[On Stage] Heavy and Poignant Beauty... The Play 'Yeonanjidae'

1975 Outbreak of the 'Lebanon Civil War' Subject
Original Author Mouawad Experienced the Civil War at Age 7
Dramatic Stage Aesthetics with Moon and Wave Images

The stage of the play 'Yeonanjidae' is simple yet beautiful. The large moon filling the background catches the eye. The tenacious moon is painfully beautiful. It brightly rises, wanes, and waxes again in a cycle. The play tells the story of people who must have cursed while looking at that beautiful moon. Saying, "The world is hell, but the moon is damn beautiful..."

Yeonanjidae is based on the Lebanese Civil War that lasted from 1975 to 1990. Director Kim Jeong of Yeonanjidae said that since the play depicts the horrors of war, it was essential to have beautiful elements to contrast with it.

"I think the most important theme in a play about war is what has been destroyed. We need to know what beauty existed before so that when it is destroyed and lost, we feel the pain and empathize with the suffering of war due to that gap. I thought it was necessary to have elements opposite to the heavy and harsh subject of war. I definitely wanted to bring beautiful expressions."

Theater performance scene of 'Yeonan Jidae'
Photo by Sejong Center for the Performing Arts

The original playwright, Wajdi Mouawad, was born in Lebanon in 1968. When Mouawad was seven years old, the civil war broke out. His parents fled their homeland with their young son. After spending five years in France, Mouawad settled in Canada in 1983. Based on his horrific childhood memories, Mouawad wrote a four-part war play series. Yeonanjidae is the first work in that series. The most widely known work is the second, 'Incendies.' 'Incendies' was adapted into a film titled 'Incendies' directed by Denis Villeneuve, released in 2010 to critical acclaim. In Korea, director Shin Yu-cheong produced the play 'Incendies,' which was selected as one of the 'Top 3 Plays of the Year' by the Korean Theatre Critics Association in 2019 and won the 'Baeksang Arts Award for Theater' at the 56th Baeksang Arts Awards in 2020.

The image of waves created using lighting and hologram film along with the moon also gives a very beautiful impression. The waves fill the front of the stage, blurring the spatial boundaries and maximizing the play’s fantastical nature. The stage feels almost empty without any particular props, but the images of the waves and the moon filling the background present a dramatic stage aesthetic. Mouawad’s poetic expressions and Claude Debussy’s 'Clair de Lune,' played live throughout, add to the beauty of the play. Director Kim Jeong said that when he received the script, he immediately thought of Debussy’s 'Clair de Lune.'

The play depicts the journey of Wilfred, a young man born in Lebanon, who sets out to bury his father Ismail’s body. He tries to bury his father in his hometown, but his relatives oppose it because they blame Ismail for the death of Wilfred’s mother, Jeanne.

Performance scene from the play 'Yeonan Jidae'
Photo by Sejong Center for the Performing Arts

Jeanne was so weak that she could not bear children. However, out of love for Ismail, she conceived Wilfred and showed determination to give birth to her son until the end. Ismail initially tries to save his wife, but Jeanne persuades him to choose the child over herself. Thus, Wilfred was born amid his mother’s death, and his father left his hometown and wandered the world without seeing his son. Wilfred faces his father’s corpse for the first time. While searching for a place to bury his father’s body, he meets friends of his age who lost their parents in the civil war. Through their stories, the horrific realities of the civil war are revealed. Whenever Wilfred struggles, the thought of burying his father in a good place gives him strength to endure.

Director Kim Jeong said that the phrase "Life is precious," spoken by Wilfred’s mother Jeanne, is the message the play wants to convey. He explained, "The message that life is precious is connected to Wilfred’s act of trying to bury his deceased father in his hometown."

Although it deals with heavy and painful themes, the two-hour performance does not feel long. This seems to be due to the power of the story, enhanced by beautiful stage aesthetics and fantastical elements. In the play, Ismail, though a corpse, moves and talks with his son Wilfred. Ismail also converses with Wilfred’s friends, sharing their pains. Since the play deals with the blurred boundary between life and death amid the horrors of war, this setting is quite convincing. However, the first 20 to 30 minutes, which Director Kim Jeong said were staged somewhat lightly and playfully so that the audience would not feel overwhelmed by the heavy subject, feel somewhat incongruous.

Yeonanjidae is being performed at the Sejong Center S Theater until the 30th of this month.