Event Host: The Institute for Korean Studies
Short Description: The paper discusses the production of Sung Rno’s play Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen, which was produced in Korea in 1998.
Esther Kim Lee
Head of History/Theory and Head of MA/PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies
Theatre, Dance, & Performance Studies
University of Maryland
The paper discusses the production of Sung Rno’s play Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen, which was produced in Korea in 1998. The play takes place in “Seoul as reflected through a certain Mr. Yi Sang’s strange and twisted brain,” as described by the playwright. The Korean surrealist poet Yi Sang died in 1937 at the age of twenty-seven during the height of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. He is considered a poet genius who has received unprecedented posthumous recognition. He is a mythic character in the Korean literary society. Sung Rno presents a surrealistic play inspired by translations of Yi Sang’s poems that blur literary genres and defy structural rules. The paper examines the production in the context of Korean avant-garde theatre and experimental art.
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