the original story. After they had destroyed the original plot, they often reconstructed the current issues in the scenes such as gender, sexuality, class struggle, family relationships, and so on. In these post-modern Shakespearean productions the spectacular mise-en-scenes presented Korean social reality as a force rather than representing it. This paper will survey how Shakespeare productions have developed since the late 1970s, and will focus on three recent Lear productions which that embrace tradition, modernity and post-modernity. The National Theatre’s King Uru (2001) depended on Korean folk culture for its theatrical style. Yoon-Taek Lee’s King Lear (2004) mixed a modern theatrical style and traditional folk culture. And Theatre Group Gabyun’s Family Lear (2003) destroyed the original plot and reflected current Korean social problems of such as parent-child relationships as well as the prevalent materialism. Eventually my paper will show how Shakespearean productions are corresponding to the current cultural landscape in Korea.