Based on the records, the areas where the act of “acting” was performed in Korea were traditional plays that were highly formatted such as mask dance, puppet play, pansori, and changgeuk. It is correct to see the form of acting conducted through t...
Based on the records, the areas where the act of “acting” was performed in Korea were traditional plays that were highly formatted such as mask dance, puppet play, pansori, and changgeuk. It is correct to see the form of acting conducted through traditional plays as a concept of performance that was comprehensively strong in the form of festivals rather than a concept of realism based acting that we commonly understand in the contemporary era. In other words, traditional plays are not usually based on narratives and express conflicts within social systems in a formatted form of indirect fiction or metaphor, not in a way that characters realistically convey the content of the narrative and the theme of the play.
Until the end of the 19th century, Western-style dramas that pursued realistic acting to approach truth or authenticity have never been performed in Korea, so there is no realism based acting method native to modern Korea except for traditional dramas that mainly expressed technical and formatted performances. In the 1910s, Sinpa play, part of modern drama, was introduced from Japan, and from then on, Korean actors began to use life problems as the subject of work based on reality and language perception, and attempted to express them realistically. It was the time that realistic acting started to be required.
Since 1910, plays have been the main demand for realism based acting, and film industry which started in 1919, as sub-demand. Since the establishment of KBS in 1961 and the growth of film market. there were more realism based dramas/films produced and the demand for realism based acting surged. As demand surged, Korea began to introduce realism based acting methods developed in the West. Currently taught acting methods at Korean art schools, private academies, and the fields have all been brought from the West. Their forms vary, such as the System, Grotowski, American acting methods, and Meisner Techniques, but Korean people tend to call them all a “method”. In Korea, the founder of the methods is often known as Russian Stanislavski, who established modern acting theory, but the correct way to call his theory is the “System.” The Methods we know is “American Acting Methods” to be correct.
The American ac ting Method has not been properly taught or attempted in Korea, but only criticism of it is high. The problem comes up from here. The first is a problem in which students and actors were given indiscriminate guidance from whom did not have thorough understanding of it. Second, acting is divided into various genres such as stage acting, camera acting, mime, and musical, and the goals and training courses pursued by genre are all different, but the Method has been considered as the goal of all acting genre, so it is confusing for aspiring actors what training to focus on.
The scope of this research is limited to realism based acting methods, and the purpose of it is to improve the quality of works in areas requiring realism based acting by examining cases of realism based acting such as the Systems or the Method, identifying problems, and suggesting directions for improvement.