Student Festival (Online)

Participated in ITI/UNESCO Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts / 2nd Student Festival (Online) Monday - Sunday, 13 - 19 July 2020

Here is AeRan’s take as she was invited to co-host the Korean on-line after show discussion. Her primary role was translator for Director Ha Kyounghwa of the Korean show Desire and provide additional commentary. Upon watching and reflecting on the show she wrote the following text.

Desire: corporeal expressions especially those created by the Korean body and Korean movement to tell the story of Medea.

• It was interesting to see the combination of Korean body verses greek mythology. To relate to the theme of the festival Home: Greek mythology is home or mother of theatre and the Korean body is the local home of where the actors are trained. In addition, according to what the director indicated, she utilized sources from Stanislavsky, considered to be the father of an actors theatre training. In this respect, the theme Home brings another layer - Travel. How Western-European theatre travels to Korea in contemporary society? In terms of theatre, what does really travel and how is it localized? Does theatre conduct a multicultural complement to enrich our existing culture or does it come disguised as another homoginization aspect of globalization? To explore these vital questions particularly today in the complex flux of multiculturalism, inter-culturalism, globalization, and pan-culturalism, the student theatre festival is especially important, more than at any other time. I really appreciate ITI giving this opportunity to open theatre discussions around the concept of Home.

• My second response to Desire involved the role of the spectators. We know theatre is foremost a gathering, a meeting. Many theatre practitioners like Grotowski have defined the essential element of theatre as the relationship between the actor and the spectator. And Richard Schechner underlines the importance of between-ness, not what is, but what is happening between the actors and the spectators. Theatre comes from the greek théatron, meaning a viewing place. And what do we see? We see as Jean-Marie Pradier articulated, “the incarnation of the imagination”. In Desire, I sensed the invitation to witness the actors’ emotional journey. I was not invited to personally feel their journey but rather view how they felt.  I  thought about feelings, not felt them. Primarily I was more interested in analyzing theater than submitting to its hallowed power to move and enthrall me.  When I was working with Eugenio Barba, he shared with us on opening night that the meeting with the spectators is the meeting of the truth to evaluate whether all our experiments would work or not - that our truth would meet the spectators truth. Rather than cancelling this Festival, this opportunity to meet, the ITI courageously organized an on-line Festival. The performances and meetings during this Festival allowed me to seriously ponder my question of this relationship between the actors and spectators. This question perhaps not unsurprisingly emerged in the online format more than ever.