Actor, Rapper Yang Debuts as Director

By Chung Ah-young

Staff Reporter

Multi-talented entertainer Yang Dong-geun, 28, has built up his career as an actor and a rapper, along with his own impressive philosophy on life.

Now, Yang is transforming himself into a director of the renowned play, ``Offending the Audience'' by avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke.

As the title suggests, the play ridicules the audiences with actors who do not play characters and a stage set that does not represent any place.

The play premiered in Korea in 1978 and has returned several times due to its provocative script and format which breaks traditional theater conventions.

Yang has special ties with the play as he performed his own rap songs and hip-hop rhythms in the play in 2005.

In this rendition, Yang has transformed the play into a rap-based musical drama under the original premise in which four chairs are set on a bare stage for four actors. The actors spew out ambiguous dialogue.

The play ignores traditional conventions, inviting the audience to respond to the performances.