It’s All About Poo…

Today, all of the Andeok Middle High students and teachers got a little show. Well…it was more than just any other show, it was a fantastical performance about poo.

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In the gymnasium, the musical was set up with drums and cymbals to stage left, and the actors stood at stage center.

The performance began, first with the drums and cymbals banging together in time, the noise (I mean, sound) getting louder and louder.

I looked to my left to see the title of the play. Mmhmm, mmhmm…I read some Korean words that I couldn’t understand…and then…poo?

Since Young-hee (my Korean co-teacher) was on a business trip today, one of the other teachers tried to explain the plot to me:

“A king and his poor servant each had land. The kind had bad land and the servant had mahnie, mahnie crops (many, many crops). The king stole his servant’s crops. The poo monster then helped the servant grow more crops by adding poo to the ground.” (That’s exactly how she said it.)

The Andeok Elementary School students also attended the musical, and they were participating to their fullest capabilities, pointing and shouting at the poo monster, who was dressed in a chocolate-crimson-tan-and-green-coloured rag costume (…very appealing).

Some highlights from the show: the acrobatics (the servant was able to do gymanstic-like flips all over the place, receiving a loud roar of applause, every time), the poker that the king stuck in his servant’s bottom-hole (which stayed fully upright for about three minutes straight), and finally, the basketball-sized smear of diarrhea that the servant had made on a newspaper (which he openly showed to the audience).

What the students learned: (1) poo is very important for growing food; (2) your bottom-hole is capable of holding long, poker-like sticks in it for long-periods of time, and; (3) anything remotely disgusting will rouse an audience of elementary, middle, and high school students.

What I learned: (1) poo is very important for growing food…maybe not our poo (like the servant used), but poo, nevertheless; (2) your bottom-hole is capable of holding long, poker-like sticks in it for long-periods of time, and; (3) even fake poo, in the form of diarrhea, is visually disgusting and traumatizing, and I wish I hadn’t eaten lunch just an hour before the show. 

What a wonderful performance for a Wednesday afternoon :).

- Jess