2015 PAMS Choice - Theater

MRC is a theatre company that vividly expresses Korean colors, language, and cultural identity. Starting with a 1987 international tour, it has performed in various countries including Germany, Japan, and the USA, helping raise awareness on the Korean culture and ethos through original theatre works. In Korea, the Company has built its peerless reputation as a cutting-edge experimental theatre group.
In 1999, MRC’s theatre called "Aroongguji" opened on Taehangno ("University Road"), a theatre district in Seoul, where the Company produces three or four plays annually. MRC has continuously received enthusiastic responses and support from audiences not only within Korea but also from all over the world.
To pull threads from raw cotton, soft on the outside but tenacious inside, one must spin with a patient and delicate pace—neither too fast nor too slow. With the a similar devotion to the spinning of cotton, the Mokhwa Repertory Company will continue its work to construct meaningful theatre.

Why Did Shim-Ch’ong Plunge into the Sea Twice? - Mokwha Repertory Company

Shim-Ch’ong who made her father's vision return to him, plunges herself into the deep water again to save the world.

Why Did Shim-Ch’ong Plunge into the Sea Twice? is a jarring revision of the legend of a filial daughter who volunteers to drown herself for the restoration of her blind father's sight. In OH, Tae-suk's violent retelling, the daughter, Shim-Ch’ong, is abruptly placed in a seamy modern underworld of thieves, pimps, and prostitutes, where her plunge into the sea no longer offers hope of redemption but rather serves as a moving reminder of the fragility of goodness in contemporary society. There is a young man named CHUNG Sae-Myung, who has a heart of compassion towards others that is hardly found these days. Through this young man, the director cries out for our dying moral values. The audience can enjoy a theatric entertainment, which the director brings through the humor and satire embedded in the struggle of the young man. But the audience will end up empathizing with him. There really is nothing to laugh about, but it leaks out anyway, and you feel a chill clawing the back of your neck!

Quartet on Pain - Project Group TUIDA

Pain becomes sound, that sound becomes words, and those words again invoke pain.

How do we prove that a person is alive? Pain felt in the skin when cut; the scream produced when bones shatter; the agony felt when the heart is being ripped apart—all paradoxically provide evidence that a person is alive. Inspired by the traditional Indian performance “Kutiyattam,” the production Quartet on Pain is a play that is set below an extremely restricted circular stage, and explores a life in which words are excised and a life that is accompanied by pure physically expressed pain. The story is structured around a dying whale that is trapped in endless suffering because of the words it has said and the who grew up eating the sounds of suffering—Neokson, who wanders looking for the agonizing sounds of pain. The play illustrates a cycle as it shows that suffering, which is evidence of life, becomes sound, that sound later becomes words, and those words again invoke suffering.