Hello Friends,
My colleague and dear friend, Derek Straat, spent 5 years in Asia teaching English. We spent three years at the Actors Studio Drama School, he on the acting track and me on the directing track. Our thesis was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, a heady piece with gorgeous language and meaty characters. So when he decided to head to the Far East, I thought to myself, “Wow, will he be able go delve into the characters he so loved and was easily exposed to here?” The journey turned out to be an interesting one. Derek taught English and added theatre as a mechanism for learning the English language. He also was able to play roles like Othello which was great since he isn’t is a “Moor” as Shakespeare indicated. My curious mind got the best of me and I figured since we’ve been traveling beyond Broadway across the Atlantic, why not find out more about the culture of theatre in Korea and Malaysia.
Malini: What was your experience there?
Derek: Korea and Malaysia are quite different. I’ll start with Korea. Koreans are very interesting in that they are all in love with drama. They don’t outwardly express emotion like other cultures might (Italians), but they compress and bound it tightly so that when it comes out it is often sharp and jarring and quite severe. Korean TV expresses this well, and the K-pop phenomenon also becomes an expressive medium for younger Koreans dying to release feeling and express a range of natural human emotions that the culture doesn’t always allow. The theater is still somewhat traditional, although they have opened up to the world and accept most tours and musicals today. I saw RENT there with the original cast and one of the most interesting things about the audiences in Korea is that they don’t react our of respect for the actors. Many times the jokes or moments were received with dead quiet, not because they weren’t great on stage, but because the audience didn’t want to ‘interfere’ with the work. At the end of the performance, the crowd erupted and finally let out their appreciation. This is a custom that may be hard for international actors to accept. I performed once in Korea and found that the crowd was mostly expatriates who wanted to see something different. The language in Korea is king, so if anything were to work, it most definitely would have to be translated.
Malini: What were differences between both countries?
Derek: Malaysia is, by all intents and purposes, void of artistic expression. The arts are reserved for the religious ceremonies, and any attempt to supersede that seriously could result in arrest or a falling out of graces with the society. Art and theater presented is largely representational and has an almost puppet atmosphere to it. The landscape does seem ripe for a cultural revolution, but it most likely will involve a political one, and that will not be greeted without immense struggle. I attended a workshop run by an RSC member who was very close with John Barton. The workshop was wonderful and free. Few actors attended as acting is looked at largely as ‘personality and marketing’, not Shakespeare. I also joined the Melaka Theater Group, which was considered one of the better groups in the area. After a few meetings, it appeared the group was more of social gathering of the elite Tamil classes who wanted to have something to do, but very little acting got done. I persuaded them to produce a reading series, which happened after one year. There is much analyzing and planning involved with respect to the technical aspects of the show, but little work is done on the characters. I think that there is a similarity in the theaters of Korea and Malaysia, but the ruling religious government represses Malaysia, and there is not much to be done there without risk.
Malini: Is theatre a part of the Asian culture? Is there a theatre district?
Derek: Korea does have a theater and culture district in Seoul, which is growing and getting more exciting each year. It is called, Daehangno: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daehangno
Live, Love, Learn,