With the burlesque play "Lane In the Hall" performed on the Stage of Heavenly Toad Yifu tonight, the 7th Shanghai International Comedy Festival of 2021 came to a happy end. Since its opening, 38 days, 41 performances, a total of 329 in-festival performances have created the "Happy Peak" of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival, and a series of comedy performances and activities with temperature have been staged in the "Performing Arts World", making the winter Shanghai at the end of the year full of harmony and laughter.
Local original power wins word of mouth, and Haipai comically tells the "Shanghai story" well
Although overseas performances are still absent due to the impact of the epidemic, Chinese local comedies are poised to develop. This year, they sang the "protagonists" of the comedy festival stage. Chen Peisi's opening play "Frightening Dreams" set a record of one hour of ticket sales and a box office of more than one million, and the applause of the audience at the premiere site was endless. A colorful picture of life and survival is presented in front of the eyes, and the intertwined plot of tragedy and joy, the unique theatrical aesthetics, and the poetic texture stage make the audience fully immersed in the fate of the characters in the play.
The clown play "Player One" combined with the mime is a good performance, and the audience is driven by the actors to shuttle through several different dreams and experience the adult fairy tales that are missing in real life.
The children's drama "The Adventures of the Dirty King", which was authorized by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, was also popular with parents and children. In the play, the choreography, costumes, and props have restored a large number of contents in the animation, and the cartoons familiar to them as children are vividly presented on the stage, and parents accompany their children to watch at the same time, but also pick up a wave of "memory killing" by the way.
The "New Joyful Clown Carnival" created by the CCTV star clown team gathered many strange clowns, funny and funny, and once again filled the joyful atmosphere of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival.
While increasing the excavation of new local comedy forces, the Shanghai International Comedy Festival also pays attention to the inheritance of the intangible cultural heritage of Haipai burlesque.
As the finale of the closing drama of this Shanghai International Comedy Festival, "Lane In the Direction" is the original burlesque play of Shanghai Burlesque Troupe, and it is also a key creative repertoire of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China in 2019. The play takes the ordinary life of several families in an old Shanghai alley as the background wall, depicting the cold and warm of human feelings in the changing times. College entrance examination fever, going abroad fever, going to the sea fever, demolition fever... The "hot words" in it are like a key, opening the "Shanghai memory" in the audience's mind. The vicissitudes of the times are intertwined with the dreams of ordinary people for many years, and under the laughter, tears are full of tears, which triggers many sighs from the audience.
"The Voice of Shanghai" also focuses on excavating the memory of Shanghai, depicting the faces of all beings of the times through the ups and downs of the fate of an individual character, evoking the deep memories cherished in people's hearts, and taking the audience to immerse themselves in the "collective nostalgia" of the theater.
Use the embryo of drama and the passage of burlesque drama to take the road of new comedy. The shanghai local burlesque troupe vividly and vividly shows the Shanghai characters, The Style of Shanghai School, and has walked out of its own path in telling the "Shanghai Story". The other two burlesque plays of the Shanghai Burlesque Troupe that reflect the contemporary life of Shanghainese, "The Emperor Don't Be Anxious Eunuchs" and "Oh Daddy", have been performed 17 times on the People's Grand Stage and the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and are also loved by the audience.
More new comedy scenes "unlocked" in the city
The boundaries of contemporary comedy are constantly expanding, and watching talk shows offline is becoming a way of life for urban young people, and talk show performance groups are mushrooming everywhere. The "new wave of comedy" should be born of the "tide", as the talk show section of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival, it has been upgraded this year. It has gathered 12 well-known talk shows and improv comedy teams in Shanghai, such as the Magic City Improv Troupe, Owl Comedy, Lehe Comedy, Hahaland, June 66 Comedy, and Tangerine Comedy, to "show" their masterpieces in Shanghai.
From December 3 to 5, 14 talk show labels and 17 individual stand-up show players from all over the country officially opened the first "Gathering and Team Battle National Talk Show Club Team Competition" at Duoyun Academy Drama Shop and Owl Comedy Bazaar. Changing the previous single-player model, with the label as the unit, the group PK was carried out, and the audience witnessed the strongest competition of these domestic talk show labels at the competition site. After three days of fierce competition, the "Laughing Comedy" from Luoyang won the championship, the "More Than Comedy" from Kunming won the runner-up, the "Miscellaneous Sauce Troupe" from the single-player competition group and the new label from Shanghai, Hi-Oh Comedy, won the third place.
The competition aims to build a platform for the majority of talk show actors to communicate and learn, and the award-winning team "Group Debut" will also carry out in-depth cooperation with the Shanghai International Comedy Festival in the future.
Stepping out of the theater, comedy will also permeate the corners of life. The comedy festival links the public spaces of the huangpu district business district such as TX Plaza on Huaihai Road, Asia Tower, Henderson Celebrity Plaza, World Trade Center, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, Shanghai Plaza and other popular cities to "punch in", combining young comedy and life scenes, and bringing a more life-like and interesting consumer experience through cross-border linkage with tourism and business circles.
"We love acting", Zuo Wen Right Ge Troupe, Xiaomi Encounter, Xiao Ya Theater Troupe rehearsed a variety of original public welfare performances in the Huangpu District new performing arts space, business district, so that the public have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the ocean of comedy and joy. The organizing committee also planned a number of crew meetings and post-performance talks, so that the audience could learn more about the wonderful behind-the-scenes stories.
The Shanghai International Comedy Festival, in conjunction with Duoyun Academy, Drama Shop, Reader Bookstore, Neili Department Store, etc., invited Drama directors, screenwriters and producers such as Shi Yan, Wang Danqing, Wu Xiaowen, Xu Minjie, etc., and carried out the "Low IQ Crime" and "Trap" crew creation sharing meeting through forums, lectures and workshops to talk about the comedy trend at home and abroad.
Comedy is life, and life is comedy. When comedy becomes a way of life, more young people and urban people are approaching comedy and falling in love with comedy.
It is reported that the 8th Shanghai International Comedy Festival in 2022 will be held from November 18 to December 31 next year, at which time, it will continue to take the "Big World of Performing Arts" as the core activity area, platform aggregation of high-quality and unique comedy content, through online and offline layout, cross-border integration and other ways, the comedy shockwave will radiate to the city blocks, and build a new domestic comedy ecology.
Yu Rongjun, director of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival and vice president of Shanghai Wenguang Performing Arts Group, said that the Shanghai International Comedy Festival has been held for three years and is committed to making this comedy event a "top ten characteristic activities of Shanghai culture". In the future, the Shanghai International Comedy Festival will further link up top artists of multiple styles, relying on the theater groups and performing arts resources of the World of Performing Arts, select more international trend comedies, cultivate more local comedy rookies, incubate more new comedies, and build a more vigorous comedy ecology.
Stills courtesy of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival
Author: Tong Weijing
Editor: Wang Xiaoli