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Category Archives: Oh Tae-seok

Last chance to see Oh Tae Seok’s masterpiece

26-Jul-07
The enigmatically titled Bicycle finishes this weekend. The play is performed by a western cast, in the English translation by Kim Ah-jeong and RB Graves, in Camden People's Theatre, an intimate space (audience capacity around 40 I would reckon) near Euston Station. Oh Tae-Seok is known for making the audience work, skipping parts of the plot to make the viewers fill in the gaps themselves. This production helps the audience in some of that work, but without spoon-feeding them, and with only one deviation from the text, as far as I can see: for a western audience, it was helpful to have the play start with the horrific incident from the Korean war, as it sets the context which may be ...
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More from Master Oh

01-Jul-07
Those of you who went to the sell-out performances of Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican last year will be interested to know that another play by Oh Tae-seok (Oh T’ae-sŏk, 오태석), The Bicycle, will be shown at the Camden People's Theatre this month, 10 - 29 July. "One night I fainted because the ghost of a young woman called out to me from her grave by the side of the road. I was so scared that I began to shake and, later, I got sick. Whereupon I submit this report of absence." Spirits of an earlier time swirl together with inhabitants of the present as a town clerk tells of the mysterious events which led to his prolonged absence from work. ...
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Master Oh’s apology to Korean youth

04-Dec-06
Romeo & Juliet - adapted by Oh Tae-seok (Oh T’ae-sŏk, 오태석) Mokhwa Repertory Company 23 November 2006 - 9 December 2006 / 19:00, 19:45 The Pit, Barbican, Part of bite06 Oh Tae-suk, born in 1940, had a traumatic start to his life. When I was 11, the Korean War broke out. One day a car stopped in front of our house and my father was forced to get into it and he was abducted. After that, everything changed. (Oh Tae-suk, from Romeo & Juliet programme notes) Since then he has emerged as Korea's leading director / playwright, with 60 plays to his credit. Oh Tae-suk emerged as an avant-garde theatre artist in the 1960s, opposing the then dominant shinguk, a generic term referring to modern Korean theatre ...
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