Oh Tae-sok

Oh Tae-sok

Director of The National Theater of Korea and The National Drama Company of Korea
Born in 1940, Oh Tae-sok is a playwright and director. A graduate of the philosophy Dept. of Yonsei University, he debuted as a playwright by winning the Hankook Ilbo New Year Literature Awards’ honorable mention in 1964 for a play titled Men in Makeup (unperformed). Later, he became active as a playwright, writing works for The National Theater of Korea. In 1984 he started his own theater group, the Mokwha Repertory Company, for which he has since continued to write and direct plays. As one of South Korea’s representative theater companies, Mokwha has performed numerous productions in Japan, the UK, India, China and other countries. The roots of Oh Tae-sok’s theater art lie in the traditional pansori musical storytelling, in which the singer intones a narrative poem written to a basic 3-4 beat rhythm. He also has his actors employ uniquely Korean physical motion to express the emotions in a very Korean way. In these ways, his plays are strongly influenced by Korean traditional performance. In addition to winning many theater awards, he is also the 2004 recipient of The Republic of Korea’s Culture and Arts Award. Presently he is representative of the Mokwha Repertory Company, Artistic Director of The National Theater of Korea and Honorary Professor of the Theater Dept. of Seoul Art University.