Oppressed Between Seoul and New York

    Solidarity. I feel that I am still with the people whom I have talked to during the Encuentro. They will come into my mind whenever I meet people through theater in the future and whenever I dream with them about a better world.
The initial thoughts and motivations of my project were little different from what I feel now. I had to find a counterpoint between my interests in theater and the ‘Spectacles of Religiosities’. Having grown up in a radical church in Korea, which was the center of political resistance and experimental theater during the modern history, I have experienced how powerful performance can be in conveying messages of social engagement. The community built in the process of producing such performances and the total freedom of speaking out about freedom and justice on stage had made me experience a moment of true happiness. That is why I chose to study performance and I was trying to find about that moment in the Encuentro. That is why Prof. Diana Taylor introduced me to ‘the theater of the oppressed’ from where I started my project.

    I started with the simple knowledge that there were people named ‘Augusto Boal’ and ‘Paulo Freire’ who have worked for and with the oppressed people through theater. While trying to learn more about them through their books, I approached participants of the seminar with four questions. “Do you think that the world can be changed through performances?”, “How is that belief revealed in your artistic/academic practice?”, “How would you introduce the theater of/for the oppressed to people who don’t know about it at all and who do you think are the oppressed?”, “Have you ever been influenced by Augusto Boal or Paulo Freire? Do you think that the methodology of Augusto Boal or Paulo Freire can influence other continents such as Asia?” I tried to meet people from Brazil and anybody whom I would meet in workshops, lectures or on the corridor.
The four questions were initially selected to make a video introduction to the people in Korea on the ‘theater of the oppressed’ mainly for Korean people. The interviews, however, made me wake up. I realized what is true and what I had been thinking wrongly. The theater of the oppressed was something universal. My plan to take the methodology of it from here and to plant it into the life of Korean people changed after the interviews and after getting to know the group ‘Hae’ in Korea..

    People whom I interviewed were talking about changing the world. It was not just what they were talking about but the whole atmosphere of the Encuentro, the performances that I watched, the lectures and everything during the seminar that made me realize what they really were talking about. It was not just the words of them, but it was the eyes of them, their faces and their breath which made me feel the truth that they were actually living in their life. No matter to whom I talked I could feel that the world actually is changing. The interviews made it possible for me to make some important intimate encounters with people who were actually living what they thought and shared their academic, practical experience. It was not easy for me to casually approach people during the Encuentro, but the interviews gave me the opportunity to really talk to them, to really ask them about what was a burning question for me. While talking to them, I could remember the moment of happiness that I talked about before and that I was trying to find again. I could also dream about what I would do in the future.

    Tiny steps. Micro way. Not the world but individuals, people. One of the most shocking things was the way in which people would understand how the world could be changed through performances. My approach about changing the world through performances had been rather something huge. Performance in changing the world for me had been rather an effective tool to fuel discourses or to enlighten. I had been thinking about classes or political issues when it comes to world peace and performance. Many people, beautiful people I met, however, were talking about the change of individuals. They were talking about the contact and relationship with others, which happens through performances and I could feel the affection of them with which they wanted to talk to human beings through their performance or art. They came from different backgrounds but they were putting it in such a similar way that it seemed to me that there is a secret about changing the world that I didn’t know about. A secret about how I could I start with the change of myself, another dimension.

    After talking to the people, I also discovered that I have had a complex, controversial understanding about the concept ‘oppressed’. Many people were saying that oppression is something that everybody has within oneself and that everybody is taking turns in becoming oppressors and the oppressed. There were also responses, which mainly pointed out the issues of class and economy. While listening, I could find out how I had been understanding myself and where I should be in the future. When it comes to the discourse about the first worldism, I used to become radical identifying me as a person from the oppressed third world. In the context of Korean society, On the other hand, I never had felt bad about studying abroad with my scholarship taking all the advantage of a student in the U.S. I have become interested in the theater of the oppressed through my experience in radical church theater, but ironically, I had never really ‘lived’ with the oppressed within Korean society. I had been trying to ‘help’ the oppressed people in Korea whereby I am in fact, oppressing them. The response of an indigenous woman really struck me, saying that indigenous people would not need any help. I like to say the same to the people in the first world. “I do not need to be helped.” Then why have I been trying to ‘help’ people in my country? Helping is not the proper term because after all, all of us are oppressed.

    While thinking about the subject and victim of oppression I came to realize how simple and ignorant my motivation was to ‘take the methodology about the theater of the oppressed from somewhere else and to use it in Korea’. Coming to know that the oppressed is everybody, I started to feel a sense of solidarity, which made nationalities or other barriers meaningless. This feeling grew stronger when I got more acquainted with what the theater of the oppressed was about.

    I kept on doing the interviews and at the same time, tried to find a more concrete counterpoint within Korean society to make my experience more useful. I did research and found out that there already exists a group in Seoul, which is practicing the theater of the oppressed. I asked them the same questions and received some material about their work, which I decided to introduce to the Hemispheric Institute. It was no more about taking something from somewhere. I started to regard myself as a bridge between two different worlds where people are dreaming about the same. I enjoyed becoming part of the solidarity. It was really surprising how similar the people were. No wonder because they were dealing with the same ‘theater of the oppressed’ but it was so moving to hear about it in different languages. While contacting the Korean group ‘Hae’ per e-mail and telephone, I was really amused to compare the responses with the interviews from here and really enjoyed how loving the people in both of the groups were. All of them were believing that the world could be changed, all of them were mentioning both dimensions of internal change and social structure and all of them had a love and interest in human beings themselves. Most of all, all of them were so interesting and wonderful as persons, whose personality itself made me believe in what they were dreaming about.

    The answers to the question of the possibility of the adaptation of the theater of the oppressed in other countries or in my country, gave me a more concrete idea about what I should do in the future as a bridge between the east and west. My initial question turned out to be a little improper after I realized how generally and universally the oppressed could be defined. The fact that ‘Hae’ has been practicing it in Seoul itself was a proof of the possibility of the adaptation of the theater of the oppressed to another country. While talking to the people here, however, I came to confront a next question, which was about the context of practicing it. What struck me most was the importance or essential necessity of living the life of the grassroots. People gave me ideas about getting back from the global to the local and about really incorporating the theater of the oppressed, which means that I have to live ‘as’ or at least ‘with’ the oppressed in my context. This impressed me so deeply that I started to feel a responsibility to go back to my country as soon as possible: even though, I also came to know the needs for study and research about the methods of the theater of the oppressed in the States, through the responses of the Korean group I came to decide that I should go back to live ‘with’ the grassroots of my country.
When I heard about the theater of the oppressed from people here and when I read about it, it was quite interesting. When I talked to the Brazilians or other South Americans about their oppression and found out how similar their experience or mentality to mine is when it comes to suffering, I felt not just an interest but a stronger solidarity. At the point, however, where I went through the material from Korea and talked with them about my reality, it was a totally different emotion. I cried quite often while I was translating the materials.

    The theater of the oppressed now reminds me of a church. I often am moved when I enter a church in Germany, Japan or here at the Riverside Park and see the same cross hanging. I see something similar as ‘ecumenism’ in the theater of the oppressed. I think about the people during the Encuentro whom I shyly approached and who opened my mind to discover the oppression in myself and how I am oppressing others and what I should do in the future. I think about the people in my country who are waiting for me. I smile when I remember how I tried to look at ‘the theater of the oppressed’ as a methodology, which I should take from somewhere else and use in Korea. In silence, I try to feel the happiness I felt when I sensed the solidarity of the people talking and how beautiful they were as persons. I try to imitate their loving way of regarding human beings. I think about what I should do next. Tiny steps. Micro ways. Grassroots. The oppression in myself…psst….. I again want to thank all the people who were really willing to share their experience including the group ‘Hae’. I also want to thank Mr. George Stoney who provided much video material for the group in Korea.

(Yoona Kang is an M.A student in the department of Performance Studies at NYU)

Collaborative "Hae-Workshop" Painting