Sometimes (or often times), there are those pieces that get rave reviews from the public and from critics domestically, but then that hot response turns lukewarm once the piece crosses a social border. The opposite can also be true. The widespread resonance that only the arts can produce is based on faith, and it’s hard to create such a resonance in a society with a different social culture. When you consider the nature of drama, and the importance of the role that language plays, you can see that language barriers are significant for Korean plays on the international stage. Despite recent changes to the situation with the increase in international exchanges, where different countries have taken interest in different cultures - they watch plays with subtitles - language is still just as important to foreign audiences as the Korean language is for us.

There are no such boundaries for Jeongung YANG and the Yohangza Theatre Company. Jungung YANG and the Yohangza Theatre Company has performed their hit play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream>, in about 80 different cities. Before venturing out to overseas markets, this piece got explosive reviews in Korea (truly explosive!) and it was a play that imprinted Jungung YANG and the Yohangza theater company deeply in our minds. A decade has passed since they first performed this piece and, even now, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is still being performed and getting great reviews. But Jungung YANG and Yohangza are no longer the young bloods they once were.

This summer, they are the highlight of Myeong Dong & Chong Dong Theater’s (MDTheater) exceptional choice for their summer performance, which features two pieces by this one theater group. The two pieces from Yohangza - Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Twelfth Night - will be showcased at the same time. Yohangza is not a resident performing arts company at the MDTheater.

“I want to enjoy Shakespeare with today’s audience”

Q: : It’s written all over your face that you are very busy. What is your schedule like these days?

A : Sometimes I’m busy and sometimes I’m not (laughs). A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Twelfth Night are performed back to back every week, and if one team is performing at the MDTheater the other has another performance in a different city. Today, I’m a little bit busier because I have the BESETO meeting on top of that (a theater festival named with the first two letters of Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo; groups from three countries all take part, and each country take turns hosting the event – this year it opens in Seoul on Sept. 4th). In October, Peer Gynt will be showcased at the LG Arts Center, but we have a performance in Australia scheduled before that. Also, the 10-minute Theater Festival that ran simultaneously with the MDTheater ended just a few days ago…

Q: I think we could focus the interview on your schedule alone (laughs)! But first, tell us a little about the London performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. London was the second overseas performance, after the Barbican Centre in 2006, and I heard it was every bit as successful as the first.

A : In line with the London Olympics, we were invited by the Shakespeare Festival, Globe to Globe. The Barbican Centre usually introduces modern performing arts, but the Globe Theater is very strict about Shakespeare. Of course, that is the overall atmosphere in the UK. We performed without subtitles but still got enthusiastic applause during the curtain call. There was a strange, upbeat vibe during the rehearsal. It was like every one of us was burning with passion and excitement. It was an inexplicable feeling, and I can still remember it vividly.

Q: You once said that you wanted to perform every single piece by Shakespeare. What is it about Shakespeare that attracts you so much?

A : He’s a long-dead writer, so I thought I could alter his work any way I wanted. I’m joking! First of all, I think his work is interesting. His comedies are fantastic, and his tragedies have depth and emotion with a hint of humor. But a lot of viewers regard his pieces as difficult because they are written in old English with a lot of rhetoric. I want to enjoy Shakespeare’s work with other people. I want to reenact Shakespeare for Koreans living in modern times.

Q: In one article, you said that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed in many cities, yet the elements of humor were all the same. The words you used to explain this were “it’s because the piece touches on humanity’s universal emotions, rather than distinct geographical or cultural characteristics of Koreans.”

A : I am going to continue to work on Shakespeare by preserving the humor and essence, while adding Korean elements. Theater is literary and rational, but at the same time it is instinctive. There are two worlds at play - the one that we see and one that we don’t see. When the scene or image that we see is accurate, it is as important for it to draw sympathy from the audience as it is for them to understand in terms of literature and logic.

Hamlet and Gut (Korean traditional shamanist exorcism)

Q: Now let’s talk about Hamlet, which is slated to be introduced at this year’s PAMS Choice Awards. I saw this piece in early 2009 (also at the MDTheater). I was surprised because Hamlet took on a totally different approach to the methods you used before.

A : In what way?

Q: A lot of Korean directors have been incorporating Shakespeare and other classic writers into their work, reinventing classics with a Korean twist. What differentiated your work was that you never restrained yourself by trying to be more ‘Korean’. However, in many scenes in Hamlet you nearly reenact a Korean Gut. I couldn’t help but wonder whether actual female shamans were involved.

A : All the actors did it. All of them actually learned how to perform a Gut while we were preparing for the performance. When I was directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I put a lot of time into stylization but, during Hamlet, I was caught up in delivering the essence and meaning rather than stylization.

Q: I see more of a style in Hamlet.

A : I saw Hamlet as a story of both life and death. I, personally, have never seen a ghost before. All I have to go on is what the psychic says and, in Korean shamanism, there are no boundaries in life and death. I thought that the situation and conflict surrounding Hamlet fitted well with the nature of Gut, where the female shaman relieves any resentment or grudge. This is why I wanted to reenact the piece with Gut. As we were preparing for the performance, we went to see a lot of shamans in action. The crew invited a shaman to help them learn how to perform a Gut. I thought it would be close to impossible to take shamanism out of it and simply convey it in a Korean style, but when you observe Gut being performed, you start to realize how intricately beautiful it is. Neokjeon (the tool a shaman uses during Gut - a human figure or a pattern related to Gut carved out of paper) is beautiful in itself. A Gut has its own style and is very modern. A lot of people, including Koreans, think that Gut is a past culture, but traces of Gut can be found in many different aspects of our lives. Culture never goes far.

Q: : I agree with you that Gut is very modern and beautiful in itself. After the stage opened up, I remember being mesmerized by the wild colors and big images that filled up the background – they were drawings of what I had seen before at Gut rituals. It was fantastic stage design. Do you do the same for overseas performances?

A : Yes. We haven’t had that many chances to showcase this piece abroad. We did have a performance in Australia and one in Germany, but we had the same stage design installed and spread out rice on the floor.

Q: That’s right - you also had rice on the floor, which was another memorable feature. Rice was spread out in a circle. At first I thought it was white sand (in Peer Gynt the stage was covered with black sand) but I knew it wouldn’t be because of the nature of Gut, and I doubted my own eyes. I went up close to check, during the intermission, and it truly was rice. So the whole mise-en-scène was performing a Gut, with a table full of goods for the gods, talking about the story of Hamlet (when performing a Gut, you prepare a table full of good food to offer to the gods and, in the middle, you have a bowl full of raw rice).

A : Rice is essential in an agrarian society. It represents prosperity and also death at the same time. We always filled our stage with rice even at overseas performances. That’s 80 straw bags full of rice (6400kg). With Hamlet, I’m more interested in the reasons for life and death than the dramatic structures. For me, those reasons offer some sort of healing. The han (deep resentment) or relief of those resentments that is talked about when performing Gut is about relieving that lump or grudge in people’s hearts. So, in that way, Gut and healing are in the same line of thought.

Q: Visually and musically, you directed the piece to show an extravagant Gut ritual, but the Danish prince Hamlet appears wearing shabby clothes.

A : I wanted to be free of any stereotype. I didn’t want the character to be too serious, too earnest or too good-looking.

Q: I liked that the character did not fit the stereotype of a distressed intellectual or rebellious youth. Junyong CHUN, one of the main actors in Yohangza, played the role of Hamlet, and I remember that he did a fabulous job. He characterized Hamlet being torn between reasoning and agony, with just the right balance of relaxation and focus, and portrayed the character candidly, expressing specific emotions and responses without idealizing the character. After the play ended, I remember the shaman music still flowing in the background, even as we exited the hall.

A : I wanted the viewers to leave with a lingering sense of relief of any resentment they themselves had. Even after the play has ended, we still live our lives with worries about life and death, don’t we?

Q: : I think you were right on target with what you were aiming for. There was a strong resonance. I hope the PAMS Choice Awards viewers will feel the same..