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Becoming Hamlet for Only Nine Days: Korean Workers and Documentary Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2016

HYUNSHIK JU
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Abstract

In South Korea, workers’ theatre is often considered outdated and unsuited for the postmodern era of hybridity and diversity because of its crude, ideology-oriented slogans. Thus the success of Hamlet for Only Nine Days (2013), featuring workers laid off from the CortCortec factory in South Korea as actors, is highly exceptional. This article presents an analysis of the characteristics of Hamlet for Only Nine Days as documentary theatre where various experiences and representations of reality mix with fiction, and reviews its political significance.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 122 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 Quoted in the Seoul Administrative Court's written judgment of 16 October 2008 (my translation). In 2006, 1.78 billion won would have been equivalent to US$1,123,060 and 850 million won would have been the equivalent to US$885,530.

2 Quoted in the Seoul High Court's written judgment of 27 November 2009 (my translation).

3 Quoted in the Supreme Court's written judgment of 23 February 2012 (my translation).

4 See Gin-gu Kim, ‘Cortec Instruments’ losses, Only 3.4% of Total Net Income: The Financial Audit to Overturn the Legitimacy of the Layoff’, Kyunghyang Daily News, 15 November 2013, at http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201311150600015&code=940702, accessed 9 February 2016.

5 Quoted in the Supreme Court's written judgment of 10 January 2014 (my translation).

6 Labour law organizations, ‘Remark toward the Cortec Layoff Case Ruling’, 17 June 2014 (my translation).

7 In-geun Lee, Kyeong-bong Kim, Jae-chun Lim, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

8 Mi-kyung Choi, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 23 June 2015.

9 Eun-young Kwon, Hoon Ko, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 27 and 30 May 2015.

10 In-geun Lee, Kyeong-bong Kim, Jae-chun Lim, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

11 Kim, So-yeon, ‘The Determined Rage of Laid-off Workers, Hamlet for Only Nine Days’, Korean Theatre Journal, 72 (2014), pp. 37–40Google Scholar, here pp. 39–40.

12 This summary and workers’ dialogues are compiled from the author's attendance at the performance and reading of the programme, which provided a synopsis in Korean.

13 Hamlet, I, v: 35–40. Dialogue from the production is quoted from memory based on the author's attendance of the performance. Dialogue from Shakespeare's Hamlet refers to Harold Jenkins's edition (London: Methuen, 1982).

14 See the Supreme Court's written judgment of 23 February 2012 (my translation).

15 These lines of original Hamlet III, iv are quoted in Hamlet for Only Nine Days Act VI.

16 These lines of original Hamlet IV, iii are quoted in Hamlet for Only Nine Days Act VII.

17 These lines of original Hamlet V, ii are quoted in Hamlet for Only Nine Days Act VIII.

18 I borrow this term from Martin, Carol’s Theatre of the Real (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar), p. 5.

19 Jin-kyung Lee, ‘I Watched Hamlet for Only Nine Days, a Play by Workers Laid off from CortCortec’, at www.facebook.com/jinkyung.yi.1/posts/629728013750920, accessed 20 December 2013.

20 Eun-young Kwon, Hoon Ko, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 27 and 30 May 2015.

21 Hoon Ko, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 30 May 2015.

22 Mi-kyung Choi, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 23 June 2015.

23 In-geun Lee, Kyeong-bong Kim, Jae-chun Lim, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

24 Hoon Ko, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 30 May 2015.

25 Eun-young Kwon, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 27 May 2015.

26 Ibid.

27 In-geun Lee, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

28 Kyeong-bong Kim, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

29 Jae-chun Lim, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 17 June 2015.

30 Mi-kyung Choi, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 23 June 2015.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Willett, J., ed., Brecht on Theatre (London: Methuen, 1964Google Scholar), p. 194.

34 These lines of original Hamlet IV, iii are quoted in Hamlet for Only Nine Days Act IV.

35 Mi-kyung Choi, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 23 June 2015.

36 Reinelt, Janelle, ‘The Promise of Documentary’, in Forsyth, Alison and Megson, Chris, eds., Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 6–23Google Scholar, here p. 10.

37 See cite source for further information, at https://tumblbug.com/nocorthamlet, accessed 9 February 2016.

38 Hoon Ko, interviewed by Hyunshik Ju, 30 May 2015.

39 Kim, Sung-Hee, ‘Dong-won Kim: Established the Realistic Style of Acting in South Korea’, in National Theatre Association of Korea, eds., 100 Years of Korean Modern Theatre: Historical Figures in History of the Korean Theatre (Seoul: Theatre and Humans, 2009), pp. 351–72Google Scholar, here p. 360.

40 Kim, Dong-won, Attempted, but Failed Curtain Call (Paju: Thaehaksa, 2003), p. 199Google Scholar.

41 These lines of original Hamlet III, i are quoted in Hamlet for Only Nine Days Act IV.

42 Ridout, Nicholas, ‘Performance and Democracy’, in Davis, Tracy C., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 11–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 19. Italics in the original.