Arirang 2

What is the Arirang Pass we must cross today?

In 1986, amid violent and ever-shifting political turmoil, Arirang asked what artists should do and how they should live — and recalled Na Woon-gyu, who some seventy years earlier had turned the grief of a nation without a country into film. His work became the company’s founding production. Seven years later, at a time when there was still no outlet for the nation’s pain and despair, it was re-created as Arirang 2.

The play opens as Na Woon-gyu, busy shooting Arirang, meets a Master of Ceremonies, who tells him of the historical changes after his early death and then joins the 1926 film as an actor.

The MC’s intervention changes the ending. When Yeong-jin finds O Gi-ho trying to assault Yeong-hui and goes to stab him with a sickle, Yeong-hui dies trying to stop him. Shocked back to his senses, Yeong-jin follows her dying wish and leaves for Manchuria to join the independence movement, as the villagers sing “Arirang” and wait for his return.

Throughout the film’s story, the MC keeps raising present-day issues — Japanese remilitarisation, torture, the state of culture, the plight of farmers, relations with the United States. The play ends with Na, overjoyed at the film’s success, meeting the MC again, who asks: if the Arirang Pass for our colonised ancestors was independence, what is the pass we must cross today?