Haewonhaejulgeyo – The Emotional Gaps Left on Stage
Title: Haewonhaejulgeyo：REMASTER
Company: 2N Square (2N제곱)
Dates: April 11 – April 14, 2024
Venue: Daehakro Arts Theater – Small Theater
Program: 2024 Performing Arts Creation Fund – New Work of the Year
Genre: Traditional Performance, Contemporary Theater
Scenography: Min Lim
The Korean word haewon carries more than the notion of forgiveness. It holds within it a curved emotional contour — something deeper, quieter, and often unspoken.
Haewonhaejulgeyo was an attempt to visualize this uniquely Korean emotional shape through scenography. My goal was to turn the stage into a ritual space, a fractured memory, and a place where emotion emerges.
This was not a fixed architectural stage. It was a framework of ritual — a vessel that holds emotion.
On one side of the stage, the musicians sat still in meditation-like stillness. They anchored the emotional rhythm of the entire piece, guiding the flow like a quiet tide. At a climactic moment, one musician stood, holding a scroll, and slowly walked to the center of the stage. He placed it on the floor and silently exited. That single movement — subtle but resonant — gathered and released every remaining emotion in the space.
“There is little movement, yet the emotion runs deep.
Haewon is not spoken — it is fulfilled through space.”
At the Heart – The Knotted Cloth of ‘Go (告)’
At the center of this emotional fulfillment stood the knotted cloth known as ‘Go (告)’ — a fabric used to console pain and symbolically untie inner wounds. ‘Go’ was the key structural material of the performance.
Light cleaved emotion. Shadow unveiled memory. And most strikingly, a wall of countless ‘Go’ knots filled the back of the stage — onto which projection-mapped images slowly emerged.
Wounds. Voices. Forgotten figures. Not silhouettes of characters — but memories rising from the knots, calling out for resolution.
A Space That Listens
Haewonhaejulgeyo did not try to explain. It did not insist. Instead, it offered a space where emotion could rest — and the audience could quietly project their own memories into its gentle void.
“It was not a closed-off set — but a quiet opening of the heart.”
“‘Go’ was the unspoken word — a knot binding unresolved hearts onto fabric.”
The entire stage became an emotional map structured around these cloth knots. ‘Go’ divided the space, guided the actor’s movement, and provided a physical structure for emotional tension. And in the final moment — the knot was released. The stage exhaled.
“Only when the knot was released,
could the stage finally fall silent.”
“The chamber of grief is soft-walled, yet heavy with memory.”
ⓒ stageinside | onion sketch by [Min Lim ]
#StageDesign #Scenography #Haewonhaejulgeyo #KoreanTheater #RitualPerformance
#ContemporaryTheater #EmotionalSpace #TheaterDesign #ProjectionMapping #PerformingArts
#MinimalistStage #MemoryAndSpace #KnottedFabric #PostdramaticTheater #StageInside
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