Theatre Journal

Abstract:

Lloyd Suh’s play for young audiences, Bina’s Six Apples, provides a foundation for a formulation of Korean American refugeetude. The refugee status of Koreans before and during the Korean War was a particularly ill-defined one; from a U.S. perspective, it was a label but not a legal status, and the consequent erasure of this particular aspect of militarism has had lasting effects on the U.S. imaginary. The 2022 premiere stages the Korean refugee experience onstage with attention to the dignity and creativity of the persons involved and without the explicit presence of the state. Bina’s Six Apples revises Cold War narratives, particularly countering the role of the Korean child or adoptee in narratives of U.S. saviorship and humanitarianism, and suggesting in keeping with contemporary concerns that we consider the child as an independent refugee and political actor. Furthermore, it suggests a means by which Korean (American) refugeetude is constructed transgenerationally. Feminist refugee epistemology importantly refocuses us on the creativity and storytelling that Bina hears and performs, a reflexive commentary on Suh’s work of historical reparation.