“Silly” is not the first word that comes to mind for anyone familiar with the tragedy of Medea – and yet Sengkubdong Beedoolkee’s adaptation seeks to destabilize and reframe our understanding of this ancient story, calling into question the way we receive and process violence today through multiple forms of media. As audience members and witnesses, how do we come to terms with the ways violence shapes our everyday lives, our entertainment, our social time and our expectations for how we can move through the world?
Reality and fiction, the clear lines of genre, the distance between the past and the present – all these are called into question in this dynamic, challenging performance. MEDEA on Media recasts the ancient tale as a commentary on contemporary media and serves it to the audience in wildly outrageous ways, including talk shows, action movies, Disney cartoons, and an Instagrammable yoga class. Will you laugh? Will you cry? Will you post a photo online after the show?
Led by director Kim Hyun-tak, South Korea’s Seongbukdong Beedoolkee Theatre freely deconstructs the texts of both well-known masterpieces and modern Korean dramas to recreate them, incorporating contemporary social issues. Often, Kim’s performances use a different theatrical style depending on the material and topic, such as dance theatre, melodramatic film, or physical theatre, and most of them include active audience participation.
