Original/ Yuan Yuan (forwarded with the author's permission)
The playwright Cao Yu once said: "I like to write about people, I love people, I write characters that I think are heroic and gratifying; I also hate people, I have written humble, trivial villains." I feel how much people need to understand, and how difficult it is to understand. No literary scholar dares to say this: I have made man clear. ”
Mr. Cao Yu is a literary scholar who has explained people clearly, and this has been well demonstrated in his classic book "The Wilderness".
Different from the symbolic characters commonly used in modern film and television dramas, Mr. Cao Yu focused on the portrayal of characters when creating "Wilderness". The contradictions and conflicts in the play are extremely fierce, the storyline is particularly rich, and the character personality is particularly complex: Hua Jinzi was persecuted by the arranged marriage of feudal society, cursed by his mother-in-law Jiao's mother, preferred to bear the original sin of killing his husband and cheating, and he had to rise up to resist and break through the feudal society; Qiu Hu's father was buried alive by King Jiao Yan, his sister was abducted into a brothel and bullied to death, he was also persecuted and imprisoned, he jumped off the train with a strong breath, returned with a deep vengeance in the sea of blood, and was bent on revenge but found that the enemy King Jiao Yan was dead. Only the blind widow Jiao Mu, the son of The King of Jiao Yan, who was once commensurate with his brother, Jiao Daxing, the fiancée Hua Jinzi was also forcibly taken by the King of Jiao Yan to fill the house for Jiao Da Xing, entangled between revenge and emotion; Jiao Mu was once oppressed by her deceased husband, but when she got old, she became a vicious mother-in-law who persecuted her daughter-in-law Hua Jinzi; Jiao Da Xing was a useless good person who struggled painfully and cowardly between her mother and Hua Jinzi. This made the choreography and performance of Wilderness extremely difficult.
Mr. Cao Yu once commented on his three plays: "For an ordinary professional theater troupe, playing "Thunderstorm" will be successful, playing "Sunrise" will be sensational, and playing "Wilderness" will fail, because it is too difficult to act." Unlike "Sunrise" and "Thunderstorm", which received widespread attention and praise at the beginning of the creation, "Wilderness" was in a state of mixed praise for a long time, and with the development of the times, it gradually became widely recognized by the public.
As a classic book, "Wilderness" has been adapted to the screen many times, and the new rehearsal of "Wilderness" that premiered on November 30 at the Cao Yu Theater of Beijing International Drama Center is the third edition of Beijing Renyi. Zhu Yu is in front, reproducing the masterpiece, which is more difficult and more stressful. And the young director Yan Rui led this new generation of actors to do a good job, especially the performance of Zhang Keying, a young actor who played the role of the heroine who spent gold, was even more remarkable.
Young actor Zhang Keying (played by Hua Jinzi)
Different from Mr. Cao Yu's play, which takes the road of revenge of Qiu Hu as the main line, Yan Rui's version of "The Wilderness" has a novel angle, which highlights the story of Hua Jinzi, who is oppressed by feudal marriage, not willing to be bullied, and rises up to resist, even if it is moving towards self-destruction, it is also necessary to struggle forward to seek the light of dreams, and the story of moths fighting fires.
When Jiao Mu held jiao Yan Wang's whip, she excitedly chanted to her son Jiao Daxing: "This is your father's whip, hit her, beat her." "Jiao Mu has always been dominated by the spiritual imprint of the dead King Jiao Yan, and this whip is like the old saying in our country - many years of daughter-in-law to become a wife. Jiao's mother can't wait to inflict the pain she has suffered on her daughter-in-law Hua Jinzi, she is jealous of Hua Jinzi's beauty, she curses to disfigure her, she is jealous of her son's love for Hua Jinzi, so she does not allow Jiao Daxing to be good with Hua Jinzi. But Jiao Mu did not expect that it was her jealousy that pushed her beloved son to the road of death.
Hua Jinzi is by no means a virtuous moral model, she is a living, enthusiastic person, and it also represents the gradual awakening of the female group that has been suppressed for many years. Hua Jinzi is not willing to be humiliated, unwilling to endure Jiao Mu's day-to-day bullying, and is extremely disappointed in the weakness and incompetence of her husband Jiao Daxing, and she struggles to escape. And the Qiu Hu who happened to appear, and the place where the gold in his mouth was paved, gave Hua Jin hope, and in her eyes, the place covered with gold was her way of life, her future, and her freedom.
Vast wilderness, driving to the unknown railroad tracks, paved with gold, dark and lost black forest, leaning tables and chairs, dull gongs and drums, poignant screams, the director cleverly uses many metaphors and just the right accompaniment to render the atmosphere to the extreme. With the appearance of the minotaur horse face and the projection of the seemingly innocent jiaoyan king's remains, it points out the hidden character in this drama - jiaoyan king. He never appeared, but he was the ruler who always dominated the entire wilderness, and was the source of hatred that permeated the hearts of the people.
Zhang Keying, a young actress who plays the heroine of the flower gold, is the daughter of the well-known actor Zhang Kaili, who has been taught by her mother since she was a child, and although she was deeply influenced by art, she was born with a good hand, but she never forgot to work hard. After more than a year of study in Hong Kong, Zhang Keying deeply realized the importance of her mother tongue for performance, so she resolutely dropped out of school and re-examined the exam, and was re-admitted to the Central Academy of Drama with the first place in cultural classes. After graduating from the Central Academy of Drama, he was admitted to the Beijing People's Art Theater with the first place.
During this period, she also accumulated a thick resume, starring in the English version of the stage play "The Wizard of Oz" in her first year of high school, and then successfully portrayed the youthful and beautiful Yu Miaomiao in "I Only Like You", the rebellious and lovely returned girl Tina in "A Journey to Meet Love", the little cotton jacket who sacrificed her life for the country in "The Old Tavern", starred in the National Centre for the Performing Arts drama "Wanbai", starred in the drama "Zhengyang Bookstore" and played two roles across time and space.
Zhang Keying's rich acting experience also laid the foundation for her to take on the lead role after entering the Beijing Renyi, and the twenty-four-year-old young actor initially could not understand the complex and changeable character of Hua Jinzi, let alone adapt to the voice of the drama without microphone support. Although she practiced until her voice was dumb and she could not enter the character for a while, Zhang Keying did not admit defeat, she wrote the character biography over and over again to get close to the character, and looked for gold and fierce state by observing the films of her predecessors, and sought inspiration from her own life. Finally, after two months of hard rehearsal, Zhang Keying overcame many difficulties and gradually entered a better situation, with superb acting skills, he interpreted the role of Hua Jinzi very well, and portrayed this hua jinzi who was born in the field, grew up in the field, was delicate and fierce, and was charming and charming, but stubborn, even if he was arranged marriage, he still did not yield, flaunted himself, full of resistance, and worked hard to break through the confinement of Hua Jinzi.
It is like the senior teacher who watched "The Wilderness" commented: "This gold of Cocoa has light in the eyes, fire in the heart, roots under the feet, and a rare maturity of actresses of this age." Hua Jinzi is too difficult to perform, and it is a rare difficult female role on the theatrical stage. Twenty-four years old, just out of the school cocoa, graduation is to pick the beam, pick the beam is to touch the peak, completed such a multi-meaning complex image of the young woman, if not with a solid foundation and extremely high talent, it is difficult to be competent. ”
This classic masterpiece from 1937 can still make the audience empathize in the ever-changing 2021, and the success of the new row of "Wilderness" is based on Mr. Cao Yu's classic plays, but it is also inseparable from the director's creative re-creation and the actors' heartfelt interpretation. And this also tells us that no matter whether we gain or lose for a while, in the end, the years will pan for gold, and good plays will eventually be "seen".