그간, 1920년대 초에 집중적으로 나타난 연극사적 현상들은 ‘새로운 연극’의 출현을 가시화했다는 점에서 주목받아왔다. 그러나 기존의 연구들은 이와 같은 현상에 획시기적 가치를 부여하면서도 장기지속적인 관점에서 조망하지는 못했으며, 1930년대 연극사에 이르는 연속적 이행 과정 역시 충분히 규명하지 못했다. 본고는 연극의 상수로 존재하는 관객성의 양상에 천착할 때, 연극사의 연속성을 보다 면밀하게 구성해 낼 수 있으리라 가정했다. 1920년대 초의 학생극 순회극단 공연을 통해 부각되었던 ‘자발적 관객’들의 존재는 식민지 조선 근대극의 원형을 해명하기 위한 단초가 된다. 그러나 이러한 관객의 형상이 1930년대까지 곧바로 이어질 수 있는 것은 아니었다. 본고는 1920년대 초에 형성되었던 특유한 관객성이 연극의 생산자들에게 내포관객으로 받아들여지고, 이것이 문화환경의 변화를 거치며 조정되어나가는 과정에 주목하고자 했다.
그러나 1920년대 중반에 이르러 소인극 운동이 관성화되고, 자발적 관객의 에너지가 위축되며, 연극 역시 하나의 문화상품으로서의 지위를 확립해나가게 되었을 때 관객의 자발성에 대한 기대치는 예전과 같을 수 없었다. 이 시기를 경유하는 동안, 극작가들은 기존에 설정되었던 내포관객의 상을 실제 극장에 출입하는 관객들을 참조하며 조정해나가야 하는 과제를 부여받게 된다. 이 과정에서 필연적으로 요구되었던 것은 텍스트 내부의 완결성을 기하고 보다 폭넓은 공감대를 조성할 수 있는 형상화 방식이었으며, 이를 위해서는 결국 ‘식민지의 모순’이라는 사건의 구조적 배후를 어떤 방식으로든지 텍스트 내부로 끌어올 필요가 있었다. 다만, 이는 검열의 위협을 증대시키는 원인이었던바 효과적인 우회로의 개척은 곧 1930년대 연극에 도달하기 위한 또 하나의 과제였다.Until now, theatrical historical phenomena that emerged intensively in the early 1920s have been noted in that they have visualized the emergence of ‘Sinkeuk(new drama)’. However, existing studies have given to this phenomenon the epochal value but have not been able to see it from a long-term perspective, and the continuous process of implementing it to the theater history of the 1930s has not been fully established. This study was assumed that the continuity of the drama history could be more closely organized when it came to the aspect of spectorship that existed as a constant of the play. The existence of 'spontaneous spectator' that were highlighted through the performance of the student theater troupes in the early 1920s could be the first step to explain the original form of the modern drama in colonial era. However, this spectotor's character cannot be preserved immediately until the 1930s. The main purpose of this study was to pay attention to the unique spectatorship that formed in the early 1920s was to be accepted as a implied spectator to the producers of the play, and how it was adjusted through changes in the cultural environment.
As shown in the performance reviews of the Towolhoe, the horizon of expectation requested by the theater producers of colonial chosun was to make the public a receiver of the play, and begins to materialize in the form of a creative play that represent their lives on stage. At this time, newspaper articles could be the basis for playwrights to guarantee the veracity of the case. In particular, this study was able to identify the significant influence between plays and newspaper articles through Lim Youngbin's Bokeoal(blowfish eggs). The implied spectator he set up can be described as a retrospective version of the 'spontaneous spectator' formed in the early 1920s, and only if this is the case, Bokeoal can be read beyond the superficial event and into more meaningful content. In other words, the death of a family due to ignorance could be sublimated into a tragic ending that suggests the collapse of the entire ethnic community.
But by the mid-1920s, expectations for spontaneousness of the spectator could not have been the same as before when the amatuer drama movement became inertia, the energy of the spontaneous spectator shrank, and the play also established a status as a cultural product. During this time, playwrights will be given the task of adjusting the previously set statue of the implied spectator by referring to the real spectator who entering the theater. What was inevitably required in this process was a formative way to ensure completeness within the text and create a broader consensus, which eventually required the structural backstabbing of the event, called 'the contradiction of colonialism' to be brought into the text in some way. However, this has also increased the threat of censorship. Thus, the exploration of an effective detour was the another task to reach the 1930s play.