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Drums of North and South Korea

Four performers dance together while playing in unison on traditional Korean hourglass drums. Photo by Joseph Hong.

By Joseph Hong

In the non-Western tradition of “theater in the round,” performances usually take place at “the center of the village.” Such performances serve the practical purpose of affirming life in a spectacle where both performers and audience members participate.

My desire to experience this style of theater performance was fulfilled this week at the Korean Youth Cultural Center (KYCC) 14^th annual fall show, which includes their second presentation of Mandang-Kut. What is a Mandang-Kut? It’s a Korean open-air village festival—a theater in the round, Korean style.

The energy that night was a welcoming, thoughtful and festive one. The theme Unnatural Separation aimed to illustrate separation on a multitude of levels, North/South Korea, performer/audience, native Korean/Korean Americans, and the younger/older generation.

The audience was led from the lobby, where two monitors were showing a video of reunited families in Pyongyang and Seoul, to the performance space by a loud procession of drummers, cymbals and flute players. Masked dancers and singers dressed in traditional imperial attire joined in. Then came a man dressed as a ragged beggar, two women holding two large nine-foot vertical banners and one woman passing out Korean flat bread from a basket.

As the audience followed their lead, we were obligated to enter from one of two doors. Those whose hand had been marked in blue had to enter from the right door and those in red entered from the left. Groups of family and friends in the audience were broken up and seated separately around the performance space — we were now divided like the 38^th parallel line. The place was packed. In the front, people sat on reed mats, while in the middle were two rows of chairs, and still more people stood in the back. There were around 200 people there that night.

The first performance was the Kosa or blessing ceremony. The audience watched as all the performers bowed and wished for a meaningful performance. They also said a prayer for those whose lives have been deeply impacted by the war.

Next on the agenda was a folk dance, Ip-ch’um, performed by guest artist Mi-Sook Yoon. This performance attempts to express the tension and release of han. Han can be described as the collective consciousness of the Korean people. It is spoken of in terms of their historical and current anxieties and sufferings.

Wearing a simple red and white traditional Korean dress and holding a large white scarf, Yoon, using purposely restrictive movements, did a slow tension-filled dance. Toward the end she started twirling the scarf, which created a feeling of relief though the tension remained on her somber face. She seemed to be telling the audience that han can be relieved but never fully banished.

The performance continued with two songs relating to the separation of North and South Korea. Then something unexpected happened. Both audience and performers took part in the game of patty-cake. There was no stage at this point, just one big patty-cake orgy. Like the program said, “who knew patty-cake could be so stylish and fun.” Well, I don’t know about stylish, since the participant had to sit in the bathroom squatting position but it looked fun with everyone smiling and laughing.

The audience was then told to go back and take seats on separate sides again. Two mask dances were performed, one originating from the North and one from Kyongsan Namdo in the most southern part of Korea. This was followed by a crazy tug-of-war with serious audience participation. At this point members of the audience became the entertainers. The game attempted to demonstrate the power of gathering strength.

Let me preempt the next segment of the program with this: If you haven’t seen a good poong-mul performance, I urge you witness one of them before you die. Poong-mul is like taiko drumming on speed. It has the same thunderous sound of taiko, but the drummers hold their instrument as they play, dance, twirl, and jump around to the beat. The drums vary in shape from two-sided hourglass, round, to smaller drums held by one hand. There were also cymbals and gongs of different sizes and shapes. The musicians wore these festive headpieces that kind of looked like the Swiss guards helmets with a bunch of cheerleader’s pom-poms stuck to it. The drummers from KYCC, Cal and Stanford gave it everything they had.

The finale was the Daedongnori or “group play.” Performers urged the audience to join in and participate in all sorts of games such as forming a big bunny hop line. Up to this point in the show, I was a little shy and stuck mostly to the sidelines. But in the end, I was dragged out with the other audience members. It felt natural and good to participate with everyone: young and old, dancers and drummers, performers and audience members. In the end, the spirit of a Korean village community prevailed, and we were simply united, perhaps the way Korea will be one day.