Director Jang Jin: "Comedy is a Thrill for Me... I Won't Let Go Even as I Age"

Director Jang Jin Returns to Daehangno with a Comedy Play After 10 Years

Directed by Jang Jin. Photo by Park Company

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] “Please, I’ll work hard to earn money, so come steal from me about once every six months. Hahaha.”

Yoo Hwa-i, a female teacher living alone in a single-person apartment, remains calm even when the thief Jang Deok-bae breaks into her home by climbing over the veranda. When Deok-bae grumbles that there’s nothing to steal, Hwa-i casually tells him to come back once every six months because she will earn a lot of money. In the movie A Woman I Know, the protagonist Dong Chi-sung, who believes he has an incurable disease, hands several bundles of cash to a thief who breaks into his house and comforts him by saying, “If you’re going to keep stealing, do it well without getting caught. If you get caught again in this neighborhood and run away... come hide in my house.” Jang Jin’s thieves are not evil, and their victims are not weak. The conventional relationship between thief and victim is strangely overturned, creating a delightful situation and dialogue that evoke unfamiliar yet warm laughter from the audience. Perhaps that is why he defines comedy as something that “must be created with an ‘inventor’s mindset.’” The laughter comes from the taste of words casually spoken by extraordinary characters woven into ordinary situations. The world has named this style “Jang Jin-style comedy,” but he waves his hand and says, “That’s just because people liked the expressions I tried recklessly in my twenties without knowing anything,” adding, “The farce genre is harder to create because it doesn’t involve delivering a message or a specific purpose.”

Jang Jin, a film director and theater director who made a dazzling debut in the New Spring Literary Contest’s play category and once worked as a fairly recognized actor and storyteller, has returned to the stage after 10 years with his long-standing work Clumsy People.

He completed this work at the age of 23, five days before his military discharge. It was first performed in 1995 as an entry to the Seoul Theater Festival and became the most successful play in Daehangno, selling out all performances in 2007 and 2012. We met him on the 15th at the Ateod rehearsal room in Daehangno, Seoul, where he is revising the script and rehearsing repeatedly for his first directing in 10 years.

The world has changed very rapidly over the past 27 years. He said, “Since Clumsy People is not a play for someone in their mid-50s to direct, I felt I had to do it again before it got any later,” adding, “I changed parts that no longer fit the current era since it’s a work from 30 years ago.” Although he wrote it when he was very young, he also reflects on how innocent he was back then. “I want the villains in my works to be okay too,” he says. The characters in Clumsy People, which digested the ‘aesthetics of fools’ in the early 1990s in his own way, are somewhat awkward and foolish, but when he looks at them, he doesn’t feel like mocking or ridiculing them; instead, moments of envy arise in his heart. He expressed his hope that in this harsh and brutal world, audiences would wish these characters to become their close friends and feel that it’s okay to live like them for a while, enjoying their clumsy appearances.

Director Jang Jin

Although he used to lead the so-called ‘Jang Jin troupe’ working with actors he always breathed with, he introduced that for this work he personally selected actors by watching small theater performances to find new faces. Actors Lee Ji-hoon, Oh Moon-gang, Lim Mo-yoon, Kim Joo-yeon, Choi Ha-yoon, and Park Ji-ye joined the production this way. The multi-role actors, who play three roles each, are Lee Cheol-min and Ahn Doo-ho, who have long collaborated with Director Jang, adding vitality to the play. Director Jang said, “Since it’s been a while for me to do theater as well, I enjoy working with new actors,” and “I hope many audiences will recognize, through my work, ‘Oh, there are actors like that too.’”

His previously mentioned difficulties with small theaters stem from his serious attitude toward comedy. Although he made a name for himself with his unique comedy, he still worries whether this comedy will resonate in the rapidly changing era. “I wonder if I can still do comedy after I turn 60, and I’m not confident, but I think I will continue doing comedy,” he said, confessing, “That’s why comedy is always thrilling. And I’m also curious whether this comedy is still valid in today’s era.”

Worried about not being able to make people laugh, yet insisting he does not want to give up on dignified comedy, he said, “I avoid selling my soul to force laughter, but I think about the comedy I want to challenge when I’m in my mid-50s or 60s and try not to let go of it.”

The performance runs until February 19 next year at Yes24 Stage 3 in Jongno-gu, Seoul, with all seats priced at 55,000 won.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.