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Interviews
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Oh T'ae-Sok - Korean director, drama teacher and playwright Rivka Jacobson in conversation with Master Oh Oh T'ae-Sok is a young 66 year old director, drama teacher, playwright and the father of what the Korean critics labelled shinguk (new play). He is addressed as "Master Oh". He is a small to medium build, casually dressed man and looks to Dr. Kim for translation of my questions. She in return carefully notes every point that I raised. Master Oh is delighted that the show (his Korean production of Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican) sold out three weeks before it opened. However, he introduces changes daily, aiming to correct, perfect and provide the actors with new challenges. The premise upon which his productions and own plays are based is that Korean people love music and dance. Unfortunately over a century of miserable history involving occupations, civil war and dictatorships, the true Korean sense of music and dance became entombed. Oh T'ae-Sok commented, "I am just opening the dark rooms in which these were buried and giving them an opportunity for expression." He accepts that Western music influenced Korean music; however, there is a difference, and an important one. Western music follows scientific division of rhythm while Korean music does not follow such a pattern. There is more scope for improvisations in Korean music. Master Oh emerged in the mid 1960s as an opponent to the theatrical realism Japanese and American drama imposed for many years on Korean theatre. His attempts to reconcile Korean's cultural heritage and, in particular, its theatrical traditions with modern dramatic modes to highlight social and political upheavals, led to what was labelled in the 1970s as New Drama. The traditional Korean form of theatre known as madang kuk (=outdoor play) where traditional masked dance were incorporated into loosely adopted plot lines from Western classics such as plays by Chekov, Gorki, Ibsen and Molière, to name but a few. However Korea's democratic election in 1987 opened the doors to a more reflective theatre as well as a future looking theatre. The removal of restrictions provided Master Oh with greater opportunities to explored new theatrical modes. To my question "Who is your favourite western playwright and why?" he smiled broadly and said, "They are not my personal favourites, but as the Korean theatre requires the audience to be involved with what happens on stage, I prefer Samuel Becket and Thornton Wilder." I asked, "Why Becket?" to which he replied: "I mentioned Becket because I think he involves the audience. His characters raise experiences that can be shared easily with the audience." "What about Shakespeare?" "Well, Shakespeare was first introduced to Korea in the 20th century. Up to then we never heard of him. Our students who studied abroad came back with knowledge and appreciation of this great playwright. They introduced his plays to our culture. Initially Shakespeare was not performed, but just read as an academic text." However in 1951-2, in the midst of the civil war, Hamlet was performed to unprecedented success. There was a great deal of scholarly effort made to translate Shakespeare into Korean. The difficulties were mainly due to the facts Shakespeare's plays require experienced actors. Korea had no time to produce them in the first half of the 20th century. We then moved on to talking about the Mokhawa Repertory Company's Romeo and Juliet, which he directed. The hatred and futile feuding between the Montagues and the Capulets mirror something of the events that have divided Korea and brought about hardship and death, the three years of civil war (1950-1953). Master Oh's life was affected by that war. At the age of 11 he witnessed his father taken away to a car, never to be seen again. That was in 1951. Korea was torn between the Eastern and Western powers in a war that sealed the border that divided the country into what we know as North and South Korea. That trauma is very much in the Korean psyche, Master Ho confesses. "This production of Romeo and Juliet was possible," he says, "as I was given many good actors." In this production Shakespeare's fountain in Verona is turned into a bath, fixed in the centre of plain pine wood frame. "Why a bath?" I asked. "Well, the water is important as it symbolises life, the shape is the nearest to a narrow object of a womb where life is created and to a coffin, where it ends." In this production there are many non-verbal elements which may be lost on Western audiences and therefore I asked, within the limited time we had for this interview, to clarify one or two of these. "Could you explain the meaning of the gesture by Juliet shown on the programme's cover, namely the moment when Romeo tries to undress Juliet and she points firmly to her hair. Does this have any meaning in Korean culture?" "Of course," said Master Oh. "When a woman is single her hair is let down in plaits. When she gets married she puts it up in a bun, just like Juliet's hair the night Romeo comes to consummate the marriage. In my production, she directs him to let her hair down, symbolising that now they are fully married." "The night before Juliet' forced marriage to Paris, a blind masked figure adorned by Juliet's wedding dress enters standing with arms stretched out, just like a dress-stand, with a large sleeve/banner on each arm in five colours. What does that mean?" "This is a metaphor. The figure's outstretched arms resemble the two families of the conflict. The wedding dress Juliet should have worn and what should have happened was a unity; hence the colours resembling unity in Korean's culture. The colours are those of the five directions that create unity - North, South, East, West and Centre. Korean culture clearly indicates that breaking that unity is bound to lead to misfortune and illness." "In this production, the play has a pessimistic ending. Why so?" "I wanted the audience to see the two dead bodies of the lovers. There is a moral question. I want to ask the audience to think about the meaning of the two bodies, the meaning of death of these young people. Of course, it is affected by my experience. The division of South and North torments my life and that of my people. The ideological problem is a big problem. Within South Korea there are divisions and ideological conflict. Those supporting the left are for unification. They are much tormented." "What is the next play you hope to direct?" I asked. With a broad smile and a twinkle in his eyes, he replied, "Macbeth. I am not sure what form it will take. Wait and see". Master Oh is clear that the theatre is there to entertain and arouse the audience's consciousness. Oh Ta'ae-Sok has written over sixty plays, five of which were translated into English by Dr. Ah-Jeong Kim and Mr. R.B. Graves in a book entitled The Metacultural Theatre of Oh T'ae-Sok - Five Plays from Korean Avant-Garde. Rivka Jacobson reviewed Master Oh's production of Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican.
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