The Hilarity of Unhappiness in Oh Tae-suk’s Tempest: Cross-Cultural Access and Precolonial/Indigenous Aesthetics

Oh Tae-suk’s The Tempest, staged at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival, is one of the most recent Koreanized productions of Shakespeare. Investigating the multiple indigenous elements embedded in Oh’s Tempest and drawing on Oh’s interview comments (some of which have never been published before), this paper asks how, and to what extent, Oh’s adaptation has established cross-cultural access. Specifically, in response to the adaptation’s reputation of “lightness,” this paper reveals the linguistic, historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and aesthetic strata that constitute Oh’s Tempest as well as its latent postcolonial interpretive possibilities. Oh’s adaptation illuminates the challenges and implications of delivering indigenously based works to contemporary audiences cross-culturally.