North Korean appropriating Stanislavsky for the revolutionary theatre acting: focusing on experience.

This study investigates the correlativity between the acting of the Seonghwangdang (Village Shrine)-style revolutionary theatre in North Korea and the Stanislavsky system. Kim Jong-il dictates that Seonghwangdang-style revolutionary theatre is one of the representative art works that explains the origin of North Korean juche in his books On the Art of the Cinema and On the Art of the Theatre. Despite his criticism of the Stanislavsky system, Kim almost translates the process of role creation into urisik (our style, that is, North Korean style) one, borrowing a given circumstance, experience, jagam (creative state), and "magic if" from the system according to the principles of juche and sokdojeon (speed battle). The result is simplification of the semantic area of experience and the creative state, which shows how theatrical arts are limited by political ideological centrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]