“Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show is one of the more moving and imaginative works I have ever seen on the American stage…what makes it so transcendent is its delicious ability to alternate the pain of being different with a sense of humor about lives not lived among the status quo.” —Hilton Als, New Yorker … [Read More]
Booklist: Drama
Partial list of theatrical plays and other scripted performance pieces, both in translation and originally written in English.
Butterfly Sleep
From the publisher’s website: Kim Kyung Ju’s allegorical drama Butterfly Sleep refracts a critique of South Korea’s headlong development through a mixture of magic realism and absurdist dark humor set early in the Joseon dynasty. With lyricism and grace, Kim unfolds a lesson of consolation by confrontation, and finally reconciliation, with the ghosts of the … [Read More]
Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf
Equal parts poetry, drama, and sci-fi, award-winning poet Kim Kyung Ju’s verse play BRED FROM THE EYES OF A WOLF follows a post-apocalyptic family of wolves (indistinguishable from humans) forced to taxidermy their own cubs in order to survive. An allegory for the degraded social relations of the present, Kim Kyung Ju’s all-too-familiar dystopia partitions … [Read More]
The Song of Ch’unhyang: Musical Text as compiled by Master Singer Kim Yŏn-su
The Song of Ch’unhyang is one of the most popular p’ansori pieces in the genre’s classic repertoire. Its story is simple. Ch’unhyang (“Spring-Fragrance”) is the beautiful daughter of a deceased aristocrat and Wŏlmae, a retired kisaeng. Her ambiguous social status becomes the key dramatic complication when she falls in love with Yi Mongnyong, the young … [Read More]
A Grand Retreat and Other Plays
From the publisher’s website: This selection of plays offers an overview of Lee Gun-sam’s attempts to portray the socially-underprivileged people’s ‘heroic’ struggle to assert their human dignity in a society swarming with time-serving snobs and hypocrites. Lee Gun-sam’s heartstring was always attached to those who remain honest to themselves and fight for their moral principles. … [Read More]
The Clowns
From the publisher’s website: 이 (爾) (The Clowns) by Kim Tae-woong premiered in 2000 and is today considered one of Korea’s most famous dramas. Awards include: Best Play by the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper; Best Production by the Organization of Korean Theaters, and Best Play by the Seoul Arts Festival. Mr. Kim was lauded as one … [Read More]
Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas
From the publisher’s website: Showcasing the dynamism of contemporary Korean diasporic theater, this anthology features seven plays by second-generation Korean diasporic writers from the United States, Canada, and Chile. By bringing the plays together in this collection, Esther Kim Lee highlights the themes and styles that have enlivened Korean diasporic theater in the Americas since … [Read More]
Modern Korean Drama: An Anthology
From the publisher’s website: Carefully selected and represented, the plays in this collection showcase both the fantastic and the realistic innovations of Korean dramatists during a time of rapid social and historical change. Stretching from 1962 to 2004, these seven works tackle major subjects, such as the close of the Choson dynasty and the aftermath … [Read More]
Allegory of Survival: The Theater of Kang-baek Lee
From the publisher’s website: In the civil and government upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s in Korea, Kang-baek Lee began his distinguished playwriting career. He is perhaps best known as the premier writer of social commentary in the form of allegories in an effort to circumvent extremely strict censorship laws which were heavily enforced until … [Read More]
Four Contemporary Korean Plays
From the publisher’s website: South Korean drama has received considerable attention in Europe and Asia, but, until recently, received only scant attention in the United States. This anthology contains early works (1989-1993) by one of Korea’s leading theatre artists. These works reflect the nature of Lee Yun Taek’s genius, his contributions to contemporary Korean theatre … [Read More]
Plays of Colonial Korea
From the publisher’s website: During the Japanese occupation of Korea, young intellectuals like Se-dŏk Ham, eager to transform the traditional Korean ways, introduced Western arts, philosophy, and technology and styled themselves as bringing enlightenment. It was in this edgy, tumultuous world that Ham’s plays were first performed. With the end of World War II and … [Read More]
Three Plays: The Cow – The Mud Hut – The Donkey
From the publisher’s website: In his study Irish Influences on Korean Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s, Won-Jae Jang alerted scholars to a previously unexamined example of intercultural exchange in which Korean scholars looked to Irish writers and especially Irish dramatists to help them find a way of freeing themselves from the cultural imperialism of Japan. … [Read More]
Korean Drama Under Japanese Occupation
From the publisher’s website: From 1910 to 1945, Japan occupied Korea and controlled every aspect of the Korean life. This book selects three plays by two prominent Korean writers, Ch’i-jin Yu and Man-sik Ch’ae, who ventured to voice anti-Japanese sentiments in their plays despite the harsh censorship. In The Ox, two brothers suddenly find their … [Read More]
The Metacultural Theater of Oh T’ae-Sok: Five Plays from the Korean Avant-garde
From the publisher’s website: Here for the first time are translations of five plays by Oh T’ae-sok, Korea’s leading playwright and one of the most original dramatists and stage-directors working in Asia today. Drawing inspiration from both East and West and combining styles as disparate as ancient Korean masked dance-drama and contemporary avant-garde theater, these … [Read More]
Traditional Korean Theatre
From the publisher’s website: A translation of the contents of the manual used for the masked dance of Korea. Readers will delight in the wit and liveliness of these dramas that depict human errors as well as the redeeming virtues of social bonds. “…a pioneering collection of Korean mask-dance and puppet plays… a fine introduction … [Read More]
Plays from Korea
No further information available. WorldCat lists it, but without giving any details of its contents. LTI Korea suggests it might contain one or more plays by Yu Chi-jin. The volume appears to be for sale (presumably as an eBook) from this source. Amazon US is currently listing a second-hand copy. [Read More]