극장 드라마센터에 나타난 유치진의 연극관

Abstract

In 1962, Yoo Chijin built the Drama Center, which was a comprehensive space with a theater, an academy, and a library. Among them, the theater had 473 seats with unique stages, and such kind of theater had never built in Korea before. The Rockefeller Foundation which supported to build the Drama Center and people in the theater hoped that it should be built as a small theater in order to sponsor the contemporary drama festivals, but Yoo Chijin, who preferred a big theater for enhancing the intimacy with the audience, built a medium size theater because it was a big theater that he had proposed since the start of his career and after his world theater tour, he realized the need of such a theater for the modern succession of masquerades. The stages of the Drama Center which visualized Yoo Chijin's ideal of a theater were new, but he performed only the Shakespeare's dramas and the realism dramas and unfortunately it wasn't long before the Drama Center was closed because of financial troubles. The Shakespeare plays were suitable for the stages of the Drama Center, but the realism plays did not match with the stages because Yoo Chijin and Lee Haerang could not to adapt to the new stages because both were used to realistic theaters. The proper application of the new stages was possible only in the next generation of theater people. In conclusion, Yoo Chijin built the Drama Center theater to enhance the intimacy with the audience, but he did not achieve his goal of leveling up Korean dramas with the new theater.