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This study analyzes the American and British plays produced in Seoul, Korea from 1980 up to 1997 and attempts to track down which plays were selected, and why and how they were produced and received in Korea. When plays of a source culture are transplanted into a target culture, three different steps are involved: 1)selection of a play either by the translator, director, or production manager; 2)production of the chosen play on the stage; 3)audience perception of the play enacted by and for the target culture. Thus, this study first gathers statistical information about the plays produced in Korea during the period specified above, and secondly, interprets the patterns of the plays, and thirdly, raises and answers questions stimulated by personal interviews and critical reviews of the productions involving the transplantation of American and British plays.
In order to further clarify the patterns involving the American and British plays produced in Korea, this study views the collected statistical information from three different angles: the most frequently produced plays; the playwrights who have had more than three works performed upon the Korean stage; and individual plays which cannot be categorized in the former two classifications but nevertheless hold a significant status in the history of contemporary theatre. In the first group are included the representative works of O'Neill, Williams, Beckett, Osborne, Pinter, Shaffer, Delaney, Simon, Orton, and Shisgal. The second group lists Albee, Mamet, Shepard, van Italie, Stoppard, and Kirby, as well as Simon, Williams, and Beckett. The last group includes feminist drama such as Crimes of the Heart, Getting Out, 'Night Mother, Uncommon Women and Others, Steaming, Cloud 9, Top Girls, as well as plays by minority playwrights such as Fences and M Butterfly, and two plays which represent the voices of the "rejected," Agnes of God and Children of a Lesser God.
When a particular play is chosen for production, several diverse reasons are involved, such as the director or translator's personal tastes, practical considerations connected to the staging the play, and potential profits due to a writer's fame. The audience's reaction also varies depending not only on the quality of the production but also on the different cultural and artistic parameters of the target culture. Overall diagnosis of the productions of American and British plays in Korea demonstrates that Koreans are indeed aware of the main currents occurring in American and British theatres and recognize the significant changes taking place in the theatres of other cultures. On the other hand, this study also points out that more careful attention is required to the selection, translation and production of individual American and British plays, since the adoption of plays from different cultures onto the Korean stage also signifies a re-creation of the Korean culture.