The New Millennium Shakespeare in Korea

Abstract

Korean theatre has been experiencing the unprecedented Shakespeare boom since 1990. During the last two decades, 411 Shakespeare productions were performed in Korea; 38 foreign Shakespeare productions met Korean audience, and 373 Korean Shakespeare productions were produced. Furthermore, many Shakespearean productions including Oh Tae-suk’s Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Lee Youn-taek’s Hamlet, Yang Jung-ung’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Han Tae-suk’s Lady Macbeth, Won Young-oh’s Hamlet from the East, and Kim Myeong-kon’s King Uru, Kim Nak-hyoeng’s Macbeth, which recorded significant successes at home, were invited abroad and received very positive responses from the audience as well as the critics, and were given many awards in various kinds of international theatre festivals. Korean Shakespeare can be truly said to meet Renaissance in the New Millennium. This paper presents the Korean Shakespeare production list from 1990 to 2011, which records production titles, theatre companies’ and directors’ names, and the performance styles. Also, it defines the characteristics of the Korean Shakespeare productions during the last two decades as four elements such as populism, feminism, shamanism, and traditional Koran theatre style.