An empty stage, once looked as if only faded grey could exist, returns to life with the breath of actors, now constantly stirring and full of energy. an immortal story, will deeply resonate within the audience as the play transforms into a GUT (the exorcist ritual performed by Korean shamans) through voices and movements of highly trained actors, painting its scenes with sensibility of East and West and of all ages.

The performance deals with fundamental human problems; desire and from which guilt ensues. It raises the questions about the placement of human beings in the supernature or Mother Nature, and about how tangible and intangible phenomena of the supernature and the human order become integrated to form a view of the world; thereby leading the contemporaries to witness the somber transcendence of time.

Director’s Note

Among Shakespeare’s many plays, has always been more attractive to me, as it’s the rare Shakespearean play that talks about the human versus the other world, not simply one person against another person. Many Shakespearean plays portray primitive human nature through vengeance, jealousy, or madness. , however, depicts how human beings are subject to their destiny and their relationship with the supernatural world surrounding them. This play not only deals with existential questions about fate, but also with fundamental questions about life, which everyone, whether good or evil, has to manage within one’s own lifetime before death. This was the driving force in me as a director to bring this Western classic onto the Korean stage. One of the major issues of modern society is to define the relationship between self and others. Here, ‘others’ are not only limited to other human beings but include nature and supernature that surround ‘self’. Through this concept and before satisfying myself with some clichéd reviews as, “This is a well-adapted production of a classical play”, I was able to assure myself that our production of would appeal to the audience regardless of time and place.

Company

Juk-juk Company

The Juk-juk Company was founded in 2001 by members of Theater Lab Hyehwa-dong No.1’s Session Three who shared a common opinion about conventional theatre plays, contemporary plays, and their implications for today’s society. The company is known for its various theatrical challenges and for its bravery at pushing new boundaries. The company has won Art Prize of the Year in 2006 and Best Play at the Korea Theatre Awards in 2008. It was chosen as one of the best seven Korean plays of 2008, and won Best Play at the 21st Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre in 2009. Each year, the company aims to present contemporary plays, as well as classic plays to develop on-stage languages by studying our reality and the theater world of the past and present.

Credits

Original by       William Shakespeare
Adapted and directed by Nag-hyoung Kim
Lighting  Sung-geun Joo
Stage     Young-hwan Choi
Music    Dong-wook Kim
Costumes  Myoung-ah Lee
Props  Hyun-yi Park
Makeup  Geun-young Kim
Cast      Hong-il Sung, Ja-kyoung Lee, Chul-eun Lee, Myung-kap Jang, Chang-su Lee, Jae-in Lee, Che-ik Park, Min-kyoung Kim