KJCKorea
Journal Central

CaoYu’s work, <Thunderstorm> is very famous in Korea. <Thunderstorm> was first staged in the National Theater of Korea in 1950. Thirty eight years later, the actor-turned-director HaerangLee rearranged the show and it was once again enacted upon the stage of the National Theater. The adaptation directed by HaerangLee did not follow the original manuscript. Still, CijinYu cut and embellished Lee’s adaptation. However, Yu’s adaptation is not considered asuccessful adaptation the personalities of some of the characters were not emphasized while others’ were completely altered. Also, the stage sets and application of technology did not have any new breakthroughs. The popularity of the drama was significantly decreased. The lack of technological improvements is also another factor to the films’ mediocrity. The film would not attract a larg audience either --especially during the 80’s where mass media flourished. CaoYu wrote in a prologue and epilogue to maintain the distance of the audience with the characters. Most of the involved directors, including HaerangLee, decided to completely cut out these parts. In fact, there were already issues between the culture and society of China and Korea as he was directing <Thunderstorm>. Distance could be kept even without the prologue and epilogue and this part of the processing was possibly the best of the show for HaerangLee. From a general point of view, the performance of 1988 was a performance without originality with an average state set and sound system that imitated the 1950 show. However, the show in 1950 had produced an artificial thunderstorm to attract large numbers, and the 1988 performance did not reproduce the shocking and exhilarating thunderstorm. The performance, with the multitude of aforementioned reasons, can be stated as a failure of a work of theater.

Yu Cao, Haerang Lee, 《Thunderstorm》, The National Theater of Korea, Receptive aesthetics