• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.45
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• pp.219-243
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• 2016

The life of Antonin Artaud exactly reproduces a very cruel drama. He lived in constant anguish and suffered from severe mental pain. This research will trace his thoughts in his writings while he was a prisoner of language. Artaud was a poet filled with anxiety about language, things, being, and thought. Whenever he tried to explain the mystery of being by means of mundane language, he experienced psychological agony. His poetic thoughts began to break down, because of his identity loss. Nevertheless, he was destined to grasp the world through language. Artaud had suffered from mental illness during his youth. His mental illness was associated with his difficulty in creating poetry. In this research, the letter, Correspondance avec Jacques $Rivi{\grave{e}}re$, is analyzed. The poet refers to "the collapse of the spirit's core, and the erosion of the fundamental thought that slips away" to convey his linguistic incompetence. Hereafter, he constantly demonstrated anxious mental symptoms. Even though he became mentally deranged, he maintained his consciousness, as is apparent in his writings. Also, his spiritual belief is reflected in his mental uneasiness. While he was traveling through the Tarahumaras area in Mexico, he was obsessed with its primitive belief in the Peyote rituals, and he immersed himself in performing them. His unchristian belief was the product of his mystical personality. Until his last breath, he did not give up writing. Artaud's mental derangement does not mean lunacy, but if one insists in calling it so, that is a metaphor. His derangement comes from his refusal to accept his limitations and from his aspiring to regard his body in the same light as his intellectual perceptions. His intellect could manifest more easily when his mind was elevated to the extreme. Artaud's lunacy is no different from that of a profound philosopher. The lives of poets who suffer from mental derangement are more poetic than the lives of those who do not. Artaud's atypical emotions provide a way of to measure our own limitations, helplessness, and resignation. His scream is nonsegmental but different from that of a mental patient. That difference is why people are interested in his works and wish to delve into his writings.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.52
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• pp.271-317
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• 2014

This essay studied the acting theories of Diderot, Delsarte, Meyerhold, and Artaud to know the historical formation of 'sign acting' and its theoretical and aesthetic appropriateness. The sign acting so far discussed shows the repetitive patterns of idea as follows. The sign acting (1) emphasizes the physical expression such as gesture and movement, (2) assumes that the physical expression functions as a sign evoking special emotion and thought, (3) thus recommends the imitation of the outer sign, (4) uses a tableau for the effective reception of outer sign, (5) aims for the spectator oriented aesthetics as it stresses the result of outer sign rather than the creative process of a role, (6) assumes that the emotional reaction or the intellectual understanding springs from the physical experience, (7) thus emphasizes the physical language rather than speech, (8) can attain the appropriateness of physical language by the recent theories of cognitive science. Besides having such commonness, the sign acting also reveals the individual differences. For instance, the intended sign for Diderot and Delsarte was the sign of emotion, for Meyerhold the stylized sign of circus and acrobatics, and for Artaud the spiritual sign. If Diderot and Meyerhold demands the cool consciousness for the correct sign acting, Artaud's sign acting tends to pursue the state of trance. And if Diderot, Delsarte, and Meyerhold think the sign acting on the level of sensory appeal, Artaud insists that the sign acting should dismantle the spectator's sense. As such the discussion of sign acting shows both recurrent ideas and new visions, forming an unity out of diversity. Perhaps the sign acting is a matter of practice before we consider it as a theory. It is not only supposed to have been existed practically since ancient theatre, but also used by actors consciously and unconsciously in expressing certain emotion and thought. We need to study the sign acting more academically, considering its long history and aesthetic potentials. In fact the sign acting has been an essential element of acting, in spite of bad reputation judging it as a banal and worn-out style. It is true that the sign acting, in the worst case, could produce a stereotypical expression. It was this aspect of sign acting that caused a fierce negative reaction of the realists who sought the natural expression based upon psychological truth. Of course the sign acting has a serious problem when it stays banal and artificial. But we need to see this issue from a different perspective. What is the natural expression of emotion? How is it free from the learned way of expression? In some respect, we use, in reality, a learned expression of emotion that could be accepted socially. For instance, when we attend a funeral, we use the outer sign of mourning gestures learned socially. If a semiotic expression pervades various aspects of our life, the acting, being the representation of life, seems not to be free from codified expression. The sign acting could be used consciously and unconsciously in all kinds of acting.

• Proceedings of the Costume Culture Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.118-120
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• 2003

종합예술인 한편의 연극을 무대에 올리는 데는 다양한 것이 요구된다. 즉 미술, 음악, 무용, 문학 등이 있으며 여기에 등장인물의 개성을 가장 잘 표현해 주는 무대의상이 필요한 것이다. 특히 무대의상은 작품 속의 등장인물의 역할을 설명하는 기호의 의미를 내포할 뿐만 아니라 관객들에게 작품의 내용을 더욱 리얼하게 이해하게 하는 설득력의 도구적 표현능력을 지니고 있다. (중략)

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.129-146
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• 2011

Despite the ubiquity of love in the work of Sarah Kane, the theme has been overshadowed by the violence that characterizes her early plays. This essay differentiates Kane from her contemporary "in-yer-face" playwrights, arguing that violence in Kane operates as a means of securing love. Antonin Artaud's concept of cruelty, often (mis)understood in a physical sense alone, provides a clue to the nature of Kane's violence and its relation to love. The essay focuses on Cleansed and Crave, both written in 1998, one about love's redemptive possibility, the other about its pure impossibility. What makes Cleansed hopeful is its violence that works as love's obstacle, creating the illusion that once it is removed love would be possible. The absence of violence in Crave on the contrary lays the illusion of love bare, making it Kane's most despairing play. Kane's oeuvre draws a trajectory of love from hope to despair; as a whole it stages the impossibility of love. To love the other requires the relinquishing of the self, making love logically impossible by depriving the verb of its subject. Love, if possible, would offer the bliss of unity, tearing out the constraint of the Symbolic Order. Kane's only alternative is death, as is expressed in Crave and 4.48 Psychosis.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.23
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• pp.245-280
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• 2011

One of the major streams of modern play in Korea is the work of introducing Korea's traditional ritual-'gut' into a play. Such work, together with the stream of diversification of culture, has brought about the tendency to induce 'gut' into a play in a creative way. The research on ritual plays in Korea has been done in the direction of studying the ritual plays in the West centering on the work of theoretically inquiring into histrionic features inhering in 'gut' as a ritual. This research made an analysis of the receptive aspect of rituals and histrionic characteristics presented in Korea plays through "Sanssikgim" and "Ogu" on the basis of the theory of ritual plays established by Artaud. In an effort to understand the receptive aspect of rituals, this research analyzed what forms these Korean works are borrowing from "Ssikgim gut" and "Ogu gut" while analyzing these works differently from the viewpoint of Artaud regarding characteristics of ritual plays. Accordingly, this research made an analysis of the structure and characteristic of "gut" with the aim of understanding in what form "gut" is absorbed into Korean plays by looking at the theatric receptive forms of "gut." The ritual plays in Korea originated in "gut." Likewise, the theater of cruelty by Artaud was greatly influenced by the belly dance stemming from "mudang-gut" in Asia. Accordingly, there is considerably exposed something in common between the ritual play in Korea and Artaud's theater of cruelty. "Gut" in Korea, or ritual plays are a little different from Artaud's work which makes its audience feel unfamiliar in that 'gut' or ritual plays in Korea are pursuing ritualistic quality and playing quality simultaneously, but there exists a similarity between the two in that they both desired to have communication with audiences. This researcher strongly believes that for the time to come, when the receptive aspect of the modern play assuming ritualistic quality is developed using the medium of communication with audiences, purification and play therapy, its direction will be more noticeably exposed.