• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.40
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• pp.207-237
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• 2010

Concentrating on the birth, life, and death of the Living Theatre, almost half a century avant-garde group, the primary purpose of this study at large is to explore its counter-cultural philosophy. While taking a chronological form adapting the biological order, the paper focuses on the troupe's productions: , , , , and . Through out these productions the philosophy of the Living Theatre seemed to included communal, anti-intellectual, politically radical, generally Utopian, and proselytizers for sexual freedom. The history of the Living Theatre interestingly parallels the history of the Beck's theatre in occupation and shut down. The first New York theatre was closed by fire inspectors for instance. The second theatre was declared unsafe, and locked up by the Building Department. The third theatre was seized by the IRS, consequently shut down. In 1984, after more than 25years from the third building, the Living Theatre settled once again on East Third Street in Manhattan. The theatre was however evacuated by the New York City Fire Department in 1993 and once more took to the road. With these struggles, the Becks' profound aspiration of the counter-cultural insurgency came to harden as strong as 'iron' in some ways. With the outstanding components of counter-cultural philosophy and style, the Living Theatre, in the course of the transformation, absorbed and then reflected virtually every phase for the Living Theatre were vehicles for more than just aesthetics. The group seemed to propagandize its beliefs rather performing productions. Accordingly, both on and off-stage action of the Living Theatre caused great controversy either through political activism of individual members or through the unconventional collective life style. No avant-garde theatre company was more emblematic of the rebellious spirit of the sixties than the Living Theatre. Like the first great transformation, the Becks' encounter, their personal values and the form of theatre they created had blended 'so inextricably that the vitality of each was dependent on the other.' The Becks always urged unity and harmony at all levels of human life, but not at any price. The anticapitalist ideal inspired the Becks to promote a politically motivated campaign throughout their productions. They believed the revolution is desirable but in the state of non-violence and the expansion of human consciousness. Julian Beck's gravestone identifies his as pet, painter, actor, and anarchist. The Living Theatre was a 'small umbrella' under which the Becks and its members could breath and unfold their dream on stage or in the street.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.539-565
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• 2009

T. S. Eliot attempted the combining of the liturgy of Anglican Church and a drama in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and created a modern verse drama which comes most close to the regular tragedy like Greek tragedy today. Eliot chose the drama to deliver his religious insight because of its ritualistic origin and its potentiality to deliver a dramatic world which can contain a complete order. The central theme of this play is the martyrdom. The dramatic action of killing the archbishop Thomas Beckett in this play, however, is not treated as important event enough to be a dramatic climax. He is portrayed as a witness to the reality of God's will rather than a man who wills to give up his own life for any religious belief or cause. In Eliot, a martyr is nothing but "a witness" in its ancient sense. This paper purposes to review the language of this play. The various and new meters and rhythms of the language of this play function enough to bring its playwright to encounter 'the real audience' in 'a living theatre'. The interactions between different verbal models also play a big role to make this play a living theatre. Eliot found the poetry which crosses the various classes and levels of the tastes of audience is the most useful poetry. And the poetry of this play proves as the very thing which intensifies the theme of the play and gives the most powerful force to the play. Especially Eliot's poetry succeeds smost in the various and free meters of chorus, which makes Eliot the first playwright since Aeschylus, who could bring the chorus to undertake the function of extending the dramatic action of the play into the universal meaning. In the theatre the real audience identifies themselves with chorus. And the chorus leads the audience to respond to peace which passeth understanding beyond words and sounds of this play, which is the desired response in Eliot's conception of drama.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.48
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• pp.447-484
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• 2012

This study aims to analyze the characteristics of post-epic theatre in the Belgian theatre director Jan Lauwers' trilogy titled in "Happy Face/Sad Face": (2004), (2006) and (2008). I regard that it played a very important junction for him to create his own theatrical style compared to earlier years. From this period, Lauwers has tried to create his original plays in order to concentrate the story of our era and has showed to combine a variety of media such as dance, installation, video, singing etc. In this context, I would like to study his own theatricality from the three perspectives of dramaturgy, directing and acting largely based on Hans-Thies Lehmann's theory of post-epic theatre, who pointed out the significance of Lauwer's theatrical leading role very early. First, from the dramaturgical point of view, we need to pay attention to the theme of translunary death; where the living and the dead coexist on the stage. In fact, death is the theme that Lauwers has been struggling to research for quite long time. In his trilogy, the dead never exits the stage. The dead, who is not a representative tragic character, even meddles the things among or with the living and provide comments to people. As a consequence, it happens to reduce a dramaturgical strong tension, leads depreciation of suspense and produces humanism in a way. This approach helps to create his unique comical theatrical atmosphere even though he deals with the contemporary tragic issues such as war, horror and death. Second, from the directing point of view, it is worth to take a look at the polyphonic strategy in terms to applying various media. Among all the things, the arts of dancing and singing in chorus are actively applied in Lauwer's trilogy. The dance is used in individual and microscopic way, on the other hand, singing shows collective and is a macroscopic quality. The dance is the representing media to show Lauwer's simultaneous microscopic mise-en-scene. While main plot takes place around the center-stage, actors perform a dance around the off-centered stage. Instead of exiting from the stage during the performance, the actors would continue dance -sometimes more like movements- around the off-centered stage. This not only describes the narrative, but also shows how each character is engaged to the main plot or incident, and how they look into it as a character. Its simultaneous microscopic mise-en-scene intends to function such as: showing a variety moments of lives, amplifying some moments or incidents, revealing character's emotion, creating illusionary theatrical atmosphere and so on. Meanwhile, singing simple lyrics and tunes are an example of the media to stimulate the audiences' catharsis. As the simple melody lingers in the audiences' mind, it ends up delivering a theatrical message or theme after the performance. This message would be transferred from the singing in chorus functions as a sort of leitmotive in order to make an impression to the audience. This not only richens their emotion but also creates an illusionary effect. Third, from the acting perspective, I'd like to point out the "detachment" aesthetic which Lehmann has pointed out. The actors never go deep into the drama by consistently doing recognize a theatrical illusion. The audience happens to pay attention to their presence through the actor's deliberate gesture, business, movement, rhythm, language, dance etc. The actors are against forming closed action by speaking in various languages or by revealing deliberately stage directions or acts, and by creating expressive mise-en-scene with multiple media. As a consequent, the stage can be transformed to not a metaphoric but a metonymic place. These actions are the ultimate intention for a direct effect to the audience. So to speak, Lauwers uses the anti-illusionary theatrical method: the scenes of fantastic death, interruption of singing and dance, speaking many kinds of languages, acting in detachment-status and so on. These strategies function to make cracks in spectators' desire who has a desire to construct a linear narrative. I'd like to say that it is the numerous potentiality to let the reality penetrate though and collide the reality with a fiction. By doing so, it induces for spectators to see the reality in the fiction. As Lehmann says, "when theatre presents itself as a sketch and not as a finished painting, the spectators are given the chance to feel their own presence, to reflect on it, and to contribute to the unfinished character themselves". In this sense the spectators can perform an objective criticism on our society and world in Lauwer's theatre because there are a number of gaps and cracks in his theatrical illusion where reality can penetrate. This is also the point that we can find out the artists' responsibility in this era of our being.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.5
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• pp.109-133
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• 2007

What a concept of theatricality in modern art became more controversial is through a review "art and object-hood" on Michael Fried's minimal art, as having been already known broadly. As he had been concerned, the art following the minimalism is accepting as the very important elements such as the introduction of temporality, the stage in the exhibition space, and the audience's positive participation, enough to be no exaggeration to say that it was involved in almost all the theatricality. Particularly even in the installation art and the environment art, which have substantially positioned since the 1970s, the space is staged, and the audience's participation is greatly highlighted due to the temporal character and the site-specific in works. In such way, the theatricality in art work is today regarded as one of the most important elements. In this context, it is thought to have significance to examine theatricality, which is shown in the works of Arte Povera artists, who had been active energetically between 1967-1971. That is because the name of this group itself is what was borrowed from "Poor Theatre" in Jerzy Grotowski, who is a play director and theorist coming from Poland, and because of having many common points in the aspect of content and form. It reveals that the art called Arte Povera is sharing many critical minds in the face of commanding the field called a play and other media. Grotowski's theatre theory is very close to the theory and substance in Arte Povera in a sense that liberates a play, which was locked in literature, above all, renews the relationship between stage and seat and between actor and audience, and pursues a human being's change in consciousness through this. That is because Arte Povera also emphasizes the communication with the audience through appealing to a human being's perception and through the direct and living method, not the objective art concept of centering on the work. In addition, the poor play or poor art all has tendency that denies a system, which relies upon economic and cultural system, and seeks for what is anti-cultural, elemental, and fundamental. It is very similar even in a sense that focuses on the exploration process itself rather than the result, excludes the transcendental concept, and attaches importance to empiricism. However, Arte Povera accepts contradictoriness and complexity, and suggests eclecticism and tolerance, thereby being basically the nomadic art and the art difficult to be captured constitutively. On the other hand, there is difference in a sense that the poor play is characterized by purity, asceticism, seriousness, and solemnity. If so, which significance does this theatricality, which was introduced to art, ultimately have? As all the arts desire to be revealed with invisible things beyond the visual thing, theatricality comes to play a very important role at this time. If all the artists and audiences today came to acquire actual or virtual freedom much more, that can be said to be a point attributable to that art relied upon diverse conditions in a play.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.52
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• pp.359-397
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• 2014

This paper describes dramatherapy with a bulmina nervosa patient. She was in her early 20s and has been under the various psychotherapies for cure of deep depression since 2005. We had 24 sessions and 3 persons - the patient, the therapist, and the assist-therapist- participated in dramatherapy. I found there's a big collision between her important roles in the course of initial interview and diagnosis. Those roles are 'a good daughter of mom' and 'an independent adult'. Therefore I defined her bulmina nervosa as 'an symbolic behavior repeats compulsively the failure of separation from her mother.' And I set the general goals, the separation from her mother, the awareness and expression of negative emotions, and the diminuation of overeating and vomiting. To attain these object, we had many different dramatic experiences in dramatherapy. We made a self-portrait, the mask of bulmina nervosa, family sculpture, figure work, the past I and the present I, psychodramatic scene and several stories. In order to objective assessment, I used behavioral observation and 6PSM(6 Pieces Story Making) analysis. First of all the most noticeable change was a rapid decrease in over-eating and vomiting. Before the dramatherapy she had overeaten 30 times per week. At the closure it has fallen off to 1 time per week. Another behavioral changes were shift of outward appearance, not going church, working for living, and having a date with only one. She made 3 stories on 1th session, 13th session, and 23th session. And I comparatively analysed those stories with both qualitative and quantitative method. For qualitative analysis, I classified 5 structures according to the substantial similrarity. On protagonist structure, there's no difference. Three protagonists are dead things. The type of task structure is changed from an escape, a traveling, to metamorphosis. The type of obstruction structure is changed from the protagonist to an outside object. The type of closure structure is changed from an exaggerated happy ending, sad ending to probable happy ending. To quantitify the aspects of transformation, I developed an assesment tool using likert scale. It is composed of 4 sub-categories-reality testing, imagination, ego-strength, optimism problem-solving. In reality testing category, a shift of score was 9-11-15, imagination 2-5-5, ego strength 3-2-2, optimism 6-3-7, and total score 20-21-29. This change of score reflects the growth of problem solving capacity. Viewed in this light, dramatherapy with this girl was successful on the whole. The thing had significant effect on it was psycho-dynamic approach focused on separation from her mother and defence mechanism to avoid negative emotion. And assessment method used in this case will be full of suggestions to researches to come.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.95-109
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• 2014

The variety show has expanded as a contemporary genre of popular culture since it first appeared as the Industrial Revolution allowed the public to enjoy their leisure time. In Korea, it has developed itself in similar ways, but it also has been criticized as low-brow. Recently, however, the real variety show has caught great attention as one of the social phenomena and is winning fervent responses from general publics as it is not consumed as a kind of entertainment show but is establishing its form and style as Korean real variety show. On the basis of these features, this paper focuses on the characteristics of real variety show as openness and expandability which can be found in the pre-modern Korea's traditional theatrical performances. Quite different from the cases in the Western culture, the Korean traditional theatrical performances used to set a stage up around the living space, attract audience to willingly approach the stage and participate in the theatre, and let them enjoy their participation. At the same time, however, The perfection of the shows had not been missed. And in comparison with the traditional theatrical performances, the present real variety show reveals the anticipation that the real variety show will not settle down just as a certain format or a genre, but accumulate its abundant contents and continue its new attempts and changes.