[Changzak Gonggam: Writers] No. 1 Shin Hae-yeon’s Beyond the Desert at Night: Journey of X

Playwright Shin Hae-yeon pays close attention to various emotion within the human mind. This time, she sends a greeting to those struggling with the night on their own. Together with director Dong I-Hyang, the winner of the 14th Cha Bumseok Play Award (2020) who has gained critical praise and expanded her horizons through such recent works as Blackout and Old Memories about the Sun and the Moon, Shin offers a sensuous and scintillating theatrical experience.

Designed to foster new talent in playwriting and support production of original contemporary plays, this program presents three new plays on the stage—following a preparation process. For the past year, three writers—namely Shin Hae-yeon, Bae Hae-Youl and Kim Do-young—have been engaged in a creative journey with NTCK, sharing ideas on contemporary discourses, writing plays, and thus developing their own artistic worlds. The three plays—staged consecutively in Baek Seonghui & Jang Minho Theater at the hands of Dong I-Hyang, Shin Jae-hoon, and Lee Rae-eun, directors celebrated for their distinctive styles—invites the audience to explore diverse issues including various human conditions amidst depression, consolation and history as well as climate crisis and sustainability.

Shin Hae-yeon finds inspiration in the world that cannot be explained by explanations alone as well as the human interior. After all, despite the uselessness, worthlessness and unproductiveness in the world, we willingly lose our subjectivity and meander without purpose. Shin often passes by those she encounters during this aimless journey, and sometimes delicately examines the emotions of someone she meets at the end of the journey. The writer’s room is filled with writings and memories accumulated over time by constantly paying attention to various inexplicable human emotions. Today, she once again leaves the room and walks on and on to collect sentences that represent the world. 

Dong I-Hyang writes and directs plays in the hope that people with numbed minds come to the theater to find a place for their hearts. After debuting as a playwright in 2002, Dong has been writing plays and exploring theater as the most acute way of engaging with contemporary times. She gained much critical praise in 2020 when she won the 14th Cha Bumseok Play Award for her work Liver and River. Furthermore, she continues to deepen the interior and expand the exterior through the bodies, words and stories of people living in the current era.