역사적 기억과 휴머니티로 다시 읽는 중국 고전 희곡, 〈조씨고아〉 = Reillumination of The Orphan of Zhao Family on Korean Stage (2015) from the View of Historical Memory and Humanities

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Orphan of Zhao Family (趙氏孤兒) is a very famous drama in the Chinese classical repertoire. Wang Guowei in his book, A Study of Song and Yuan Drama, paid high compliments to The Orphan of Zhao Family and The Resentment of Dou E as very rare tragedies among the Chinese drama. In this paper, I’m going to carry out a analysis study of the performances of The Orphan of Zhao Family directed by Koh Sun-woong(高宣雄), who is also a prominent Korean director, invited by the National Theatre of Korea for the production in 2015.
Koh’s stage was pretty faithfully based on the Ji Junxiang’s Yuan drama version, because he found great narrative power in the play. But it disclosed the limits of that time, so director Koh developed much more meaningful interpretations of the revenge narrative. Koreans are familiar with Confucian ideas as Asian values, and can easily accept the value of loyalty and filial piety, but we can’t agree with the violence and massacre, especially because we still remember the period of Japanese occupation, the Korean War, the blood for democracy and the recent tragedy of the Sewol Ferry in our own modern history. So we wanted to reveal what the righteousness of the affair is, and to confirm the value of self-sacrifice for loyalty and faith, but not the violence and massacre caused by one man’s desire for power. That’s why he put a really poignant scene at the end in which nobody listens to Cheng Ying or even cares for him when, after the revenge of same massacre, he ends his life to report the result to his dead friends, though the massacre was held by the king who wanted to keep his power on. It totally collapses not only him but also all the audience as they realize that revenge is all for nothing. So the person in the black suit, who is an outside character of the drama, brings a message: not to make any problem among people and to live together with love during your short life.
For the presence of historical memory, Koh used several different ways to show how it is remembered. Because the memory is usually one sided, not comprehensive, so at the beginning we only can watch a sketch about Chu Ni and Ling Zhe, and at the last scene Cheng Ying, the witness of the affair, revealed why Chu Ni died himself in that way and why Ling Zhe rescued Zhao Dun from danger through the explanation of the picture. The scene of Cheng Ying struggling with his wife to exchange his son and orphan not only leads the audience to an emotional peak but also lets them contemplate the conflict of human nature and the belief in social relationship. Because of the deep insight into human nature, I believe the scene added a new page in the history of performance of The Orphan of Zhao Family.
Koh’s version gives us very strong message, not only in the theme and narrative, but also in presenting a very familiar, but fresh and impressive approach to the stage. Because Koh puts stress on theatricality and playfulness, he prefers an empty stage and very much depends upon the acting of the actors. The harmony of the actors and all the elements of the stage is the real virtue of this production. The most interesting characteristics of this production is the unique Korean style tragedy. The Orphan of Zhao Family is the famous so-called “Chinese tragedy,” and many directors feel the burden of how to present the tragedy. But director Koh approached it in his own Korean way, because Koreans used to use humor and satire lightly in dealing with deep sorrow and tragic fate. So the stage keeps on a speedy and cheerful rhythm until Cheng Ying’s son is dead in the first act and even until the orphan comes to know his own story of survival in the second act. The performance fully displayed the aesthetic of the empty stage of traditional oriental theatre in a very interesting way. I believe the production not only revealed the power of the narrative of Chinese classical drama, but also brought up a universal dialogue with deep and new interpretations, and also created an interesting new stage of Korean style tragedy. It also contributed to arousing new concern about the staging of Chinese classical drama.

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