Theater Company Ibangin Presents Harold Pinter's Play 'Like Alaska'

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] Theater company Ibangin will perform the play "A Kind of Alaska," which tells the story of a girl who wakes up after 29 years of being in a mysterious illness, from August 13 to 16 at Bukchon Changwoo Theater in Jongno-gu, Seoul.

"A Kind of Alaska" is a 1982 work by British playwright Harold Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.

Deborah, a 16-year-old girl, falls asleep due to an unknown illness and wakes up 29 years later at the age of 45 after the development of a drug called L-DOPA. The mysterious illness that put Deborah to sleep began in winter Europe during World War I and was later named "encephalitis lethargica or sleeping sickness" by a doctor named Konstantin von Economo.

The play begins with the scene of Deborah waking up. Deborah struggles to recognize and accept the changed self, unfamiliar others, and surrounding environment after being asleep for so long. Honby, a 60-year-old doctor who has cared for her for a long time, and his wife Pauline, Deborah's younger sister in her early 40s, explain what has happened to Deborah, but it feels strange to the 45-year-old girl Deborah.

Theater company Ibangin has presented works such as "Angel, Look Homeward" in 2016, "Ghost," "Convenience Store Man," "Chunhyangjeon VOL 1," and "Mara, Sade." Ibangin has continuously attempted to collaborate theater with other forms of art. For this performance of "A Kind of Alaska," they announced plans to conceptually interpret the stage as conceptual art and use video art to visualize Alaska, who has been asleep for 29 years.

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