몸의 연기론 ( 1 ) (2000)

Acting assumes various aspects these days in Korean Theatre. Diverse terms of acting such as `psychological acting`, `interior acting`, `physical acting`, or physical training became familiar with many actors of Korea. Recently so called `body acting` is taking a growing interest between theatre people. From the historical point of view, the body acting of today is the result of the efforts to surmount the dual view of acting: to see man and his acting as a mind/body duality. This paper intends to review the history of mind/body duality of acting and to examine the attempts of harmonizing them. The paper printed here is the first half of the entire paper. Frequently acting has been explained in terms of body/mind or somewhat like exterior/interior duality. This corresponds to the traditional view of human being in Western culture. The history of acting can be interpreted as a rivalry between mind and body; The argument such as `Does mind control body?` or `Is emotion or body technique a essential part of acting?` were the focuses of interest. The history of the mind/body acting can be traced back to Platon who adhered to Idea and Descartes who believed firmly in human reason. Diderot, the philosopher of the 19th century, and Coquelin, the actor of the same area solidified the dual nature of acting. They all believed reason controls body and emotion. Entering 20th century, `the method` of Lee Strasberg, which intensified the psychological aspect of Stanislavski`s system acting, also consolidated body/mind duality of acting. On the other hand, the efforts to mitigate the conflict between the two and to pursue a harmony between them have been exerted throughout the 20th century. Until recently, Stanislavski system has been misunderstood as a psychologically oriented acting system only to emphasize to such elements as inner truth or emotional memory. But as his theory of physical action being rediscovered, he began to be revaluated as to initiate a psycho-physical acting. Artaud, Grotowski, and Barba, the representatives of modem nonrepresentational acting stressed the physicality of acting. They groped for hardly trainned, well-scored body with appropriate inner support. For this, they found body-mind, the harmonization of body and mind is inevitable. Phillip Zarrilli, encountering traditional Asian acting, pursued body-mind unity in a deeper level, to recognize the psycho- physiological acting. Bt controlling breath and stimulating breath circulation, a real harmony of body-mind is achieved and as a result, a large amount of creative energy can be produced. Since this breath control named `ki` or `dan` is familiar with Korean People, A Korean director Lee, Yoon-taek, for example, adopted the psycho- physiological acting as his method to enhence creative power, energy, flexibilty of body and mind of his actors. Western acting seems to have been traveling a long time to settle in body-mind acting. However, from the perspectives of view of non-Western, or Korean people, body-mind harmony is quite natural, eventhough they experienced the age of a `distorted` Stanislvskian, phychological acting for sometime around the middle of the 20th century. Now they come to realize that a mature acting is based on a mature view of human being.