유치진의 록팰러재단 미국 연극 연수에 대한 연구

Abstract

This paper is aimed at reconstructing Yoo Chijin's training for American theater and examining its effects on his theatrical activities. In 1956 he was selected as the Rockefeller Foundation's fellowship and went to America in June. Since then he had been training for about 8 and half months in America and visited European and East Asian theatrical circles for 4 months. Yoo Chijin's memoirs including Dongrang Jaseojeon (Dongrang Autobiography) explained that he went to America accidentally but the training was planned by Charles Burton Faths's push combined with Yoo Chijin's effort. When Charles Burton Faths met Yoo Chijin for the first time in 1948, he judged that Yoo Chijin was the right man who could pursue theater education and community theatre. After that for 8 years Faths had pushed Yoo Chijin by giving him related books and theatrical informations and demanded that he should improve his English ability. Yoo Chijin who withdrew from National Theater representative and needed a breakthrough had a strong will. He had made constant efforts to satisfy Faths's standard and finally he was selected as a fellowship. Yoo Chijin's Training in America consisted of a great deal of content and conducted effectively by the Rockefeller Foundation's active management. After language study, the training had been conducted with two goals. First goal was to collect materials on curricula managed by departments of theater in American universities and various theater schools and to visit them. Second one was to visit representative community theatres and to grasp the current situations. During this training, Yoo Chijin met first rate American theatrical people and could look around representative community theatres, so his confidence in America more deepened. Through American training Yoo Chijin shaped the direction of hid theatrical activities, which could be summarized in two ways. First he clarified the self awareness as a playwright representing Anti-Communist theater and tried to raise playwright's status by publishing English translation collection of his works. Second he shaped up the goal to found a theater in seoul through his understanding the way to manage a theater by the support of public institutions, visiting representative community theatres. After coming home, he tried to practice the awareness established in American training. Hangangeun Heureunda is the work of his will to continue a role of anti-communism playwright. His goal to establish a community theater was connected with constructing new theater. In this sense, the August of 1958 should be recorded as the time when Yoo Chinjin's theatre activities started in a new direction.