Is "The Last Empress" worldwide?
[Introduction]
The musical “The Last Empress” is Korea’s first original musical. Ever since it first debuted in 1995 in Seoul, it has been continuing its run within the country making the phenomenal success. Its popularity went beyond the nation being played in the States, England and Canada. <Thesis Sentence> However, in spite of this great success, it seems to have some problems to captivate the international audience.
[Body]
<Supporting Evidence 1> Firstly, the general plot of the musical is too much summarized. It is not that difficult to understand the main flow of the musical for the Korean audience who has already learned the historical facts and events of the late Cho-sun dynasty during their school days. Although there are some missing scenes, we can infer the story line using all these background information. However, for foreign audience, who even first hear the name of the queen Myeongseong, it could be a hard work to find a link between each scene. For instance, even I was very confused when the king’s father was all of sudden taken as a hostage by Ching Dynasty.
<Supporting Evidence 2> The second problem which makes foreign audience frustrated is the translation service of the musical. The theater offers the two translation boards next to each side of the stage for foreign visitors. However, there are too many awkward sentences which are definitely derived from word-forward translation, and some unimportant words are even omitted. This can give foreign audience a double pain.
[Conclusion]
It is impossible to put all the historical events into two-hour performance and it is not an easy job to translate old Korean into English without spoiling the original meaning. However, by improving these two given problems, the musical “The Last Empress” can be a world’s best musical I think.
(Word Count: 302)
Posted by Minkee
