Lee provides a comprehensive insight into important topics within modern Korean theatre and conducts an in-depth evaluation of the major discourses that shaped Korean theatre during the 20th century. The book adopts a topical approach to explore modern Korean theatre through a more focused lens. Examining key subjects such as Korean Playwrights. Korean adaptations of Shakespeare, the National Theatre, feminist theatre, and the intercultural potential of a Far Eastern theatrical bloc, it provides a rigorous understanding of the evolution of Korean theatre during the 20th century and explores the moments of rupture and innovation within the chronological history of theatre. The book is a vital resource of interest to scholars and students interested in East Asian culture and theatre, specifically Korean culture.

Lee provides a comprehensive guide that traces the transformation of Korean theatre from traditional to modern theatre and examines the impact of the introduction of Western plays to Korean society.

This volume focuses on the theatre history of Asian countries, and discusses the specific context of theatre modernization in Asia. While Asian theatre is one of the primary interests within theatre scholarship in the world today, knowledge of Asian theatre history is very limited and often surprisingly incorrect. Therefore, this volume addresses a major gap in contemporary theatre studies. The volume discusses the conflict between tradition and modernity in theatre, suggesting that the problems of modernity are closely related to the idea of tradition. Although Asian countries preserved the traditional form and values of their respective theatres, they had to also confront the newly introduced values or mechanisms of European modernity. Several papers in this volume therefore provide critical surveys of the history of theatre modernization in Asian countries or regions—Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India Malaysia, Singapore, and Uyghur. Other papers focus on specific case studies of the history of modernization, discussing contemporary Taiwanese performances, translations of modern French comedy into Chinese, the modernization of Chinese Xiqu, modern Okinawan plays, Malaysian traditional performances, Korean national theatre, and Japanese plays during World War II. Renowned academics and theatre critics have contributed to this volume, making it a valuable resource for researchers and students of theatre studies, literature, and cultural studies.

A comprehensive and authoritative single-volume reference work on the theatre arts of Asia-Oceania. Nine expert scholars provide entries on performance in twenty countries from Pakistan in the west, through India and Southeast Asia to China, Japan and Korea in the east. An introductory pan-Asian essay explores basic themes - they include ritual, dance, puppetry, training, performance and masks. The national entries concentrate on the historical development of theatre in each country, followed by entries on the major theatre forms, and articles on playwrights, actors and directors. The entries are accompanied by rare photographs and helpful reading lists.

In the early 20th century, Korean women began to manifest themselves in the public sphere. Sung Un Gang explores how the women's gaze was reimagined in public discourse as they attended plays and movies, delving into the complex negotiation process surrounding women's public presence. In this first extensive study of Korean female spectators in the colonial era, he analyzes newspapers, magazines, fictions, and images, arguing that public discourse aimed to mold them into a male-driven and top-down modernization project. Through a meticulous examination of historical sources, this study reconceptualizes colonial Korean female spectators as diverse, active agents with their own politics who played a crucial role in shaping colonial publicness.

This book investigates the translation field as a hybrid space for the competing claims between the colonisers and the colonised. By tracing the process of the importation and appropriation of Irish drama in colonial Korea, this study shows how the intervention of the competing agents – both the colonisers and the colonised – formulates the strategies of representation or empowerment in the rival claims of the translation field. This exploration will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance studies, translation studies, and Asian studies.

This book examines one of the seminal chapters in the history of the modern Korea. Through an analysis of texts of various genres and types, the author analyzes Japanese colonialism and modernity and its impact on Korean culture and society during the first half of the twentieth century.