Aesthetics of Silence in Choi In-hoon's Drama
- Focusing on <In a Mountain and a Field When Spring Comes>
Zoh, Borami
This thesis attempts to examine the poetic language, ‘stutter’, ‘movement’, ‘gesture’ and ‘sound’ shown in <In a Mountain and a Field When Spring Comes> in the point of the aesthetics of silence. The poetic language in stage directions is written like a poem, in which void spaces (silence) intervenes. So it makes the drama flow slowly and focus on ‘movement’, ‘sound’ and other theatrical elements.
‘Stutter’ is revealed in almost all the characters in the drama, and it shows the suppression and fear in the characters. It also expresses the limit or incompleteness of the language, so the stutterer, father of Dalnae, embodies such a property of the language itself. ‘Movement’ and ‘gesture’ accompanied by silence are focused in this play, and a series of gestures in the second tableau can be interpreted as mime. ‘Sound’ is also focused in this play and the repetition of the sound serves to the organism of the drama. In addition, some special sound accompanied by a character (mother of Dalnae) serves as a ‘Leitmotif’ in the drama.
As a result, the silence in this play makes the play flow slowly, which is against the value of modern society, so we can say that it works as a resistance of the modern society. But of all things, one of the most important feature of the silence in this play is that it is related to available artistic resources such as ‘stutter’, ‘movement’, ‘gesture’, ‘sound’ and other theatrical elements. The all-compassing means of creation challenges the actor's and spectator's sensitivity concerning life's very sources, and revitalizes ones's vision of life, by which it rekindles dramatic lyricism in the theatre. These features are all the more important, because these appear not only in this drama but in the other drama works by Choi In-hoon.