Oldboy – A Locked Room, A Horizontal Corridor, and a Designed Truth

 

Stage Design Analysis: The Reservoir Mermaid

“The water drained, and emotions sank beneath the stage.”

A house of solitude, built upon layers of memory.

• Title: The Reservoir Mermaid
• Company: Snail Frequency
• Playwright: Song Chun-young
• Director: Lee Won-jae
• Scenography: Lim Min
• Run: February 7 – 16, 2025
• Venue: Daehakro Arts Theater, Small Hall
• Presented by: 2024 Performing Arts Creation Support Program – Best New Works

Design Concept

My starting point for The Reservoir Mermaid was the reservoir itself—

a space where water has receded, leaving only remnants behind.

It is a place that mimics reality in its silence and isolates like emotion.

“A stage is a surface where memory sinks and emotion drifts.”

Spatial Composition

At the center of the stage floats an isolated house above the drained reservoir.

At first glance, it resembles a quiet fishing hut,

but its structure extends far beyond function—

it embodies layers of memory and fractured emotion.

This house is not a single room,

but a layered psychological landscape.

While physically stacked in vertical levels,

it contains not hierarchy, but fragmented memory.

“The expansion of the house lies not in its physical form,

but in the layers where memory lingers.”

Dead Tree, Fading Emotion

At the front of the stage stands a barren tree, its branches severed.

It is both a form that has lost life,

and one that struggles to hold onto it—

a visual parallel to the characters’ emotional states.

Closed Walls, Open Imagination

Encircling the stage is a curved, black wall:

a psychological prison from which the characters cannot escape.

Yet through projection mapping,

this structure transforms—

becoming a screen for memory, imagination, and emotional expansion.

“The stage was a closed space—

but the widest passage for imagination.”

Conclusion

The stage for The Reservoir Mermaid was never meant to replicate reality.

Instead, it was about shaping the terrain of emotion—

a cartography of feeling.

I did not build a space;

I shaped a density where stories could settle and stay.

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