British school play feels painfully Korean
A scene from the Alan Bennett play “History Boys” / Courtesy of Noname Theatre Company
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Westerners, most notably U.S. President Barack Obama, speak glowingly about the enthusiasm Korean parents have for educating their children and credit this for the country’s economic prosperity.
However, it’s much harder to find a Korean who is happy about a severely hierarchical system that confines students to an exam hell and drains their imagination by bashing them about a uniform set of values.
For Korean theatergoers, the local version of the Alan Bennett smash-hit school play, "The History Boys,’’ currently being performed at the Doosan Art Center in central Seoul, is a drink that is both refreshing and bitter.
The play, which could loosely be described as a more intellectual, provocative and less cloying cousin of ``Dead Poets Society,’’ doubles as a snarky social commentary in a country where education seems to exist only for the rat race itself.
Set in a school in Sheffield, northern England in the 1980s, the plot revolves around eight students preparing for exams to enter the country’s prestigious universities.
Mentoring them are three eccentric and innovative teachers ― Hector (Choi Yong-min), Irwin (Lee Myong-haeng) and Lintott (Chu Jung-hwa) ― who reign with intellectual unruliness and encourage students to take delight in knowledge for its own sake.
The source of conflict is the ambitious headmaster, who pushes for the students all getting accepted into Oxford or Cambridge, which would elevate his school up the academic league table.
While the template of the plot is predictable and familiar, Bennett paints a complicated and disturbing picture over it, relying on the depth he develops for his characters.
Hector is discovered sexually fondling a boy and forced into retirement. The brilliance of Bennett’s writing is how he deftly connects Hector’s decline with the cultural shift in education, which has become an unromantic and functional process dictated by competition league tables.
This is a British story that may hit harder with Koreans. The Korean obsession for higher education is probably unmatchable by any other population on the planet.
And it wouldn’t be too harsh to describe this obsession as a symptom of a society where people are deprived of the freedom to develop their own subjective values for happiness ― the other symptoms being the high rates for cosmetic surgeries and suicides.
The Korean rendition of History Boys is produced by Noname Theatre Company, a subsidiary of a major theater company Musical Heaven. The play’s director, Kim Tae-hyung, could personally relate to the characters.
As a top-grade high school student, Kim was admitted to the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). However, he eventually quit and went to Korea National University of Arts to pursue his dreams as a thespian. Kim’s previous play, "Model Student,’’ portrayed the life of high school students and the cut-throat competition between them.
"History Boys" runs through March 31. Tickets cost from 30,000 to 50,000 won. Since the play is full of British literature and cultural context, Noname Theatre Company provides the dramaturg' s notes (in Korean) at its website. For more information, visit www.nonametheatrecompany.com or call (02) 744-4334.