Na Woon-kyu was an icon of Korean cinema, but his work was generally only received attention within the category of '1920s silent films'. In addition, his record of being affiliated with and active in theater company was branded as a phase representing the downfall and stagnation of the filmmaker Na Woon-kyu. However, this essay takes note of the fact that theatrical activity was not a minor part of his life, and aims to reconstruct the aspects of self-renewal that Na Woon-kyu attempted through his engagement with the stage. First, it can be noted that Na Woon-kyu actively utilized theatrical elements in order to strengthen the competitiveness of Joseon silent films. He believed that for cinematic fiction to effectively evoke the audience’s reality, it requires a device that deliberately disrupts the boundaries of the diegesis, and as part of such a strategy, he combined a prologue or epilogue performance with the film screening and staged a filming simulation.
The success or failure of Na Woon-kyu’s films depended on whether they could be combined with a “national allegory,” and the use of performance was a device to maximize the audience’s performativity. However, as the 1930s approached, this kind of strategy reached its limit. For the export of Korean cinema, films had to acquire a textual completeness without the involvement of performance. However, through his stage performances, Na Woon-kyu had confined the image of the “people’s hero” to an “aura,” that is, the existing body, thereby confining his “picture personality” within a certain boundary. Afterward, Na Woon-kyu focused on expanding the scope of his “picture personality” by attempting historical dramas and seeking a transformation in his acting.
The patterns of self-renewal that Na Woon-kyu attempted through theater can also be found in the phase in which he responded to the era’s challenge of a talkie. From the time talkie first appeared in theaters in colonial Joseon, Na Woon-kyu had been interested in producing Korean-language talkie, and also revealed the understanding that, when working in Minadojwa, training an actor’s speech skill is an important preparatory stage in the production of a taklie. Furthermore, Na Woon-kyu joined forces with the commercial Theater Company to participate in the production of combination plays, which, once again gaining prominence in the early 1930s, was a style that could flourish based on audiences’ expectations for the Korean-language talkie that were to come. In addition to serving as a means to preserve the capabilities of technical staff, combination plays were also a learning platform for creating talkie scenario, in which the role of language was dramatically elevated. If we pay attention to these aspects of self-renewal, it would be difficult to dismiss NaWoon-kyu’s comeback after entering the production field of talkie as merely a matter of fortunate coincidence.