Trojan Women

The National Changgeuk Company of Korea was established in 1962 as a part of the National Theater of Korea, and it has been presenting traditional Korean opera, changgeuk, for the past five decades. The Company has been recreating the five surviving stories of pansori (Shimcheong-ga, Chunhyang-ga, Heungbo-ga, Sugung-ga, and Jeokbyeok-ga) into changgeuk while cherishing the traditional Korean musical storytelling style and earning national acclaim for its restoration and revival of the legacy of Korean literature.

Changgeuk is a traditional Korean opera that derives from pansori. While pansori is performed by a singer-storyteller completing the entire song with a drummer, changgeuk has a whole cast of pansori singers taking on the roles of different characters in the story and addressing each other in spoken and sung dialogue. Changgeuk was formed in the early 20th century when western culture was presented to Korean audiences who were yearning for artistic innovations. With the construction of western-style theaters and the introduction of the director role, the changgeuk we know today was finally born. Changgeuk is still evolving as a genre, with more than 100 years of history.

Pansori, the backbone of Changgeuk, was designated as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003. The term ‘pansori’ derives from the Korean words ‘pan’—a place where many people gather—and ‘sori’—song—and it is the name of the traditional Korean genre of musical storytelling.

The National Changgeuk Company of Korea has teamed up with a Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen and with the best artists in Korea to present a changgeuk production of Trojan Women, a tragedy by the Greek playwright, Euripides. 

Trojan Women is a tragedy centering on the horrors of war and its aftermath. But for the work, Ong Keng Sen is much more focused on the repetitive cycle of death and birth. Ahn Sook-sun, Korea’s representative pansori singer, joined as a pansori composer, and Jung Jae-il, a musician well-known both from the K-pop and traditional Korean music scene who is also the composer of the world-acclaimed Netflix series Squid Game, participated as Music Director and Composer. Ahn and Jung present the authenticity of pansori and the beauty of Korean music. 

Euripides’ tragedy meets traditional Korean pansori and K-pop in this moving spectacle about women in war. In this production, director Ong Keng Sen returned to the minimalism of pansori where a storyteller sings with only the drummer. Each of the central characters, Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, and Menelaus are primarily accompanied by one traditional musical instrument as done in pansori. Jung Jae-il’s music is speechlessly beautiful and the power within makes the voice of the pansori turn into a visceral experience of changgeuk.

Trojan Women is set in the kingdom of Troy. Troy was defeated by the Greek-Spartan allied forces. The performance addresses what happens to the Trojan women a few hours before they, including the queen, Hecuba, were taken as slaves to Greece, the victorious country. 

Hecuba has lost her husband and all her sons from the Trojan War that has lasted for ten years. She receives a message that her daughter, Cassandra, will be taken as a slave (concubine) to Agamemnon, the king of Greece, and her daughter-in-law, Andromache, to a Greek general. She anchors her hope in her young grandson, Astyanax, but the Greek army takes him, too, in fear of his future rebellion. All this tragedy began when Helen, the queen of Sparta, fell in love with Paris, a Trojan princess, and came over to Troy. Menelaus, the king of Sparta, started the war to take revenge on his runaway wife and Paris, her paramour. The Greek-Spartan allied forces invade Troy. The Trojan people, caught in a trap set by a Greek general, bring the huge wooden horse into the castle mistaking it for a war trophy, and then hold a carnival to celebrate their victory. However, the Greek soldiers get out of the wooden horse at night and slaughter all the Trojan men. Troy is defeated, and King Menelaus appears in front of the Trojan women who are to be taken as war slaves. The Trojan women are anxious about their uncertain future.

Hecuba

The last queen of Troy. She bore 19 children but has lost her husband and all sons due to the war. Her daughter and daughters-in-law are to be taken as war slaves to Greece, in a few hours.

Andromache

The wife of Hector. He is the first-born son of Hecuba and commander-in-chief of the Trojan army. Her husband is dead in a war and her young son, Astyanax, is about to be taken by the Greek army. 

Cassandra

A daughter of Hecuba, the princess of Troy. She was beloved and given the power of prophecy by Apollo, the Sun God. But she did not keep her promise to him so ended up being cursed: nobody believes her prophecies. 

Helen

The most beautiful woman in the world. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, but fell in love with Paris, who visited Sparta as a Trojan envoy, so ran off with him. 

Menelaus

The king of Sparta. He started the war in order to have his queen back and take revenge on Troy. He won the war by allying with his elder brother, Agamemnon, who was the king of Greece. 

Talthybios

A herald to the Greek army. He delivers bad news to the Trojan women and has to kill the innocent baby. Finally he starts to feel sympathy.

Dedicated to Ms. Ahn Sook San 

My style of distilled yet rich storytelling is often expressed through a strong concept, integrated gesamtkunstwerk, and bold visuality. When I was invited by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea to direct Trojan Women, I yearned to return to the minimalism of pansori (traced back to the 17th century), where a solo storyteller sings all the parts with only one drummer. Thus began the task of removing the layers which had been overlaid in time over changgeuk (a musical theater genre formed in the early twentieth century from pansori), like stripping off layers of paints and renovations to get to the base architecture of an old house. I set each of the central characters in a storytelling mode accompanied by primarily one musical instrument, as in pansori. This was ideal for the soliloquies in Greek tragedy. Hecuba is accompanied by the komungo employed to represent the male patriarchy, Cassandra by the flute (taegum) in her flights of fantasy with Apollo, the mournful Andromache by the ajaeng, Astyanax—the innocent child of Hector and Andromache—by the haegum (derived from Chinese erhu), Helen by the piano. I wanted to hear afresh the words which have sometimes been submerged in fussy music arrangement. For this, I requested the legendary pansori singer Ahn Sook Sun, who first performed the role of the Ghost in the prologue and epilogue, to write the foundation melody of all the words. In essence, I wanted to return changgeuk to pansori, rather than dressing it up with random disconnected elements of European opera or American musical theater.

From the beginning I felt that Helen, who stands between the Greeks and the Trojans, is a character between binary opposites. In our production, the voice of Helen exists in the space between masculine and feminine—she is an outsider who launched the war between Greece and Troy. With the chorus, I drew inspiration from the music of enslaved peoples transported from Africa to the Americas. Similarly to how African music became the music of spirituals, blues, jazz, rap, it would be wonderful if the chorus of Trojan Women could express the vibrant potential future of pansori. Hence the invitation to Jang Jae-Il to write the music for the chorus in the genre of K-pop, where the emotionalism of pansori infuses contemporary pop elements. 

It still amazes me that today what we will hear is the essence of a tale which is said to have happened around 1200 BC. This tale intrigued Homer who inspired Euripides who inspired Jean Paul Sartre who inspired Bae Sam Sik. Hence it was important to ask a woman to compose the melody of the monologues today, which had been written in history by men. These words have been translated and adapted through time to arrive into the mouths of our wonderful singers. This is the power of a deep story, reimagined today by our international collaborators in art: Wen Hui from Beijing, Myung Hee Cho from Los Angeles, and Scott Zielinski and Austin Switser from New York City.

The return of changgeuk to the sound of a voice, the pain of women who struggled to transform themselves in war from victims to survivors. I think of the lonely statue of the comfort woman memorial in Seoul which I passed everyday, enroute to rehearsal. We must forgive but we must not forget.

— Ong Keng Sen, November 2022

11—20 Nov 2016 National Theater of Korea, Korea

7—9 Sep 2017 Singapore International Festival of Arts, Singapore

22 Nov—3 Dec 2017 National Theater of Korea, Korea

2—3 Jun 2018 London International Festival of Theatre, UK

8—10 Jun 2018 Holland Festival, Netherlands

16—18 Jun 2018 Wiener Festwochen, Austria

3—7 Dec 2020 National Theater of Korea, Korea