By Hamsta
***Note: this article contains spoilers for Snowpiercer (2013), directed by Bong, Joon-ho
I suppose it cannot but be a challenging work to make a well-known literature into a theatre performance, as one very crucial question may quickly arise; Why should it be staged when it seems just as good enough to be read?* To this question, Edward Gordon Craig would have answered; No, you shouldn't. This modernist theatre-maker thought that Shakespeare’s great plays shouldn't be staged at all. Besides the discrepancy between the staged Hamlet and the imagined Hamlet, what he indeed meant by negating the idea of ‘staging’ is that theatre is not merely the staged text but the reality on its own.
It seems for Han, Tae-suk, her answer in La Divina Commedia is that she tries to go beyond the ‘mere staging’ of this Western classic by means of theatrical devices such as scenography, musicalisation and bodily movement: The huge structure on stage which fully occupies one of the biggest stages in Seoul (it can even revolve!), alternating dialogues and songs with live orchestral music accompanied all the way, and abundant display of bodily dynamics. It will be great if I can deal with each of those, but to my painful realisation, I am not such a capable writer. So I would rather, in this essay, focus my discussion to the bodily aspect, which mostly appealed to my interest.*No, please don’t tell me you want it to be staged because you gave up teenage-reading and never tried picking it up again from the bookshelf!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-fLnBfmDaQ
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The performance begins as Dante gets lost in the midst of forest and meets wild animals. A group of actors(chorus) in dark-coloured tights surrounded him and threatened him with their bodies. From then on, during the first act, Dante explores the Inferno meeting a lot of suffering people, whom are mostly acted and danced by chorus.
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Even though bodily images were foregrounded, it was not the intensity of the body that impressed the audience because it was not the body that spoke, only the text spoke through body. These trembling bodies often observed in Commedia reminded me of an unforgettable trembling body that I have encountered. It was from Waiting for Godot by an able-art company Ae-in, where Vladimir was acted by a man whose posture is unstable. He involuntarily trembled parts of his body while his vocalisation and diction was perfect. This movement was not intended to stand for something but it was already embodying the core of the Beckett’s text. It did not represent but was the precarious condition of human existence. The body in Godot was speaking as text, contrary to the bodies in Commedia speaking for text.
What I mean by ‘for text’ is that something stands for some other thing, while something ‘as text’ stands as itself. Think about the relation between music and lyrics. While music can enhance or fit the meaning of lyrics or vice versa, no one really thinks that music itself stands for the lyrics. They are thought to be two different ones working in close cooperation. Music works in its own mode: the rhythm, tune and the texture of sound. For example, the Korean traditional vocal Sori used in Commedia is striking because of its own particular texture which is different from usual singing or speech. It delivers lyrics but is also appreciated as itself. Free from the ‘what does it mean?’ kind of semantic question, the music in Commedia stretched its vast imagination, exploring Korean traditional music Pansori, opera and noise-like sounds. In contrast, however, the bodily movement of chorus was limited within the field of ‘what it means’, resulting in the lack of kinaesthetic imagination.
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While the original poem depicted the Purgatorio as a pyramid-shaped mountain with seven balconies in each of which sinners are punished according to their sin, the scenic interpretation of Commedia was sinners trying to climb up the mountain of Purgatorio without knowing what will be up there. To stand for the mountain, there was a huge slope stage―wait, was it meant to be a déjà-vu? Apart from its second-hand-ness,* I still found it interesting because it structurally forces actor’s body to interact with the slope. The slope can consciously visualise and emphasise the sense of gravity which is usually unfelt on the horizontal floor and thus create unique bodily dynamics. Indeed, most actions during the second act were on the slope: the sinners in the Purgatorio trying to climb up the mountain, and Dante and Beatrice hanging on nails on the slope in the Paradiso.
The sinners kept climbing up, and at the same time, they kept slipping off, implying the genuine repentance is not easily achieved. But it was visually too apparent that the climbing was actually not too difficult with the footholds. Audience could see the actors were ‘deliberately’ losing balance. Neither the force of gravity that pulls their body down nor sufficient and desperate effort to defy it were traced in their movement. Here again, the body remained mere semiosis that signifies specific meaning, and the helpless feeling of unwanted fall-down was hardly communicated from body to body.
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In contrast to the Purgatorio where the restraint of gravity ever weights the sinners, the Paradiso, where that weight of sin is transcended, was expressed with movements of zero-gravity. It seems the Paradiso was interpreted as more of the sublime than of beauty or happiness. At the last scene where Dante at least meets his lover, Beatrice, both their action and the lyrics they sang showed little the joy of love or happiness, much the enchantment of the eternal. It was hardly emotional or psychological, drawing a great contrast to the Inferno which was intensely full of the awe and agony. Here, it is the geometrical figuration of the bodies themselves and the interaction of forces between the body and the space that comes to the audience. The movement in this scene is the least dance-like, but in my opinion, it is the dance as a search for the capability of movement. Yet I wish the actress could have moved smoothly more as if flowing or flying than dangling. At least from the performance I attended, she appeared rather stiff and at times seemed very uncomfortable. Surely and naturally it must have been uncomfortable even when she was singing, but the the performance was not as beautifully surreal as the still-cut below in which the bodies are distorted but free, flying up above.
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In place of concluding words, I want to recall a movie, Snowpiercer(2013), the film by Bong, Jun-ho. There is a scene where the protagonist Curtis finds out that the protein bars are made of cockroaches. There, the camera zooms up into the inside of boiling pot and the whole screen shows tons of cockroaches being boiled. When recalling the film, what makes me feel sick is more the image of wriggling cockroaches than the fact that people ate them. Whether imagined or experienced, the intense materiality of things at times overwhelms their meaning.
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| - Remember this?; Why do we, theatre-goers, still attend the theatre when there are plenty of substitutes both in entertainment and enlightenment? I do believe it’s because we desire to experience the intense moment of theatrical reality. The fun and sensation which things and humans on stage, their intense corporeality can only give. |
I am aware that there are a number of people who went to La Divina Commedia and thought it was a great theatre work, very well-done. A lot of comments and personal reviews are available on the internet. Yes, I do also think it was good in many other respects. And probably my yardstick for this one is a bit rigid because Han, Tae-suk is a big name. Especially I cannot but credit that it was not boring for more than two hours with hardly deviating from the literature. A good representation of literature is never an easy work after all.
Still, I’m waiting for a theatre where body is not subjected to meaning but can be the meaning; I’m still desperately waiting for the one that doesn't satisfy me, but strikes me.
