Alone on the stage in traditional Korean dress, Chan Park alternated sharp cracks of a stick against the side of the drum with expressive singing during a p'ansori performance Monday night in the Kellogg Center auditorium.
P'ansori is a Korean art form where one performer sings a story while playing a puk, a barrel-shaped drum. Park chose to tell the story of a blind father and his young, beautiful daughter who sacrifices herself at sea to restore his sight.
Park squeezed her eyes shut while singing, conveying the passion of the sailors as they pray for the soul of the maiden who drowned at sea. The daughter later is revived by the gods in a lotus flower and marries the emperor. Park grinned at the crowd and asked if they were enjoying her story.
"Tell me if my story is boring," she said and laughed.
Park alternated Korean singing and drums with English explanations.
"The new empress, though happily married, misses her father," Park said. "This is a very sad song."
She looked out at the crowd and jokingly offered to skip the song, but the audience encouraged her to continue.
The beats of the drum became slower and Park's voice shook with the emotion of the heartsick empress. She swayed from side to side and gestured with her hands in between hitting the drum.
Eventually, the blind father and his daughter are reunited at the end of the story after several humorous encounters with the father's unfaithful second wife and an eager psychic.
The Asian Studies Center, the Council on Korean Studies and the Visiting International Professional Program sponsored the event.
Van Nguyen, outreach coordinator for the Asian Studies Center, said the center is always bringing Asian presentations to MSU, with this month's focus on Korea. In addition to Park's presentation, there will be two film screenings about p'ansori and a drum performance by a student organization later in the month.
"The main theme is music," Nguyen said. "This was a way to show the cultural side of Korea, outside of the politics."
Catherine Ryu, a linguistics and language assistant professor, said p'ansori is a traditional Korean art, but it has been passed down to modern Korea through the lower class.
"I was just fascinated by it," she said of p'ansori. "It's a real, living art form."
