상기 제목의 논문은 동시대 한국연극 생태계의 변화를 응시할 수 있는 주요한 화두인 국제공동제작 작업들을 기본 틀로 한 연구이다. 세계화의 거센 물결과 함께 연극 외적으로는 20세기 후반 이후의 신자유주의 경제 구도로부터, 내적으로는 문화상호주의의 영향이라는 시대적 배경 하에 동시대 한국연극은 성장해왔다. 세계연극의 흐름에 발 맞추고, 소통하고자 하는 한국연극의 자구적 노력은 국내연극 전반은 물론, 국제교류 형식에마저 변화를 가져왔다.
1990년대 이후 우리 연극문화계에 새로운 공연제작 형식의 일환으로 등장하기 시작한 합작이나 협업을 통한 국제공동제작은 국제교류의 선행 형태, 즉 완제 공연의 초청, 수입, 순회 등의 일방적 진행을 양방향 교류로 전환시켜주는데 기여해왔다. 이는 특히 민간극단 보다는 예산과 행정 인력, 공간이라는 공연예술의 하드파워적 요소들이 상대적으로 잘 구축돼 있는 정부 지원금을 받는 대형 축제나 공립극장들을 중심으로 활발히 전개돼왔다. 연극의 국제교류가 보편화, 일반화를 이루는 가운데 특히 2000년대 후반 이후 한국연극 제작환경의 지각변동은 뚜렷하다. 근년 서울 도심을 중심으로 동시다발적으로 개관한 중극장 형태의 공립 제작극장들이나 재단법인으로 ‘독립’을 선언한 국립극단 마저도 연극의 국제 공동 작업에 눈을 돌리는 현상을 쉽게 목격할 수 있는 것이다. 이에 일부 사립극단이나 규모를 민간극장들도 이러한 제작 추세에 적극 동참하며 한국연극의 변화를 알려주고 있다.
국제교류의 일환으로 진행돼온 이같은 공동제작의 양상을 주시한 본 연구는 주요 국제연극제들의 개최로 공식적 물꼬를 튼 1980년대 이후 지난 30 여 년간의 국제교류활동을 본문의 사적 배경으로 먼저 제시했다. 제시 방식은 10년 단위로 총 3 단계로 구분해 각 시대별 변화의 구체적 특징을 포착코자 했다. 한편, 주요한 국제공동작업들이 주로 축제나 공공극장의 제작으로 수행된 점에 착안해 본문의 핵심 챕터를 이루는 3장과 4장에서 각기 그에 합당하다고 판단한 소수의 모델들을 선별해 작업과정과 미학적 성과를 중심으로 논의를 전개했다. 즉, 축제 주도의 합작·협력 공연의 예로 <바다의 여인>을 집중적으로 거론하는 가운데 그에 비견되는 예들을 동반 설명했다 또한 극장 주도의 합작·협력의 예로 예술의 전당의 주요 국제공동작들인 <강 건너 저편에>와 <야키니쿠 드래곤>, 그리고 <보이체크>와 두 편의 <갈매기>의 경우들을 각기 분석했다. 마지막 챕터인 결론에서는 한국연극의 국제공동제작 작업의 문제점과 개선 방향을 제시했다.
Korean theatre has been eager to participate in a variety of international exchanges since the early 1980s. Those 3 international festivals held during the 1980s such as the 5th Third World Theatre Festival(1981), the International Theatre Festival of the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, and the Seoul International Festival on the occasion of the 1988 Seoul International Olympic Games, motivated, in turn, Korean theatre professionals to venture on the communication with individuals, companies of the world. Exchanges at that initial stage were performed rather occasionally in the forms of invitations, visiting, tours, and so forth. Yet it was in the immediately following two decades in which new directions of international exchange towards co-producing began to have been introduced with some fruitful results. From those first examples of intercultural performances as Caponino, The Trojan Women, and the ITI-UNESCO New Project Group's provocative multinational production of King Lear, all presented at the 27th ITI World Congress, Seoul & the '97 Theatre of the Nations, Seoul/Kyonggi, Korean theatre happened to have opportunities to realize what would be the more meaningful and challenging exchanges than what they had done in the 1980s.
Throughout the first decade of the 2000s, there were a number of noteworthy international co-productions done by major festivals and public theatres by bringing in foreign partnership. With some exceptions such as Across the River in May(2002, 2005) and Yakiniku Dragon(2008, 2011), they were more often than not artistic collaborations by way of individual artists, who were normally director with an accompanying scenographer and at times, with a choreographer as well. As such a trend has been so strong that the two representative theatre organizations, the recently re-organized Korean National Theatre Company, and also comparatively new and very competent producing theatre, Myungdong Arts Theatre, both are currently doing co-productions by inviting European artists.
This paper intends to study the international co-productions and collaborations in Korean theatre performed during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. Chief rationality, among others, for executing this study is that, no major academic investigations have been done so far in this area, and thus to discover not only the hows and whats of the international co-productions in Korean theatre from a historical perspectives, but what needs to be done, in the future, in order to improve the current practices. And in order to achieve what this paper desires as such, it is organized as follows. Following the Introduction, the overall outline of the international exchanges in contemporary Korean theatre, the first chapter of the main body of the paper deals with its historical context for the past thirty years. The third and the fourth chapters which actually argues with those selected productions, as divided by producing organizations, either festival or public theatre. They are the two representative co-producing organizations in Korea, the Seoul Performing Arts Festival and the Seoul Arts Center. And among their productions, only a certain number of them as regarded important both artistically and from the point of planning, such as Robert Wilson's The Lady from the Sea(2000), the upper-mentioned Korea-Japan co-productions(their main producer was, in fact, National Theatre of Tokyo, Japan, thus, the Seoul Arts Center played only a role of collaborator)and those pieces between Korea and Russia, Woyzeck(2003) and two different versions of Chekhov's The Seagull(2005, 2008) are selected to explore in depths. Although such a division and selections of the pieces may seem somewhat arbitrary, this is designed to specify each individual cases within the limited range of this study.
Through the critical analyses of those co-productions, this paper argues that the leading international co-productions done in Korea since the 1990s have, in large parts, shown strategic shortcomings. Short-term planning, ambiguity of both the mission and objective, resulted-oriented, limited network, uniformity in execution style as an artistic collaboration of individual artists, rather than promoting for truly constructive intercultural theatre practice, and others are indicated, in final analyses, as critical concerns. Frequent leadership changes, along with irresponsible restructuring of the public theatre organizations by the government, financial difficulties from both the severe reductions of the government funding and the pressure of financial independence in running public theatres are, among many, ones of the primary reasons for those troubling aspects. Based upon them, then the paper proposes a series of suggestions for future development. They are, in brief, the needs for new recognition of the international co-production, clarity of the mission and objective, diversification of the co-production format, strategic orientation, and so forth.
