On the evening of December 15th, the Gezai Opera "Seaside Wind", created by the Xiamen Gezai Opera Study Center, was staged at the Fuzhou Workers' Cultural Palace as a performance at the 8th Fujian Provincial Arts Festival and the 28th Fujian Provincial Drama Festival. Euphemistic and beautiful music melodies, beautiful and changing lighting and dance, simple and natural and full of charm of the wonderful performance, for the audience to present a red modern theme work full of Minnan characteristics.
Stills from the song boy play "Seaside Wind"
The play tells the story of the 1930s, when the people in southern Fujian were plagued by wars and food shortages for many years, young and middle-aged men went to Nanyang to make a living. After Alain, who lives in Shapowei, Xiamen, bid farewell to her husband Yaquan, she and the female overseas Chinese relatives who stayed behind endured oppression and provoked the burden of supporting the family. Hyde, an underground member of the Communist Party of China, organized them to set up a women's salvation association to rebel, and was unfortunately arrested and sacrificed in the execution of the mission. In the bloody struggle in Xiamen and in the ill-fated encounters, Alain, a weak female overseas Chinese dependent in southern Fujian, went from having no complaints, no regrets, and waiting bitterly to awakening to actively participating in underground party activities, painstakingly completing the transformation and sublimation, and embarking on the revolutionary road. A song and play reflecting the struggle of the underground party in Xiamen, a group of southern Fujian women who watched over each other and helped each other to join the revolution, a beautiful, kind, and tenacious humanistic spirit, and a song of life that pursues the nirvana of faith and thought.
In 2015, "Seaside Wind" began to enter the script creation, and more than ten drafts were revised successively. Xiamen is a beautiful city, but also a heroic city, she has a glorious revolutionary tradition. This creation is a reflection and exploration of the way revolutionary themes are expressed. "Seaside Wind" takes a group of low-level Xiamen female overseas Chinese dependents who stay in their hometown and watch over each other as the starting point, and takes the fate of Alain as a clue, portraying a group of beautiful, kind, and tenacious Minnan women who endured and persevered until they woke up to the awakening and actively participated in the underground party in the bloody revolutionary struggle in Xiamen. In the historical background, he expresses his personal feelings and the fate of the times with a small view, and uses new contexts and new perspectives to create an artistic charm that comes from the intersection of character emotions, a perspective and feeling of the inner world of characters.
In the second degree of creation, the director actively explores the stage style presentation of gezai opera, looks for a path that is more in line with the aesthetics of modern drama, and shows that gezai opera is known for lyricism and takes life and dan as the performance center. Through performance, visual communication and musical expression, with the sea and the phoenix tree as the stage imagery, the revolutionary narrative is reconstructed, which activates people's re-imagination of heroes and tells the story of the Xiamen Revolution with plain vision. Musically, it not only reflects the unique charm of the opera brand, but also makes new attempts in the plate style and multi-voice composition, and strives to make the music of the whole play layered, relaxed and expressive and audible. The stage design adopts the saturation contrast of colors to reflect different time and space, and the simple and empty stage not only meets the needs of opera performance, but also has the open-mindedness of "sea", creating a Xiamen style with great Fujian characteristics. The costume design captures "seaweed" as the image seed, and the village women represented by Alain apply embroidery, press three-dimensional lines and other processes on the cardigans, thick and detailed outline this group of women in southern Fujian whose fate is like seaweed duckweed and stubbornly resists.
After nearly three years of meticulous preparation, "Seaside Wind" has set up a strong creative team, with Lin Dehe, director of the center, as the producer, the screenwriter is Xiamen outstanding young playwright Lin Zhijie, the famous director Wu Ziming directed, the outstanding young composer Cai Yirong as the music designer, the famous stage designer Lin Zhibin as the stage design, the famous lighting designer Qi Shiming as the lighting director, the excellent lighting designer Xu Zhimin as the lighting design, the famous costume designer Zeng Yuni as the costume design, and the famous makeup artist Yao Key as the styling director. Zheng Yueqin, an outstanding young stylist, served as a styling designer. Performed by first-class actors Zeng Baozhu, Zhuang Hairong, Su Yanrong, Zheng Huibing, Wang Zhibin, Zhuang Bifang, Huang Xiaoying, Xue Jiancheng, and a group of outstanding young actors such as second-level actors Zeng Zhendong, Chen Lijuan, Huang Juanjuan and Lin Shuqian.
With full creative passion and sincere creative attitude, all the staff of Xiamen Gezai Opera Study Center strive to build "Seaside Wind" into a fine art with good ideological, artistic and ornamental qualities, and lead people to adhere to their faith in an artistic way, inherit the red gene, and carry forward the fine tradition.
With the strong support of the Fujian Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the Publicity Department of the Xiamen Municipal Party Committee, and the Xiamen Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, the opera "Seaside Wind" has been selected as the 2016 Xiamen Municipal Special Fund project for the development of literature and art, the 2018 Fujian Provincial Local Opera Support Special Funding Project, and the 2021 Fujian Provincial Stage Art Quality Project Key Repertoire.
In this performance, the organizing committee of the art festival organized experts from Beijing and the province to conduct "one play and one evaluation" on "Seaside Wind" and interacted with the main creative team of the work face-to-face, and jointly commented and discussed the artistic characteristics of the work and the gains and losses of creation. Participating experts believe that the song boy drama "Seaside Wind" is a quality work vitality of the story and the main melody that has regional characteristics and is full of positive energy characteristics. It is deeply loved and praised by the audience and leaders.
It is reported that the Xiamen Gezai Opera Study Center has always adhered to the people-centered creative orientation, created a number of influential works in the country, such as "Three Family Blessings", "Egret Goddess", "Shao Jianghai", "Butterfly Love", etc., and has won the "Five One Project Award" Excellent Drama Award, "Wenhua Award", "Chinese Drama Festival" Excellent Repertoire Award" and so on for many times. (Text/Photo Xiamen Gezai Opera Study Center)