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
