Writing at Royal Court Theatre

By Park Kyoung
Global Student Reporter

LONDON ― My passion for theatre began when I started acting in a high school in Santiago, Chile. My school produced plays, rather than musicals, so from an early stage I became familiar with the works of Shakespeare, Ionesco, Brecht and Strindberg.

On stage, I would travel to mysterious worlds with different customs and pretend I was part of them; but when the lights went down and the curtains lowered, the worlds of these playwrights went far, far away. As a child, I didn't think it'd be possible for this distance to be narrowed except through feats of imagination, but I persisted.

I pursued a career in playwriting after studying at New York University and for a couple of years I was surrounded by playwrights, actors, and directors who loved theatre as much as I did. I met some of the most extraordinary emerging and leading American writers in New York and that experience changed my perception of what it is to write.

Writing is a craft that requires hard work and persistence. Writers are not made in a day, nor do their works become successes overnight. Months, sometimes years of unrecognised work must be toiled through in solitude before a play is put on stage.

When the Royal Court Theatre Young Writer's Program invited me to join one of their courses in London, I jumped for joy. I had to postpone my journey for a year as I concluded my graduate work at Kyung Hee University's Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, but I brainstormed my next play during that time. I thought of all the issues I had become passionate about in school; North Korea, world poverty, global warming, and the war on terror are but a few, critical and urgent issues that should be addressed by the global community.

Knowing that playwrights such as Brecht, Beckett, Sartre and contemporary playwrights such as Sarah Kane had their works produced at the Royal Court, I imaged myself writing a play that screamed ``World Peace!'' for everyone to hear. That idea came to a full stop after my arrival. For a month, I was provided a Writer's Cell at the Royal Court's ``Site,'' a 2 x 5 room with four white walls and a small window looking out to a garden. I read plays voraciously, exposed for the first time to contemporary British playwriting that rarely crosses over to American stages, let alone to Korea or Chile.

I met my peers, a young crop of new writers, and our tutor Leo Butler, who weekly lectured our class on playwriting. London and its many theatres became learning grounds as well. I participated in a course at Shakespeare's Old Globe, delivered a few lines of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy on stage, and received a grant from the Arvon Foundation to write in John Osborne's former home. Yet the daunting realization that the world of theatre is not the world of politics turned that mirror I wished to place in front of an audience toward me instead. I decided to write something no longer about the world out there, but the world I've seen.

Based on a family story, I wrote a new play called ``The Urn'' and I realized that when the opportunity arrives to write what you've always wanted to say, it is the writer's challenge to have the courage to write honestly. Truth arrives from knowledge and experience, but most importantly from digging deep within oneself for truth that emanates from curiosity and creativity.

Our personal sense of truth and questions are undeniable and hold the power to reach not only into people's minds, but deep within the soul. This type of drama is not based on political or cultural divides, but on the shared common experience we live despite the boundaries of race, citizenship, language, or culture. While travelling from one country to another, I've learned that both conflict and resolution take place between two people willing to talk and exchange ideas. In fact, if we talk, listen, and are open to change, we will have the fundamental necessities for us to take action, make progress, and open ourselves up to boundless opportunities, no matter what dreams we choose to pursue.

kyounghpark@gmail.com

Park Kyoung is participating at the Royal Court Theater's Young Writer's Program and has been a Korea Times student global reporter since August 2007.

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