Department of Theatre Studies of the School of Drama Hosts the 8^th International Asian Theatre Studies Conference

Amid the COVID-19, the K-Arts ran the 8th International Asian Theatre Studies conference online via Zoom for two days from November 7th through 8th. It is an academic symposium among theatre studies schools from four East Asian countries, South Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan.

The topic of the year was “Theatre at a Critical Point.” As the pandemic induced general changes in everyday life, there were also essential changes in the theatre business across all areas such as contents, production, management, etc. Starting from the topic of COVID-19, the symposium aims to discuss how to cope with and overcome the crises in the theatre business by looking back on critical points in politics, economics, cultures taken place in the 20th century. It also sought the direction for which theatre business should head after the pandemic. 

The participants of the conference presented the papers at this conference as well. The K-Arts (South Korea) presented four papers in addition to “A Review on Angel: Reversed Title Approaching from Immersive Theatre Dramaturgy” by Lee Ji-Hyun. Osaka University (Japan) also introduced four papers along with “An Ideology of Body Control and Liberation: Japanese Revenue Censorship" by Ayako Kakinuma. From Shanghai Theatre Academy (China) that published five papers in total this time, Xin Zhang read “A New Model of Theatre and Internet Cooperation during the COVID-19 Epidemic.” Also, Taipei National University of Arts delivered two papers along with “A Comedy with Implicit Gender Equality: re-examining John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed" by Wei-Wen Chang.

Professor and Department Head of the Theatre Studies Kim Mihee, who hosted the event, said, “I hope we can better understand academic trends in contemporary East Asian theatre and encourage the academic exchange between students from these countries through this symposium. Eventually, I wish for the Asian theatre to come to the center of the global stage of the theatre.”