A REQUIEM FOR THE ERASED

Written and directed by Soo Chyun, To Be Liberated is perhaps the most exquisite show the Hollywood Fringe has to offer. Running a mere half an hour, there is a clarity and brevity that complement each other while strengthening the production as a whole.

It is August 15, 1945, the Allies have announced the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan, ending not only the Second World War, but 35 years of brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula by the Japanese.

As the nation takes to the streets to celebrate its regained freedom, a lone woman, Soon-deok (Karla Kim), sits silently on a park bench, besieged by memories of her childhood friend No-eul (Aubrey Kim).

Both were young girls when the Japanese began to implement Nissen dōsoron, a strict process of Japanization that sought to smother the culture and language of Korea as well as suppress the Christian faith of the Koreans themselves.

This included public ceremonies of submitting to the Japanese Emperor and acknowledging him as a living god. Many Koreans were taken from the streets and forced to participate in this ritual. Those who refused faced arrest and torture. Soon-deok submitted, as most did. No-eul was one of the few who didn’t. She was taken by the Japanese and did not return.

Now, Soon-doek sits, still as a stalactite, frozen in the guilt she suffers, already condemned by the verdict of her own remembrances. No-eul, still the young girl she was so many decades ago, appears. Chyun has No-eul swirling about the near motionless Soon-doek, conveying an acuity of that swiftness memories possess in swaying through our awareness.

She has come, not to assail her childhood friend for her subservience but to plead Soon-doek’s innocence. “There is nothing so difficult,” No-eul laments, “as survival.”

Chyun approaches her staging with an artist’s appreciation of chiaroscuro, employing the interplay of light and darkness to evoke the sense of memories fading in and out of one’s consciousness. Aubrey Kim brings a youthfulness to No-eul that serves to explain her willingness to embrace martyrdom while sharpening for those in the audience at the Hobgoblin Playhouse the poignancy of that sacrifice. Karla Kim’s performance is stunning, as she infuses an anguished quietus into her stillness that spreads its infection to all who view it.

Throughout, the subtle harmony of the traditional Korean instruments, the hourglass-shaped drum, the janggu (played by Charis Kim), and the 12-stringed gayageum (played by Joseph Hwang), float over the scene, invoking a sense of otherworldliness while bringing at the same time a hue of defiance by displaying the very tradition the occupiers sought to smother.  Compassion and absolution are at the core of this piece, and who is worthy of them.  Soo Chyun’s response is not confined by religious parameters but robed within our shared humanity.

To the question, “Who is worthy of forgiveness?”

“We all are,” is the unequivocal reply of To Be Liberated.

And in the poetry of this answer, Chyun succeeds in revealing the noblest reflection of her faith.

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To Be Liberated
part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival
Hobgoblin Playhouse
played four performances June 6-19, 2025
for more info, visit To Be Liberated