Reimagining the Order of the Giants on Stage: Seongbukdong Beedoolkee Theatre’s Gulliverse 2

초록

In Seongbukdong Beedoolkee Theatre’s Gulliverse 2, Kim Hyuntak reinterprets Part 2 of Gulliver’s Travels, connecting the incomprehensible size of the Brobdingnagians to the gigantic conglomerates. Just as 18th-century English readers of Swift’s prose observed Gulliver’s desperate attempts to survive in the land of the giants, the audiences of Gulliverse 2 are invited to reflect on how Gulliver internalizes what I call “the order of the giants”—a metaphor for the system of neoliberalism in twenty-first-century Korean society built upon corporate power. In this context, this article focuses on Gulliverse 2 to explore how both works—Swift’s prose and Kim’s play—portray Gulliver’s internalization of “the order of the giants” within their respective cultural contexts. I argue that, while Part 2 of Gulliver’s Travels reveals how Gulliver, from the giants’ perspective, ultimately diminishes his self-image, which he once envisioned as a gigantic English imperial subject, Gulliverse 2 poignantly depicts how a group of Gulliver(s) face their own death by internalizing the neoliberal order of Korean society—which can be understood through Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism.” Then, I shift my focus to Kim’s dramaturgy in Gulliverse 2 that theatrically adapts Swift’s strategy of satire. I argue that, just as Swift intentionally parodies travel narrative to prompt his readers to critically examine 18th-century English society, Kim similarly returns to the style of his work—in this case, experimental theatre—by foregrounding the very theatricality of Gulliverse 2. This metatheatrical approach invites the audiences to engage with its modality critically and, in doing so, reflect on twenty-first-century Korean society mirrored on stage. As a framework, I draw on Michael J. Conlon’s reading of the performativity in Gulliver’s Travels—“a performance of understanding”—to analyze how Swift and Kim engage with the modes of their respective works—a parody of travel narrative and a metatheatrical work experimenting with its theatricality—for their audiences to experience Gulliver’s shifting self-awareness through his internalization of the order of the giants.

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