ⓒ National Theater of Korea

 Producer Bae Yoseop Showcases “In the Darkness, Landscape”

From 20 to 23 June, Bae Yoseop, an alumnus of the School of Drama, presented “In the Darkness, Landscape,” a new type of performance that breaks conventions. The program makes the audience pair with performers, either visually disabled or non-disabled, and exchange with their partners the senses they did not know by themselves. As the participants are led to imagine the new senses underway, the program's fun maximizes.

Eliminating boundaries between the stage and audience seating, five pairs of performers and audiences come together to explore the darkness. In that way, the performance guides the attendants to a new dimensional universe where sight is replaced by the body's senses.

The 3 big pillars at the center of the performance hall are written over with large prints and tactile letters in Korean about the feeling of different senses. As things written in the prints and tactile letters are different, the partners should read the content out to each other. A “sonic image” which translates images to sound was another essence of the performance. When one touches an image, it plays through the headphones the sound of a crayon scratching the canvas. The performers’ movements are also translated into a language.

Bae Yoseop indicated, “My goal was to create a performance both for disabled and non-disabled in the first place, with no need to break down the ‘barrier.’ I believe, erasing the boundary between the disabled and non-disabled in humanity and consistently inquiring the matter of the boundary between the human and non-human, and likely, the life and non-life, is what arts do.”