Excited squeals rent the air, shattering the late morning calm of the Museum Theatre’s tree-shaded environs, as school buses disgorged children, supervised by enthusiastic teachers who strove for some semblance of order.
As the hubbub peaked, The Little Theatre volunteers and organisers looked pleased, because this was exactly the response they wanted from the children. The announcement urging them to ‘shout as loud as you can when the lights go off’ said it all.
‘Paper Window’ is the theatrical creation of Cheol-Sung Lee who combines poetry, installation and performance in his experimental productions. A graduate in French Literature, the performer has majored in acting and direction.
Under the joint auspices of The Little Theatre and the InKo Centre, the show was presented by CCOTBBAT, a South Korean award-winning visual theatre company that integrates fine arts and theatre for young audiences.
The show’s mainstay was a large white screen on which images of objects and real-time sketches by artist Hye Won Kim were projected via a mirror and camera TV, to the accompaniment of sound and light arranged by Yunmi Han. The actor became a participant in a chain of ideas triggered by animation to which he reacted spontaneously, suggesting a sketchbook coming to life.
The first act titled ‘Spot’ featured an elusive moving spot viewed as a golf ball, chased all over the screen by Lee, till he holed out. In ‘Snack Time’ an inverted banana morphed into a para-glider through a few pen strokes, while Lee scrunched down, simulating landing position. ‘Strange Stairs’ saw Lee turning into a masked, armed intruder whose comic capers included doses of bathroom humour, which had the audience in splits.
It wasn’t all rib-tickling antics, though. Moments of poignancy surfaced when a rectangle turned into a barred prison window confining an inmate who found solace in sleep, filled with dreams of spring flowers, butterflies and his beloved.
But the most enjoyable bit was yet to come. Inviting student volunteers onstage, Lee made the ‘New-Style Painting’ experience an interactive one. Needing little prompting, the children broke into an exhilarating ‘crazy dance’ to a catchy K-Pop beat, flinging inhibition to the winds. At the ‘freeze’ command, they stood still while a colour-splotched frieze was painted behind and over them.
The show offered kids a much-needed break from the pressures of school work and exams. While the overt blend of the absurd and the comical generated laughter, it also opened a window to learning through out-of-the-box thinking.
This was aptly summed up when Lee signed off on an inspiring note. “Open the paper window within you. And make your own journey”.
