The Paper's reporter Pan Yu
The movie "Love Myth" that tells "Shanghai gossip" swept the whole New Year, and the whole Shanghainese drama "Blossoms" was also difficult to find, and the art works interpreted in the Shanghai dialect became a boom for a while. From February 9 to 14 this year, another Shanghainese version of the drama "Thunderstorm" will be staged at the China Grand Theatre in Shanghai. Turning over the list of creators, the main actor of this drama is Hua Wen, an award-winning Shanghai opera performance artist. The performance team is the Shanghai Baoshan Shanghai Opera Troupe, which is famous throughout the country for the play "Picking the Mountain Woman".
At the same time as the creation and rehearsal of "Thunderstorm", the movie "Love Myth" caught fire. After watching the movie, Hua Wen once again felt the charm of Shanghainese dialogue and the importance of Shanghainese dialect in the city. "We Shanghai opera is the voice of Shanghai, and it is also our responsibility to spread and inherit The Shanghainese language."
Stills are provided by the organizers
A Shanghai opera troupe wants to perform dialect dramas? Is it "crunching" or another pursuit. In the tense interval between rehearsals, Hua Wen, as the head of the Baoshan Shanghai Opera Troupe, talked to reporters about the original intention and idea of trying to take this step.
The idea of doing the Shanghainese drama "Thunderstorm" first began with the popularity of the drama "Blossoms". This drama, which interprets the story of Shanghai in Shanghainese, has been performed for two consecutive seasons, and the performance scene, most of the audience seats are young people, and the atmosphere is warm. That night, Xu Peilin, a veteran acting agent who has worked with Hua wen for many years, walked out of the theater of "Blossoms" and called Hua Wen late at night, "Do you want us to try it too, and use the Shanghainese you are most familiar with to perform a drama work."
At that time, Hua Wen had also been thinking about the future of Shanghai opera and her own troupe. She is worried about the increasing weakness of Shanghai opera and even local opera in the box office market. In the current relatively stable living environment, many young actors in the troupe no longer have artistic initiative. Most importantly, now, there are fewer and fewer young people who can speak Shanghainese, if they don't speak Shanghainese, how can they buy tickets to enter the theater to watch Shanghai opera?
Hua Wen feels that trying Shanghainese drama is not a "break".
"We want to start with the classic works, Mr. Cao Yu's "Thunderstorm" we are all familiar with, using Shanghainese to perform dramas, first, we can test the waters of the market, let everyone feel the market outside shanghai opera; second, also use drama to do performance training for our actors; and then there is a point, if this drama can finally lead to more audiences for Shanghai opera, and trigger the thinking of the entire Shanghai opera and opera circle, then I think it is not a little contribution to this kind of drama."
However, rehearsing dramas in the Shanghainese dialect that is used every day and is best at is not as simple and easy as Hua Wen and the Shanghai Opera Troupe actors think.
To abandon everyone's habit of Shanghai opera and speak lines in Shanghainese, many actors can 'not come back'. For example, Lu Shuping has a line, "It is fate, it is unfair fate that directs me to come." The word "fate", Shanghai opera actors generally drag the long tone of the opera recitation, but director Wu Wencong asked everyone to speak in a normal tone, short and powerful, and practiced for a long time before it was applied.
For another example, the "four" character of Si Feng, the pronunciation method used to in Shanghai opera, is different from the daily pronunciation method of Shanghainese, and everyone has been arguing for a long time, and they are still studying that kind of pronunciation method is more suitable for drama performance.
Without the performance means that opera actors rely on most, "singing cavity", many actors have said that they always feel that something is missing on stage, "Only lines, how to act?" ”
The rehearsal process is a process of shattering and reshaping, but also a re-examination of her own art, Hua Wen found more during the period that rehearsing and creating a drama is not a good performance training and experience for young actors.
The crew invited two senior Shanghainese anchors Zhu Xinling and Wang Yan to "translate the script in Shanghainese", and after all the recordings were completed, the crew followed the lines. Although there is no Shanghai opera singing voice, Hua Wen still invited the composer Ru Jinshan to compose the music in the play, and specially found a sound design that is rarely used in traditional Shanghai opera. Although the budget for clothing is not high, and there is only one outfit per character, she requires costume designers studying in the UK to be extremely beautiful and fit the character.
In this drama, Hua Wen herself will play The Prosperity. As a Shanghainese opera actress, Hua Wen has won almost all the performing arts awards, including the Plum Blossom Award, but starring in a drama is the first time in her life for her to retire in a year or two.
Lu Gui
The budget for the Shanghainese version of "Thunderstorm" is not much, Hua Wen said, "We just want to try it first." Thinking of danger in times of peace is not a bad thing for the survival of the troupe. If we succeed, we can continue to do more work. ”
When Cao Yu's daughter Wan Fang authorized the script copyright to the troupe, she was full of curiosity and expectation, and said that she must come to see the performance when the time came: "My father's "Thunderstorm" has never had a drama version in Shanghai dialect. ”
Responsible Editor: Liang Jia Photo Editor: Shen Ke
Proofreader: Yan Zhang