Dissertation: “Transcolonial Nationhood: Global Interplay in Irish and Korean National Theatre"

Certified Spring 2022

My dissertation shows how colonial Irish and colonial Korean dramatists interweaved foreign modes and methods of staging nationhood into their narratives. I examine how theatre becomes a site in which the colonized subjects represent, or re-create, their own identity. I compare two specific instances of national theatre establishment in Colonial Korea and Colonial Ireland, and the transnational influences that worked on both national theatres. In doing so, I examine the parallels between the two cases, in which the dramatists try to develop and establish a national theatre by referencing drama and theatre across one or more cultures. This allows the dramatists to locate their own theatre tradition in the global context, as well as to relate to other communities and nations to address their domestic concerns. The examples of the Korean and Irish national theatres established in the late stages of their respective colonial eras demonstrate how the national theatre was established as a means to make the people seen and represented on stage as a mode of resistance, while at the same time serving as a means to establish their presence in the context of world literature. I focus on the initial stages of the national theatre in Korea and Ireland, which began in the later stages of colonial rule, comparing how the plays were structured, types of literary movements that the works belonged to, and most importantly, the emphasis of national identity. The objective of this research is to point out the limitations of postcolonial theories which rely on the West vs. Non-West model of colonialism, as well as common misuse of theories of Orientalism and Westernization when discussing modern national traditions. By introducing these two theatre traditions to the discussions of colonial and postcolonial theatre, my goal is to promote the inclusion of colonial narratives from empires and regions that are left out of the often-Eurocentric postcolonial research, and question existing ideas of global postcolonialisms and nationalisms.