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Home : Program : Theatre |
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Once upon a Ballad - Korea
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| Time : |
Oct 24(Sat) 16:00
Oct 25(Sun) 16:00
Oct 26(Mon) 18:00 |
| Venue : |
Seoul Arts Center Towol Theater |
| Ticket Price : |
General : 30,000 won
Under Grad and
Grad Students(or under 26) : 20,000 won
Middle and High school Students : 15,000 won |
| Duration : |
270 min (including intermission of 30 min) |
| Company : |
Street Theater Troupe |
| Original Work : |
Jihoon Kim |
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The best Korean drama of 2008 comes back for a rerun.
An enticing encounter between the new author, Kim Ji-Hoon, and the great director, Lee Yoon-Taek,
A dramatic performance by the awe-inspiring Street Theatre Troupe.
Mythical imagination comes to life amidst massive heaps of garbage. |
People with no addresses start demanding that they be given lot numbers. Flowering trees flourish in the midst of a dump yard. Once upon a Ballad starts off when people without addresses demand that they be given the rights to lot numbers so they can stamp their feet on the ground and lead ordinary lives. These people living in discarded areas maintain their own language and behavior patterns not understood by others. An old beggar man discusses philosophy, while an unemployed young man starts demanding a new plot of land armed with outrageous logic.
The world they live in is beyond the world of law and order. For this reason, these people are not entitled to the protection of the law. It is a world ruled by instincts, desires and violence. Wochullyi is in charge of the dump yard. He lives with the wife of a physically disabled neighbor and their children. Even here, the habits of violence and exploitation reign. Aedongyi and Aejinyi have been trained to act as crying pallbearers and mourners to earn money in the homes of the deceased. They are the objects of violence in the adult world. In the end, they are literally thrown into the world of violence and exploitation much like sacrificial lambs. In the middle of this primitive materialistic world, there is one person who dreams of the birth of a different life-the mother of Sejin. She throws seeds and takes care of her field that has turned lifeless due to the heaps of garbage and leaking sewage water. Through negotiations with the land manager led by the intellectual, Namjeon, who has entered this world as an outsider, the castaway land is finally going to be given lot numbers. Collecting garbage has been turned into a lucrative business since gold can be collected from discarded electrical components.
The stage is filled with enhanced violence and exploitation to the point of anarchy. In the middle of the chaos that ensues, Aedongyi is beaten to death. An elderly woman takes care of the body thrown into the field. With this act, the story enters its mythical phase. A tree grows from the place where Aedongyi has died and the giant mountain of garbage crumbles creating a huge crater. In the end, only giant trees without trunks remain in its place.
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Once upon a Ballad was selected at the Creative Drama Contest sponsored by ARKO in 2007 as "the most unique and creative piece among Korean drama works". Characters continually move between reality and myth in their thinking and blurt out outrageous remarks and long-winding lines. Incidents are deliberately delayed with nonchalance, and the characters suddenly carry out actions without any logical raison d-être. The piece makes use of the realistic space of a dump yard, which is interrupted by the encroachment of mythical imagination from time to time until the very end of the play.
When presented in July 2008 at ARKO Arts Theater, the play led to a bit of an uproar as the performance lasted four hours. Once upon a Ballad proved to posses "directorship that has enabled the use of language which was once deemed impossible to put on stage". The actors masterfully internalized the personas on stage and overwhelmed the audience with their dramatic performance. For its unique contribution, the play was awarded five prizes at the Donga Drama Awards (Grand Prix, Best Drama, Best Director, Best Performance and Best Stage Art), and was selected one of the top five drama performances of the year by the Korea Drama Association, one of the top seven by the Korea Drama Critics Association, and Best Drama at the Korea Drama Awards in 2008.
Once upon a Ballad has offered a new perspective on appreciating drama, which has been somewhat lost to us for some time. The mainstream in drama nowadays has been to present stories about minor or unimportant ordinary aspects of life. Treating everything lightly has been one of the unpleasant aftermaths of the trend. For audiences long used to short, of-the-moment, sensory delight, this work may give the opportunity to explore the ordinary aspects of life and to be reminded that there is drama in Korea focused on approaching the essence of drama with fierce determination.
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| Director |
Lee Yoon Taek is a poet, playwright, and director.
He is a former artistic director at the Korea National Drama Company and currently serves as a professor of drama at Dongkook University and the artistic director of STT Milyamg Drama Village.
Directed numerous plays including Citizen K, Ogu, Hamlet, Faust, King Lear and The Mother and Her Children
Directed musicals – Dreaming in Mars, The Fourth Empire, Hurricane, The Queen of Tears etc.
Film scenario and broadcasting Ogu, The Urban Individual
Received awards for Best Director at Seoul Drama Festival (4 times), Best Director and Best Drama at Donga Drama Awards (3 times), Best Drama and Best Director at Korea Musical Awards, Grand Prix at the Musical Culture Awards |
| Company |
Street Theatre Troup (STT) has grown into a regional drama troupe with a unique character with works such as Puga, Hibakusha, Exile of Poet and Citizen K. It opened its GamaGol Small Theater in Busan in July 1986. STT sees itself as a community culture group that expresses the life of ordinary citizens with open minds. It believes that the message of drama should be revealed through definite actions. Most of its works veer toward experimentation.
STT has developed itself into a dynamic company with its unique production location, direction setting of drama, and the full-time involvement of producers. Such a system of expertise and professionalism has been strengthened by STT's embracing of reality with a global mind-set. It has employed a geometrical arrangement of space, acrobatic operation of the body, and use of highly detailed symbolism –all which point to the individual character of the troupe.
Lee Yoon-Taek monitors the entire process of directorship, training, and stage arts. The dramatic employment of acrobatics, geometric deployment of space, and the use of the Korean Gut performance uniquely characterize STT. Lee himself has described these elements as ‘narrative realism'. The works are true to Korean sentiments and character and STT considers itself as setting a new ground in the history of drama. |
Reviews
"The first playwright with the depth, width and power since Bae Sam-Shik."
- Drama Critic Kim Yun-Cheol
"I am mesmerized by the stage language mixing logic and emotion."
- Playwright Lee Kang-Baek
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