"Three Levels and Points" is a newly edited Yang family drama. It was our Taiyuan city playwrights Liang Feng, Zhang Xiang, and Zhang Yanjie, on the basis of traditional plays such as "Chopper", "Jiaoyin", "Mu Kezhai", "Mu Guiying Hanging Commander" and other plays, who consulted many yang family stories, chose a new angle, gave a new theme, and restructured the newly compiled historical drama. Yang Liulang is the protagonist. And I, starting from singing, Yang Liulang's plays really sing a lot, it should be said that I am familiar with the road. In fact, this Rokuro is different from any previous play. In the past, I sang "Beheading, Handing over the seal", which is a real singing drama with Rokuro as the protagonist. But the image of Yang Liulang in the play is indeed a somewhat nested character, and the plot of him killing his son so deadly and falling out with his mother and the Eight Sages King is really unreasonable.
"Breaking Hongzhou" and "The Flying Phoenix" I also play Yang Liulang, where Liu Lang also has some humorous and funny personality characteristics, but slightly the manager's demeanor is insufficient, and because it is a supporting role, so the room for creation is not very large. Later, he also co-starred with Gao Cuiying in "The Great Knife King's Pregnant Girl", and Liu Lang's play was similar to the previous two plays. For many years, I have always wanted to rehearse a play that can not only fully express the singing characteristics of various plates in Shanxi Middle Road, but also more completely portray a Yang Liulang who has a broad mind and a brave and a unique personality.
In 1980, Liang Feng, Zhang Xiang and Zhang Yanjie wrote the first draft of "Three Passes and Points". At that time, I was performing in the countryside, and they specially took the first draft to the troupe's station to ask for my opinion. After watching it, I thought it was very good, and suggested that in a scene between Yang Liulang and Mu Guiying, let Mu Guiying use the good story of Yang She's marriage in the past to justify his love with Yang Zongbao, and at the same time, Liu Lang used this example to persuade Gui Ying to return to Song's lyrics. The author thinks that this opinion is reasonable, so he adds it.
From the overall point of view, this newly compiled "Three Levels and Points" is a good retention of the essence of the old "Chopper" and other plays, and gives a new concept of thought, the plot is relatively smooth, the story is more complete and reasonable. When I received the script, I first envisioned the acting aspect. The core event of "Three Levels and Points" is that Yang Liulang has the wisdom to recognize talents, and the key is in a "point" word. Therefore, when designing the typical action for the characters that run through the whole play, I write on the word "dot".
In the past, many local drama veteran artists often liked to use an outstretched thumb to express self-praise, praise each other, applaud, be proud and other emotional actions on the stage. The more it is used, the more directivity of this action is not very clear. So I did the opposite, rarely on stage. But this time, I chose it. But I designed different techniques in different environments to give this same action a different connotation. In the first game, Yang Liulang was defeated by Xiao Tianzuo, and when it was difficult to break through in the face of the Liao soldiers besieging the left and right, Mu Guiying fell from the sky, broke the Liao soldiers, and killed Xiao Tianzuo to the point of embarrassment. At this time, the rescued Rokuro looked at this female general who was excellent in martial arts and bravely killed the enemy, and judged the other party from the perspective of a battle-hardened general, and couldn't help but extend his thumb and shout good, which was to appreciate the martial arts and heroism of the female general. After Mu Guiying's siege was lifted and heeded Song Ying's thanks, I looked at her distant figure, turned around, threw the flag around, and stretched out her thumb, this action was actually after observing and thinking about this contact battle. Believing that this female general was slightly extraordinary and a useful talent for breaking the Heavenly Gate Array, she decided to recommend the mental activities to the Eight Sages King.
In the second scene, Yang Liulang recommended Mu Guiying to the Eight Sages King to take on the heavy responsibility of breaking the Heaven's Gate, and when the Eight Sages King was not impressed, I had a large singing section and introduced the new talents I found on the battlefield to the other party in a gushing tone. Speaking of emotions, I couldn't help but shake my hair, clap my legs, raise my hands and thumbs, and fully entrust his expression of praise to Mu Guiying and the extreme desire, and also after he desperately hoped to get the consent of the Eight Sages King to ask Mu Guiying to go down the mountain, I used this action again, just like I wanted to praise a person who had been looking forward to it for a long time and had a deep heart of admiration. Of course, there is also a bit of a smug element, which is also in line with the personality of Yang Liulang, who has a great sense of humor.
The main dramatic action in the fifth scene is the chopping. However, the playwright's trick is very clever, is to let Yang Liulang himself design a fake chopper trap to lure Mu Guiying down the mountain to save her husband, so that he can return to Song as the commander, which is much smoother than the plot of the old chopper. After Yang Liulang persuaded Mu Guiying in this scene, Mu Guiying had a dispatch of two thanks and two supports from Liu Lang. I used another turn and thumb gesture during the second support, and this time there was a kind of satisfaction and praise for my daughter-in-law's deep righteousness and knowledge. It also contains a satisfaction with the success of one's own plan.
The last game was mu Guiying's visit to the commander-in-chief. On the school grounds, all three armies, large and small, were observing the new marshal's majesty to see if she could suppress this position. Yang Liulang is no exception. Therefore, when Mu Guiying ordered the grain officer, I was first full of energy and energetically answered: "Yes!". And when Mu Guiying's three-point vanguard officer, Yang Zongbao, was heavily reprimanded for his intentions, I actually calmly observed whether the new marshal I recommended was competent in the process, and finally saw that she was indeed majestic in military orders and had good dispatches, and I couldn't help but express my appreciation from the bottom of my heart. Only in the military tent, this situation can not be exposed, so secretly extended the thumb, but the action is larger. This action has both an element of relief and an element of heartfelt admiration. At this point, Yang Liulang's string-through action of raising the xianxian to recommend the handsome was all completed.
My repeated use of this thumb-out movement was inspired by the "habitual movement of the character" in the drama performance. I let it follow throughout the play, with the aim of emphasizing the theme of that point of handsomeness. The director of this play was my old classmate Ma Zhaolu. He pays attention to the novelty of the rehearsal and is also relatively good at drawing on the new literary and artistic forms, so my designs are also supported by him.
The play is dominated by singers. The main singing segments are in the second and fifth scenes, of which the fifth scene has the heaviest singing. The second scene is mainly through Liu Lang's recommendation of Mu Guiying's singing section to the Eight Sages King to show that when he seeks the sage, he is also a flowing board, and there must be a tendency to gush. According to the general singing method, after the flow of water, it should be followed by the second-rate thirsty and eager mood. So I am telling the Eight Sages about the process of discovering Mu Guiying, but here I use the reverse analysis of the strings after a confession, and then sing the splint, forming a kind of painting, admiration, and emotion. In fact, he was also using his emotions to try to infect the Eight Sages who were skeptical about this matter.
The fifth game is the chopper. However, it is very different from the old "chopper". The first is to change from the real chop of the old play to the fake chop of the deliberate design. The second is to delete some of the ambiguous, unorganized, and poorly written lyrics in the old "Chopper", and add some new content. The old "Chopper" is a singing drama that zhonglu Zizi has a deep impression on the audience, and it almost concentrates all the singing methods except for the white in the singing voice of this drama, so it is difficult to explain to the audience if it is not handled well in the design of the singing cavity.
Zhang Buchang and I and others insisted on the idea of retaining all the essences of traditional drama when designing the core singing section of Liu Lang's meeting with the Eight Sages King, and at the same time, there should be new and developed. So in designing this very long singing voice, I used almost all the singing voices I had learned in my life. Among them, there are parts of the line cavity of "Weishui River" and "Lower River East", as well as a few variations of "Harvest Jiang Wei", as well as the tablet of the North Road Zizi. In Yang Liulang's four-sentence singing after Mu Guiying broke into the tent, I also rubbed the singing method of Ding Pai and the singing method of Xiaosheng. Throughout the play, I sang several stacks, and the end of each stack was different... The effect of the subsequent performance proved that our vision was recognized and accepted by the audience.
This play was made into an opera film by Xi'an Film Studio in 1983, and at first the film director always thought that I sang a lot, and always asked me to speed up the singing. If you don't let you sing well, the essence of this play will be lost. At that time, I had a very strong argument with Director Sun, and said that I would rather not act according to this kind of change, and some compromise was reached afterwards. After the film was made, I still felt a little sorry, no way. There are both technical problems in which the two forms of film and stage play are close to each other, there is also the problem of understanding the characteristics of opera, and there is also a problem of mutual understanding between directors and actors, perhaps with the change of people's concepts, this problem can be solved better when making such films in the future.
Anyway, this "Three Levels Point Handsome". Even if it is the second Jin opera repertoire that has been put on the screen after Ding Guoxian, Niu Guiying and other artists of the older generation, I have the honor to star in this film, which is also a very meaningful commemoration of my personal artistic career.
The lineup of "Three Levels and Points" is very strong: my Yang Liulang, Yan Huizhen's Eight Sages, Gao Cuiying's Mu Guiying, Guo Caiping's Yang Zongbao, Xue Weiyi's Xiao Tianzuo. The rest of the supporting characters are all classmates of the original drama school. This is the best lineup of Taiyuan Jin opera at that time. In this sense, it is also very commemorative.