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I came across a precious book. It is a collection of plays that finished a performance with a total of seven books. I was more used to general novels, critique, and other related books, so reading a collection of plays required deeper concentration than I expected. If the books that I’m used to reading are about understanding the meanings each sentence hold, the play for performing requires imagining each situation and scene. When imagining becomes hard, I often read the lines out loud or do movements to recreate the scenes.
Seven collections of play are something the ACC has created and produced from performance pieces to books. The piece was published in both paperback and E-Book, and it’s rare to see a publication of a play after the performance is over, even for the performance and publication industry. The book consists of five performances and two children’s plays created and produced by the ACC art theater. A mixture of Korean and English lines with images of the performance helps bring my imagination into reality.
The color of the book cover is as diverse as the content is. Come to think of it, the color of the book cover and the content is in the same context somehow. It is not difficult to realize that the editor’s intention was to make the readers know what the book is about with the color of the cover. The seven books contain performances from 2018, 2019, and 2020, so it was like watching performances that I could not watch back then.

The play contains various types, from a piece that translated and dramatized foreign plays famous in other countries to Korea’s traditional pansori format. Also, with the 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement as a start, it contains the story about May, friendships, communing between a bird, and others that give strong feeling and lessons. Also, the two children’s story is great not only for children but also for adults to feel deep lingering imagery.

Thinking Once Again about What ‘Living’ is

Based on the content of the plays, I have classified the seven books into three categories. The first is about the 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement: They are I Was Not There in Gwangju (2020), The Painter of Time (2020), and The Song of Boiar (2019). The second category plainly depicts the parents’ way of teaching their children affects children’s lives in the form of creative pansori, which is Korea’s traditional melody. They are A Story in Asia (2019), and Dragon King (2019). The third category contains Red Oleanders (2019) and The Queen and Nightingale (2018), pieces that show that hope exists even in the agony that passes through life.

I Was Not There in Gwangju (2020), which belongs in the first category, as it suggests in the title, organizes the story about the democratic contention in the form of a frame. One of the characteristics of the work is that it encourages the participation of the audience. It shows a bald fact of why all citizens of Gwangju had no choice but to become rioters and the situation that made everyone point a gun for choosing true freedom. Thanks to these records, the generation who have not gone through the democratic contention can understand the situation with sincerity, and the performance is elaborately composed to help their understanding.

The Painter of Time (2020) is a work that used An Architect of Time, which was selected through the creative story contents development by ACC in 2018, as a motif, and is about the former Jeollanamdo Provincial Office, the final place of resistance of the democratic contention in 1980, and a painter of the building. His son draws a picture on the wall of the provincial government that symbolizes the story of that day, and the painter serves a role of erasing the memory by constantly covering the wall in white. As the title The painter of time suggests, the son tries to remember the time, while others, including the father, show a euphemistic action to erase the time. In the end, the painter realizes that the time cannot be covered after losing his son and wife in the center of the democratic contention.

The Song of Boiar (2019) is a story that depicts a friendship between Lia and Rohingya girl Kush who live in a small and beautiful village in Bangladesh. The story ultimately includes a broad sense of meaning about the national violence and an infringement upon personal rights, which is why the story is classified under the same category as the 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement.

The Story in Asia (2019) and Dragon King (2019), which fall into the second category, is a modern interpretation of pansori and give us more joy the more we read them. If we could watch the play, we might have so much fun that our worries would go away with laughter.
The Story in Asia (2019) uses folklores of Indonesia and Myanmar in Asia as its original version. Two stories are mixed in one play. Woong, a son who has a father that makes marionette, receives four marionettes named wisdom, virtue, knowledge, and power from his father when he leaves the house. Whenever he encounters difficulties, he calls the name of the marionette appropriate to the situation. Here, the marionette appears like magic and guides Woong to the right path to resolve the situation. The second episode is from Myanmar, and it is a story about a couple who longs to have a child. One day, a giant appears in the dream of the mother, gives her a seed, and makes a promise that when the child becomes 17 years old, she has to marry the giant. The couple plants the seed and takes good care of it until they bear big fruit. The fruit, which happens to be a cucumber, was embracing a little girl. The couple raises the girl with care, and the girl eventually becomes 17. When the giant visits the couple as promised, the couple hides their daughter Timun Emas, who sings the lullaby her mother used to sing whenever she encounters difficulty. The lullaby helps her tide over the difficulties, and Timun Emas learns the lesson that she cannot live the world alone and that it is important to look back at the surroundings at all times.
『Dragon King (2019) is a modern interpretation of Sugungga, one of the five representative songs of Pansori. It is a hybrid performance that combines digital animation and pansori, as well as the live performance of sorikkun (singer) and actor. The harmony of Sugungga, which portrayed the inner part of humans satirically with humor, and the animation creates fun and witty content.

The third category includes Red Oleanders (2019) and The Queen and Nightingale (2018). Red Oleanders (2019) is a play that translated and dramatized the symbolic play Red Oleanders by Asia’s first Nobel Prize winner and a great poet of India, Rabindranath Tagore. Nandini is a girl who defends the hope towards freedom with an absolute will among people who live under a sense of defeat as if it is their habit in a society where suppression and violence are prevalent. She is the light of everyone, as well as the symbol of redemption. On the opposite, she is an existence that must be removed from the people who possess power with oppression and violence. Nandini always holds the red oleander in her chest and hair. To the king and violent people who hold power, the red oleander is a symbol of resistance. Nandini, who is confident that Lorn John, the symbol of peace and freedom, will soon come, encourages people not to give up on hope. The interesting part is the appearance of the professor and archeologist. The two professions are avoidant characters who use research as their shield to avoid and shift all the social responsibilities onto somebody else.
The Queen and Nightingale (2018) shows what people should listen to in the relationship with others in a metaphorical style of speech. The ones who can listen to and interpret the song of black nightingale are not the ones who are erudite or powerful. It is a boy and the mother of the boy who is hungry and poor. They understand what the nightingale is trying to say and tells the queen how to rule the country without having to say anything.

The world of performance realized with plays

While reading seven books of plays, I thought about the days when I used to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Beckett’s play Motivational Unit, an Irish playwright. They were easy to read, and I thought it would also be fun to recreate the scenes with friends and family when I was reading the last page. This shows how much I enjoyed the richness of the content. The fact that drama scripts, one of three elements of play, were published in seven paperback books is great news to those who can’t enjoy the performance in person. It also grants readers the joy of reading plays and the environment to induce the urge to watch the performance. The seven paperback plays were also printed in the eco-friendly paper, soy ink, and other environmentally-safe printing materials to show how much they care about the environment. You can find the books both in online and offline bookstores in Korean libraries and the ACC Culture Shop.

• Written by hyun Beom baram8162@nate.com
  Photo. Provided by ACC
  
  2021.10