By Michel Vinaver
Director Marion Schoevaert / Byun Jung Joo
Choreograph Park Jun Mi
Music Kim Don Gun / Kim Aram / Choe Young Suk / Lee Ccot Byel
13 actors
Transation Ahn Chi Woon, Adaptation by Marion Schoeavert / Byun Jung Joo
Produced by Wuturi Company
Seongnam Art Center, Dec 2006
European Tour : Scene National Evreux March 2008
European Tour Theatre National Dijon Bourgogne May 2009
After an American bombardment, everything is destroyed in the north Korean Village of Yuwon, life is disrupted and the love ones are dead. The village stands up, and start living again. Not far, in the forest, five French UN soldiers are lost and scared. A young girl from Yuwon finds a wounded French caporal. She helps him bury of an American soldier, he helps her to find her brother’s dead body. She brings him back to the village. This is the story of North Korean people whose reality is changedby the outside and the story of a soldier who becomes a man.
The play follows a “gut”, a Korean ritual for the dead who died violently in the Korean war. The spirits are stuck in shape of ghosts, and the actors will be acting as “mudang” or shaman, calling the names of the dead (civilian from north and south, Turcs, American, Chinese soldiers…)
Actors are performing the play for them, to please the spirits with dance, music and singing so they can scatter into nature.
In the show, the dead are represented by clothing which will be neatly folded at the end, and their names will be burned. For this play the Wuturi Company is using Korean mask dance (with musical rhythm and precise gesture),Kung Fu (incorporated into the choreography), singing, and contemporary dance, text in formal Korean rhythm on the drum, and finally a study of propaganda art.
Reviews
“A triumph” Le Monde, Fabienne Darge
“A magnificient, and sublime play with virtuosos actors”
France, May 9, Association France Korea Bourgogne
“Irradiate with light, a magnificient declaration of peace”
Le Bien Public, Juliette Soulat, May 21
“A play rich of sense and sensational” Diversions, Dominique Demangeot
“Exceptional with intelligence, energy, power of poetry” JB Carasson, L’oizeau Rare
“The sacred and the dance are elements we should all imitate in our theater today”
Le bien Public, G. Malvoisin May 2009
“Their efforts to to search for a new style is the work that ensure our existence, it is an important work and I applaud their efforts” TIS Theater, Ha Hyun Joo
“Song, soup, sport and games… through simple kid’s game, this play really expresses the pain, the violent storm, the horror the Korean felt.” Munwha daily Newspaper
“The meeting between the traditional Korean theater, Wuturi rhythm and the French director has surpassed all the clichés of cultural exchanges… this play forces the north and the south to review their own history” Sae Gae Newspaper
“It is an experience and a challenge to develop ceremonies into a formal piece of theater… it is a physical theater which expresses by movements the modern reality”
Korean Theater Review
Funding Seongnam Cultural Foundation, Wuturi, AFAA, Beaumarchais Foundation, Art Council Korea
Marion Schoevaert 