The Traveling Theatre of Noh Poong-Chan by Moon Theatre

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Traveling Theatre of Noh Poong-Chanby Moon Theatre Yu Jin Ko The Traveling Theatre of Noh Poong-ChanPresented by Moon Theatre (Dalnara Dongbaekggot) at CKL Stage. 02 8– 25, 2018. Adapted by Eun-Sung Kim from The Traveling Troupe Sopalovicby Ljubomir Simovic. Directed by Sae-Rom Bu. Set by Da-Jung Kim. Light by Bo-Yoon Choi. Costumes Mi-Na Kim. Music by So-Yeon Park. With Seok-Chan Jeon (Noh Poong-Chan), Jin-Kyung Lee (Bong-Ja Ko), Jae-Hyun Shim (Dan-Mi Ok), Ki-Yong Roh (Ga-Rim Ha), Ji-Hyun Choi (Gui-Yeop Choi), Yong-Jun Kim (Sam-Rang Kim), Je-Young Choi (Chang-Gab), Jung Kim (Jung-Soon Yang), and others. The Traveling Theatre of Noh Poong-Chanis a Korean adaptation of the Serbian play The Traveling Troupe Sopalovicby Ljubomir Simovic. Written and first performed in 1985, the original is set in Serbia during World War II while it was under German occupation. The play dramatizes the story of a traveling troupe of actors that performs Schiller's The Robberswhile the war and the occupation inflict horrific violence around them. The play therefore poses the question of what the purpose of theater might be in such a world of grand-scale tragedy. The Korean adaptation (as yet unpublished) sets the story in Korea on the literal eve of the Korean War (June 24, 1950), and tells the story of a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare's Romeo and Julietfor a small, largely rural audience. The change of play performed by the troupe invites the question: why Shakespeare? In 1950, Korea was only five years removed from colonial liberation from Japan, but was already suffering from wide-spread and horrifying violence as political divisions split the country between North and South. The country was also desperately poor. Nonetheless, at least in the South, liberation from Japan led almost immediately to a resurgence of cultural activity, including new forays by newly formed theatrical companies into Shakespeare. And, indeed, somehow Shakespeare caught fire in the Korean literary and theatrical imagination—to the extent that even [End Page 711]during the Korean War, Shakespeare's plays were performed to sold-out audiences by the most prominent theatrical company in South Korea in southern cities to which millions of refugees fled. Interest in Shakespeare continued to grow after the war, culminating in the twenty-first century in what Hyon-u Lee has called a "Shakespeare Boom" (3). Explicitly and implicitly, The Traveling Theatre of Noh-Poong-Chanevokes this cultural and historical background in exploring what value art in general and Shakespeare in particular might hold in a world where, frankly, so much else seems to matter so much more. The first scene posed this question explicitly, as it presented the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, which the actors performed in a public yard as a teaser to publicize the evening's performance, but which was interrupted by gunfire. However, Shakespeare's play was retitled Noh Min-Ho and Ju In-Aeand set in Korea. The feud between the two families pitted pro-Japanese collaborators against resistance fighters, which recalled not only colonial history, but the division on the Korean peninsula. Further, regional dialects and thick accents defined the linguistic and acoustic landscape of not just the outer play of Noh Poong-Chan, but also the inner play, with the Romeo and Juliet figures sharing dialect-inflected dialogue. In fact, some humorous moments arose during the rehearsal of the aubade scene (3.5), when Noh Min-Ho (played in male dress by Bong-Ja Ko, a seasoned actress in the troupe) relapsed into too thick a southeastern accent and occasioned indignant irritation from his counterpart, even as the director pressed Noh Min-Ho to use antiquated and "poetic" verb inflections that recalled Elizabethan endings like "doth." The importance of dialect was reflected in the play's interest in folk music. The owner of the inn where the actors stayed was a shiftless drunkard, who was given to singing raunchy or lugubrious ballads of the kind associated with drunken folk revelry or beggars and peddlers. The maudlin vitality of these...