The Scarecrow Who Does the Belly Dance

A portrait of a person torn apart by capitalist consumption

First staged in 1995, this was the most commercially successful and most awarded production of Arirang’s first decade. Its 1996 revival was especially moving: it was the first production in the company’s own new venue, Small Theatre Arirang — opening after years marked by the forced closure of Arts Theatre Hanmadang, the national-theatre venue Arirang had run, when its manager was booked over a screening of the film The Night Before the Strike and the company’s registration was revoked.

The play follows one man’s relentlessly unlucky life. Jo Man-deuk runs a barbershop with modest dreams, but is worn down by the groans of his mother with dementia, a wife who nags about money and cheats on him, and a brother who keeps turning up to demand cash. Diagnosed with grandiose delusions, he is hospitalised and plays the tycoon, scattering fake cheques. He returns to reality, but finds no peace or happiness — he strangles his mother and loses his mind again.

Adapted from Yi Chong-jun’s story Mr. Jo Man-deuk, the title is rich in symbolism. The navel is the body’s link to the mother at birth — a sign of purity and life — while the scarecrow is hollow, perhaps a puppet: moving, yet not truly alive. Through Jo, the “scarecrow,” the play shows how a simple, honest life is torn apart by the pleasures and consumption of capitalism symbolised by the “belly dance,” and holds a mirror to our own materialism.