ABSTRACT
This chapter traces a new independent theatre movement and its contribution to contemporary Korean theatre. The Little Theatre Movement that emerged in the 1960s broke away from government-run theatres, leading the Korean theatre from the 1960s to even the 1980s. This chapter examines the founding of the Drama Center (1962), its transition to Dongrang Repertory, the important theatre companies of the Little Theatre Movement, their histories and performances, their characteristics, and their significance in the history of Korean theatre. The Little Theatre Movement was run by joint operating system by young homogeneous theatre artists. The true contributions of the Little Theatre Movement to Korean theatre rest in the theatre companies’ introduction of a wide range of contemporary Western theatrical styles, such as absurdism, boulevard theatre, and musicals, and in their efforts in creating original plays with their theatrical experiments. Also, they took elements of Korean theatrical traditions and applied them to their productions, which made Korean theatres known to the world. It was the Little Theatre Movement against realism theatre that demonstrated the possibility of theatre with tools other than language, thus setting the beginning of contemporary theatre and the seed of the so-called postmodern theatre today.
