Noran Bang: The Yellow Room

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

M.J. Kang is a Toronto-based playwright and actor. Her plays include
Blessings, He He: Tales from the White Diamond Mountains, and Simply
Fred. She has been a member of numerous playwright’s groups and
playwright-in-residence at Nightwood Theatre and Cahoots Theatre
Projects.

Noran Bang is about a Korean-Canadian family struggling to come to
grips with the realities of a new culture and trying to forget the land
they have left behind. Structurally, the play is highly sophisticated,
seamlessly blending Western performance techniques with Korean dance,
movement, and percussion traditions. Four actors play more than a dozen
roles over several decades, and scenes are played out in the past and
present, as well as in Korea and Canada. The casting is intended to show
that the multiple characters portrayed by a single actor are essentially
extensions of that actor’s main character.

Although centred on a single Korean family’s efforts to assimilate
their lives into the mainstream of Canadian society, this play will have
resonance for members of any ethnic group who finds themselves in a
similar situation.