Remembering Evangeline

About

“It’s complicated.” Capturing the drama only love can bring, Concrete Temple Theatre’s world premiere unravels the knotty love story between a man in New England and the woman he left behind in Korea. Original composition, dance and visual theatre fuse in a bewitching landscape of dreams and desires, karaoke and kimchi, in the playful and profound odyssey of love, REMEMBERING EVANGELINE: 에반젤린을 회상하며.

REMEMBERING EVANGELINE: 에반젤린을 회상하며 was created in response to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie.” The play presents the perspectives of the play’s three characters: John, Eunji and Mariko (their daughter). 

REMEMBERING EVANGELINE: 에반젤린을 회상하며 is a devised work with Text and Direction by Renee Philippi, Design by Carlo Adinolfi and choregraphy by Sook Kim and Eun Sung Lee, Noree Performing Arts. Performers are Carlo Adinolfi, Sook Kim and Eun Sung Lee. Casey McLain is Lighting Designer and Stage Manager. Sound Design by Eric Nightengale.  Design Assistant: Avigail Gutfeld and Costume construction: Maria Grande.

History

April 2016
in process workshop showings of Part I: John at Dixon Place, NYC
in process workshop showings of Part I: John at Pontine Theatre, NH

October 2016
in process workshop showing of Part II: Mariko at Drama League Theater Center

March 2017
in process workshop showing of Part III: Eunkyung at A.R.T./NY’s South Oxford Space

June 1-17 2017
REMEMBERING EVANGELINE: 에반젤린을 회상하며 at HERE, New York, NY

Press

“Visually stunning and exquisitely crafted REMEMBERING EVANGELINE is a focused, heartfelt and sophisticated collaboration by artists at the top of their game! Don’t miss it!”

“Concrete Temple Theatre’s REMEMBERING EVANGELINE is a touching, haunting, visually inspired tale that’s also quirky and witty in all the right places.”

“I saw Marvin’s Room on Broadway last Saturday after seeing Remembering Evangeline, and I have to say I enjoyed Evangeline much more, and it’s stuck with me way longer. And the way those three stories were woven together — loosely — was incredibly moving. Like the loose-hanging fabric of the backdrop and the pieces of poetry clipped and dangling, the stories had a sense of fluidity and flow, which works so well when you’re talking about things like one’s national identity vs. one’s individual character vs. one’s heritage. The three characters weren’t quite connected, but weren’t fully severed from one another either, and I thought the production design supported that notion so well. I experienced the piece much like a poem or meditation, and I think that kind of theater has the power to access deep emotional and spiritual truths.”

“Remembering Evangeline is a beautiful, haunting theatrical experience. The moving story of an American GI’s thwarted love affair in wartime Korea is told with Concrete Temple’s trademark use of poetic text in combination with seemingly magical set and stage design. Curtains become snowy Korean mountain peaks, actors become deep-sea fish in a dream, and we the audience are pulled into the dream ourselves.”

“Clever, Edgy, Great staging, Creates a dreamlike meditation on the power of connection over distance and time.”

“I especially liked the things the play has done with language, written and spoken: these layered questions about inflection and evasion, how words are recorded and reported and interpreted and translated. I keep thinking I’ve gotten to the bottom of it, only to discover there’s more to unpack.”

Video