On the Side of the Deepest Soul on Earth: An Interview with Ja Kyung Rhee and Hye Sook of Theatre 1981

Gok. It is the sound of wailing. It is a cry from deep in the heart. In Korea for thousands of years it has been a way of expressing sorrow over the death of a beloved one. In Los Angeles it was the name given to a series of performance works created by Theatre 1981 that explored themes of suffering and the sorrow of war and nuclear destruction. —Eds.

Theatre 1981 evolved out of the Korean American Avant Garde Theatre: Korean-American artists dedicated to feminist and antiwar themes. The pieces were written by Ja Kyung Rhee and directed by her husband, filmmaker Ik Tae Rhee, the group's only male. Other founding collaborators included painter and performance artist Hye Sook, the principal performer in the series, playwright So Hyun Chang, filmmaker Hye Sook Yoo and fashion designer Kimmi Song, along with a number of other participants.

In 1982 the group presented Gok-I: We wail for all the spirits of the dead, in 1985 Gok-III: The death of water, and in the Fall of 1988 Gok-IV: The death of the earth. (Gok-II was written but never produced.) Their style combined traditional Korean theatrical and ritual forms with experimental performance techniques to express political and spiritual concerns. The performances had none of the didacticism one might expect from political theatre. Instead, the group chose to explore the deeply personal and human issues inherent in global political maneuvering.

The Gok performances were all very similar, especially to Western eyes unfamiliar with the traditional Korean references. On the stage, an environment was created with lengths of white rags, typical of Korean shaman theatre. The performers produced the chilling and unworldly sounds of Korean funeral wailing. Universal symbols such as water and fire were combined with symbols such as the raven—representing power and death—to create allegories of suffering and eventual transcendence. They find the road to transcendence in the feminine. "Throughout our history, we've [Korea] always been attacked by people," Hye Sook said in a recent newspaper interview. "But we never attacked others, so a different soul developed within us—like a woman's—one that can contribute to the world's soul."

I interviewed Hye Sook and Ja Kyung Rhee in 1989 about their work with Theatre 1981. Sook had recently returned from a visit to Korea where she had several exhibits of her paintings and did a solo performance. Rhee, who writes art criticism and cultural commentary for the Korean press, has been doing research on a group of Koreans who left their country early in this century to escape Japanese domination, only to end up as slaves in Mexico with no homes to return to and no country to protect their rights.

Steven Durland: How did the Gok series develop?

Ja Kyung Rhee: In Korea in 1980 there was a big massacre of students who were protesting against the dictatorship. At the time you knew about it, but you couldn't talk about it. It was a dilemma for Korean people. What should we do about it? We wanted to mourn for them, but we weren't allowed to acknowledge the massacre. In Gok-I we were mourning for those students. But I also wanted to make it in a universal tongue. These kinds of massacres happen all over the world. We were mourning for Iran and El Salvador and other places as well.

In Gok-III I elevated it into a more aesthetic level. I used fire to symbolize destruction and water to symbolize peace. Gok-III was less specific than Gok-I. Gok-IV was a warning about nuclear destruction.

SD: In Gok-IV you gave significant attention to aesthetic, political and shamanistic issues. Is any one of these areas of particular importance to you?

JKR: We wanted to make a very powerful piece in which the three elements worked well together. We wanted an overall powerful work. In Korea shamanism is used to express and soothe the pain of the people. So we used shamanism in that way.

SD: Do you see the shamanism in your work as more actual or metaphorical?

JKR: It's actual. Even in high religion—Christianity or Buddhism—the shamanistic element is very alive. It's a driving force in civilization.

SD: There's an underlying focus on feminism in your work. Do you make a direct connection between shamanism and feminism?

JKR: Realistically, there is no connection between shamanism and feminism. But in the sense that shamanism and ritual are used to comfort and lift people's souls who are oppressed, it counters the authoritarian and masculine culture that does the oppressing.

SD: Are shamans usually women in Korea?

Hye Sook: Yes. And usually they are very low-class. People don't want to meet or marry them. There are two kinds. One becomes a shaman because of some kind of sickness she goes through. The other is descended from a shaman family.

When I was young Korea was very interested in the new Western culture and tried to abolish shamanism. Now that it is almost gone there is becoming a new interest. Koreans have always had their own shamanistic religion but I think they've been denying it for a long time. But I don't think you can erase it just by taking on a new culture.

SD: Hye Sook, the singing or wailing you and the other performers do in Gok-IV provides much of the work's power. The sounds you produce seem almost primal. How did you develop that?

HS: One evening after we'd first met and were deciding to do something, I got really drunk, and I was lying down and making this weird sound. The others recorded it. They said, "You made this sound while you were drunk. Let's try to improvise with this sound." It was the sound you hear me make during the performance. That's how I started.

I never learned singing. But everyone has a sound inside them. When you're really touched you weep or laugh. Or when you have sexual ecstasy you scream. It's all the same thing you have. I feel really lucky that I found the voice inside of me.

SD: Even though the dialogue is in Korean, it seems you've structured the work to eliminate any language barriers.

HS: Yes. Ik Tae Rhee [the director] kept telling us that this sorrow is so universal that when we are truthful to it we can convey our feeling to other people. There's no better language than emotion. He was focusing on that. At the same time we wanted to stress how beautiful another language could be when you hear it.

SD: How does the Korean audience in Los Angeles react to your work?

JKR: There are some taboos among Koreans about shamanism so Korean audiences don't really like it that we do this.

HS: Koreans are very religious people but now they believe in Christianity. It's interesting. Christianity has never worked in Japan. They believe in Shinto. But the Koreans are very much against Shinto because Korea was under forced Japanese rule for so long. Catholicism has a lot of power with the young people because of its liberation theology—liberating the people, fighting dictatorship, working for the poor, not the rich. But Korea also has deep roots connecting it with shamanism.

SD: Do they get more upset about the shamanism or the politics?

HS: The shamanism. Sometimes they call us and say, "Don't ever do that again."

SD: So they're sympathetic to the politics of the work?

HS: Yes. Korean people are very interested in politics now because political changes are happening so quickly. Our role is to expand their political concern toward the survival of the human race.

SD: Is there any theatre in Korea that is similar to the works you're creating here?

JKR: There's a similar shamanistic search in Korean plays. But it is specific to local Korean concerns. We wanted to penetrate into Western culture so we focused more on universal issues.

SD: How does Korean politics affect your work?

HS: I live in Los Angeles but I read the Korean newspapers. I'm very connected with Korea in my heart. There are many radical youngsters in Korea who are very interested in seeing the government change. The issue now has become the unification of Korea. There has been a lot of torture and killing. Last year several students burned themselves to death. It's a situation that drives people crazy. It is not uncommon for young people to end up in mental hospitals. It's like their schizophrenia reflects the divided country they live in.

But things are getting better. I went to Korea this year and the whole thing was changing, becoming more dramatic. There is more freedom of the press. I did a performance that was on national television. If I had gone there five years ago I would have been banned or they would have taken my passport away.

SD: What's the art world like in Korea right now?

HS: There's an art scene just like the American scene—galleries, money, markets. Then there are younger artists who are doing important things who aren't getting much attention. Their work is about challenging the government. It's political art, people's art.

But there's also a problem with some of this work. Some really goes to the core of humanism and is still aesthetically so good that you can be really touched by it. But often you see bad performances with a lot of propaganda. Many political artists don't believe in aesthetic high quality. I read the same thing about North Korean art. They make really great propaganda on a grandiose scale, but it's not too good aesthetically.

SD: There's a lot of talk these days about cultural appropriation, the dominant culture claiming the cultures of Third-World countries. How do you see this issue as a Korean-American?

HS: It's kind of funny. You come to America and you talk about "why my art is not here." But this is America. If you really want you can go back to your own country and make a great statement.

Sometimes I feel awkward about it. Korean art is often about expressionistic lines using brush strokes. It's a natural line, we didn't "invent" it. Now, when this generation of Korean artists show work, the critics say our art looks like Sam Francis or Robert Motherwell. But Sam Francis looks like us. So Korean artists have a problem because we didn't go beyond Motherwell. There is another realm of creation using our line and personality that can go beyond Sam Francis or Motherwell, but we haven't reached that yet because our history of modern art is only 30 years old. Artists came to Asia to get inspiration in Zen art and we didn't even ask for credit.

I think a lot of the responsibility is ours. We were trying to somehow melt into the tradition of Western art and got lost. But it's also unavoidable. I'm brought up on TV. I'm wearing this jacket. The world is one place now, and Third-World people have a lot of catching up to do to create their own unique, modern culture. I feel very strongly about it. I am the type of person who tortures herself about history. So if you are beyond history, then it's good. I feel we have a mission as the new generation from Asia. We've got to create our own version of modern Asian culture.

SD: Then what are the issues for you two as artists working outside your native country?

JKR: Where an artist lives is very important. We live in Los Angeles. This is where our reality exists. And Los Angeles is very interesting. America has had a very short history to cultivate its own culture. New York art developed by buying up preexisting Western art. In Los Angeles, people are coming here and it is happening here. An actual pattern of history-making, rather than just accepting pre-existing culture.

HS: I think Asian artists have to be at the very core of their existence. They can use their costumes or their voices or something, but it's not the time to take advantage of the fact that you're Asian because it's different. The Japanese art of Kabuki is good because it's good, not because it's chic. Artists have to be on the side of the deepest soul on earth.

This interview originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Spring 1989.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2002