Among Shakespeare’s tragedies, Coriolanus has been unpopular to the audience in its performance. However, T. S. Eliot evaluated it as the “most assured artistic success” in spite of its low number of performances. This political tragedy deals with an authoritative general of Rome, Marcius, who won the war with Volscian soldiers and received the title of ‘Coriolanus.’ However, he used to ignore the citizens due to his arrogant pride by which he cursed the disgusting smell from their mouths. Even though the Senators agreed to recommend him as a consul member, he would not admit the citizens’ demand for ‘humbleness ceremony’ wearing tattered clothes. Furthermore, he dared to insult them with haughty curses, for which he came to be expelled from Rome by the manipulation of plebeians. They were the representatives to restrain the dictatorship of the governors under the republican influence of the era.
The western performances can be divided into two tendencies: the one is to describe Coriolanus with “haughty dignity of demeanor, the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of temper” which led him to save his country from the invasion of the enemy, but he faces his fatal destruction owing to his tragic flaw, that is to say, extreme courage and pride. Terry Kemble belongs to this group. The other, Dominic Dromgoole’s interpretation, describes the citizens positively who tried to revolt against the dictatorship of the aristocrats so that as a director, he compares Coriolanus’s war to the Iraq War and Coriolanus to Bush and Blare. Aldo Billingslea experiments in his performance with the method of trans-gender. Jonathan Kent invents a temporary unique setting for his performance in which he uses a gymnasium as the stage for actors’ efficient movements during the war.
Hyonu Lee directed this drama first in Korea at the ‘Liberty Theatre’ located in the Seoul Art Center. He tried to stand in the middle of two sides: Coriolanus as the courageous savior for his country with tragic flaw on the one side and the democratic citizens who revolt against dictatorship of the hero on the other. He suggests that Shakespeare was objective in dealing with this conflict of both sides. He invents his creative methods of direction. He shows the images of revolting citizens in Korea, by means of 15 monitors, who demanded democracy against military dictators. He induces the audience to feel the spontaneity of the citizens’ movement by comparing the situation of Rome to that of Korea. He also uses the entire auditorium as the stage in which actors and actresses can mix with the audience. His artistic achievement in performance can be evaluated as the new frontier that can level up the status of Korea in Shakespeare performances in the future.