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Image | ACC Program Booklet

Come on in!
Bet this is your first time seeing Shim HakGyu’s version of Shimchung-ga.
2021! The good daughter Shim Chung is gone
and the man blinded by fate, Shim HakGyu, is here.
The true meaning of opening eyes
as told by ACC’s new performance The Two Eyes!

Pansori Media performance The Two Eyes departs from the original Shim Chung story where the good daughter Shim Chung gives up her life in return for restoring sight to her blind father, then rescued by the Sea god and reborn to bring sight back to her father. The Two Eyes narrates the story of Shim HakGyu (*Shim Chung’s father). Why two eyes? Who is the blind one, who is the seeing one? “Eyes” are at the center of conflict in Shim Chung-ga. If we replace the word “eye” with the word “story,” then this performance may be described as having two “stories.” The Two Eyes is a story about Shim HakGyu, Chung’s father, who has become synonymous with the blind, and about those who cannot clearly see their own lives.

Image | ACC Program Booklet

It begins with the drumbeats and the voice of the singer piercing through the dark. The scene is the confession of Shim HakGyu just before he opens his eyes in the climax of Shim Chung-ga. With electronic music, one fantastic pink eye appears on the stage to captivate our attention. The pink eye drifts across the stage left and right like fish, sometimes blinking. It follows the singers in the scene to meet his gaze as if it can sympathize with Shim's telling of his life. When Shim reveals that three years have passed since Chung fell into Indangsu, the eye floats directly above the head of Kim Sojin, the singer. Then a set of two large eyes appear on the stage. One pink, the other green, the eyes are backgrounds for the geomungo player and electronic music DJ, and it is also the most significant stage prop. Eerie and strange, the eyes resemble a piece of unfamiliar contemporary art. Even at this point deep into the story, there is no trace of the traditional pansori performance's old, antiquated elements. Only the pink and green eyes float on the stage.

Image | ACC Program Booklet

The conversation between Shim HakGyu and Chung, who is now a queen, goes by fast. When HakGyu says, “Let me see my daughter!” and “opens his eyes wide,” the pink eye that has been floating on the stage quickly splits into two. And the singer Sojin Kim who has been visible in the background for some time, emerges into the foreground. Does the world look like a rainbow to the person who had been blinded and can now see? The stage that only had the eyes is now filled with lasers and colorful media art. The singer gazes at them without opening her mouth, and her silence is replaced with the sound of geomungo (Woojae Park). The pink eye that the geomungo player was sitting on at the beginning is now transformed into beautiful flowers, dancing to the movement of the geomungo bow as if fluttering in the wind. The world that Shim HakGyu saw must have been heavenly. And this is how The Two Eyes opens its story. Now we have stepped into new Shim Chung-ga, made stranger and more interesting with the colors of our generation’s artists.

Two Singers and One Drummer
Ensemble of Pure Geomungo and Edgy Electronic Music
Majestic Classic and Fantastical New Age Music
Grotesque Movement of LED and Lyrical Media Art

All awakens your eyes for the art!

The play tells the story in an intelligent way. Relying on the audience's familiarity with Shim Chung-ga, the play shows the life of Shim HakGyu in various lights, sometimes pathetically, ridiculously, sympathetically, and with comfort. The play uses electronic music to heighten the emotional tension with the famous lines from the play, such as "Die! Just Die!" and "Please feed her, my daughter, my daughter." Shim HakGyu cries out these lines in pain while holding his newborn daughter Chung after Madame Gwak, the kind wife and mother, dies in childbirth. In contrast, "JajangJajang, My Baby" (*translator: lyrics of a traditional Korean lullaby), a lullaby composed by Sojin Kim, fills the stage with comfort. Notable scenes like these follow one after the other: the perspective of Chung on her way to Indangsu; the bird's-eye view of the ocean; and the chaotically trembling red laser light that reflects the guilty minds of Shim HakGyu after he lets Chung go; HakGyu fumbling around in the shallow water after falling into the stream while searching for Chung and the children's song "The Stream Trickling Down" that plays in the background as if making fun of HakGyu; and two singers who describe Madame Bbaengduk in the voice of HakGyu and other people… The old Shim Chung-ga suddenly felt anew.

Image | ACC Program Booklet

How much time of anguish is needed to make something so familiar feel special and unique? The torment of young artists in this performance can be felt palpably. How can you make traditional art come alive, and bring it to the current era? How can we show the colors of traditional art that constantly speaks to us, changes without being altered in the furnace we call “the present”? There is a phrase that appears in the performance once. It is hard to make out with multiple voices saying the lines simultaneously. Strangely, it left a lasting impression.

Was this how Shimchung felt when she fell into Indangsu? Is this Shim HakGyu’s life? Or is this the sentiment and message from the people in this performance? Living to the best of one’s ability even when afraid and anxious that all could be lost; nevertheless, we live on. Is this a life? Is this an art? 70 minutes flew by with this fantastically fun performance, but its message was not lighthearted.

A New Take on Shim Chung-ga
The Future of Art that Combines Art and Technology
「The Two Eyes」
It’s Your turn to see It!

Image | ACC Program Booklet

The Two Eyes debuted last November at ACC Art Theater. The play began as a “performance stage design platform using layered flexible block module display” project funded by Korea Creative Content Agency’s Cultural Technology Research and Development Grant (2018-2020). The performance served as a demonstration of that project. Based on the story that has become so ubiquitous and self-explanatory to Koreans, the project added modern media content and electronic music to pansori Shim Chung-ga. It appears that this new performance that added geomungo and electronic music to pansori, along with a huge LED and laser lights with media art, was received favorably by both the public and the industry. It was selected as the opening show for the Yeowoo Rock Festival that began in July despite COVID-19 (Friday, July 2, 2021, at Daloreum Stage, National Theatre). There was significant excitement as it was the first ACC newly produced performance to be on the stage of the National Theater.

ACC will present the upgraded The Two Eyes at the Yeowoo Rock Festival and plans to stage it at the ACC Art Theatre to Gwangju citizens on September 4 and 5. COVID-19, be gone! Hopefully, we will be able to see the performance at the theatre, so that my eyes for art that have gone to sleep after a long hiatus from seeing shows in person will be w-i-d-e wake once again!

• Written by Min-im Choi. samagg@hanmail.net
  Photo. provided by National Theater
  
  2021.08