Theater Company Bae-Gwan-Gong Completes Premiere of New Work ‘To Leave Mother at a Temple’… Stage Depicting Mother-Daughter Reconciliation Receives Praise

The theater company ‘Actor, Audience, and Space’ (Bae-Gwan-Gong) has concluded its run of the newly staged play ‘To Leave Mother at a Temple,’ which was performed at the Nadaso Theater in Busan from the 28th to the 30th.

This work is a stage adaptation of the novel of the same name by writer Lee Seo-su, who has captured the lives of women and youth. It depicts the journey of a daughter, who has supported her family by caring for her ailing father for many years, and a mother who suddenly declares her intention to enter Buddhist monastic life, as they head to a temple together. While the title may seem somewhat provocative at first glance, the play itself meticulously traces the process of the mother and daughter facing each other's wounds on the road and reaching reconciliation.

The direction was handled by Kim A-reum, who is known in the Busan theater scene for her experimental stage interpretations. Um Ji-young, playing the mother, and Kim Jin-ju, playing the daughter, led the center of the play by breathing together in the high-density space characteristic of a small theater. Rather than relying on a provocative title, the focus on the universal emotion of relationship recovery appears to be the reason it drew empathy from the audience.

The theater company stated that they were able to successfully complete the premiere thanks to the audience members who visited the small theater, and expressed that it was meaningful to share the story of a mother and daughter understanding each other with the audience. Since its founding in 2004, Bae-Gwan-Gong has continued to produce original plays, international exchanges, and citizen-participatory theater, and plans to refine the work following this premiere to continue meeting with audiences.