토월회의 창립공연 연구

Abstract

Towolhoe performed 4 dramas as works of founding performance at Chosŏn Theater from the 4th of July to 9th in 1923. They performed Eugene Pillot’s Hunger, Anton Chekhov’s The Bear, Park Sunghee’s Gilsik, and Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband. It can be summarized that the founding performance of Towolhoe had two characteristics. One is that they chose the realistic works of the time forming the Western modern drama as the works of founding performance. Towolhoe chose the foreign dramatists who made a great contribution to forming the modern dramas of their countries and made a huge establishment mainly in realistic dramas. That is, Towolhoe had the perception that the modern drama in colonized Chosŏn should be realistic drama. The other is that Towolhoe tried to get legal performance of theater recognizing censorship. Its basic standpoint was that they performed the works passed Japanese censorship in the permanent theater. To pass the censorship, they had to avoid the works closely related with the reality of colonized Chosŏn. Towolhoe aimed at the works which could pass the Japanese censorship and at the same time had the enlightening viewpoint. The researches which have been made up to now have evaluated that the founding performance of Towolhoe ended as failure. However, the performance was not failure in terms of actual fact and was much less failure in terms of forming modern drama in colonized Chosŏn. It must be evaluated that its founding performance was prepared carefully by the theatrical people with expert knowledge on modern drama and inspite of its insignificant mistakes, the performance ended well. Especially, the people encouraged from its founding performance newly joined Towolhoe. This fact has great significance, since it could provid a momentum for getting into its stride for modern drama. In addition, it should be highly evaluated that though they had to recognize the severe Japanese censorship for performance in Chosŏn unlike the Japanese movement of modern drama, they presented the direction which the modern drama of colonized Chosŏn that could not be indifferent to its suffering would move forward.