Image source of "Relict Green Flower" performed by Mou Yuandi / China Peking Opera Art Foundation
"Five Flowers Cave" Yu Lianquan as Pan Jinlian courtesy photo / Zhang Jingshan
"Little Cow Herding" Yu Lianquan as Village Girl Courtesy Photo / Zhang Jingshan ◎ The water is overflowing
The scale of Peking Opera's acting is divided into "big drama" and "small drama", "small drama" often refers to single-fold plays or smaller folding plays, the performance time is short, usually half an hour to an hour, the plot is simple, and there are not many roles and trades.
The word "child" is added after the word "little drama", and the meaning seems to become different again. "Little drama" is a colloquial language, which used to refer to the play performed by Tong Ling, but with the advancement of time, "small drama" has an aesthetic understanding. In addition to the meaning of "small drama", "small drama" is often close to life, easy to understand, fun, interesting and joyful - in short, "small drama" can have "daddy taste", but "small drama" must not have.
Recently, Mou Yuandi, a young actor and teacher of the Xiqu School affiliated to the Shanghai Theater Academy, performed "The Remaining Green Flower" at the Mei Lanfang Grand Theatre, which is a typical "small play".
How "small" is this play? In Tao Junqi's "Preliminary Investigation of Peking Opera Repertoire", it is written that the four people in the play, in addition to The name of Ya Gui Cuixiang, the names of the scholar and the miss are only replaced by "so-and-so", and the mother of the miss does not even have a name. This also shows the simplicity of the story: the young lady and the scholar met and fell in love at first sight, and the young lady deliberately left a jade flower for the student. The scholar became ill with each other, and the young lady's maid Cuixiang passed the book between the young lady and the scholar, and hooked up with the scholar to secretly run to the boudoir to meet the young lady. Not wanting to be discovered by the young lady's mother, the old lady asked the scholar to marry the young lady after taking the meritorious name, and gave the scholar silver two through Cuixiang.
As a traditional old drama, although it has not been staged for a long time, its narrative mode is not cold, whether it is "Huatian Mistake" or "Red Lady", there are plots in which Ya Gui secretly communicates with misses and scholars, and completes the plot of "upright gentleman" good things into pairs. If you just look at the story, it is obvious that "Flower Field Mistake" and "Red Lady" are more tortuous and complex, far better than "The Remaining Green Flower".
But at this time, it is also difficult to show the characteristics of "small drama". Watching this kind of drama, the first thing that naturally bears the brunt is the performance of the actors.
Hua Dan's recitation and kung fu are the selling points of this play. According to the "History of Chinese Peking Opera (Middle Volume)", the young Yu Lianquan was temporarily "drilling the pot" to perform the Cuixiang in "The Relic of Cuihua" before being admitted to fulian cheng's class, and Xiao Changhua also gave him a commemorative stage name - Xiao Cuihua (in the book "Yu Lianquan Huadan Performing Arts", it is recorded that Lianquan entered the Fulian Cheng sitting section in the second year of the Republic of China, that is, in 1913).
What would the teenage Yu Lianquan look like when he performed this play? I'm afraid no one alive has ever seen it. But imagine that an adolescent child who is not deeply involved in the world has insufficient artistic experience, but is gifted and practices hard, strictly following the basic skills of Hua Dan's behavior, and presenting it in the way of a child playing a child. At that time, I am afraid that I did not have much understanding of the characters.
But In 2021, Mou Yuandi is no longer a child who has not been deeply involved in the world, and he needs to analyze the similarities and differences between Cui Xiang and the Red Lady and Chunlan in "Flower Field Mistake" in a simple story. If you only rely on the story of "The Remains of Cuihua", it is actually difficult to determine the personality characteristics of Cuixiang, and it is necessary to put her in traditional society and compare and analyze the image of the beard in other plays. The girl who can take the initiative to introduce the object to the young lady and say that the matchmaker pulls the fiber will not be a little girl who does not understand "personnel", and has social experience and understands the sophistication of human feelings. In addition, how many rich people in the old society had culture? I'm afraid that there are not many girls like Chun Xiang in "Peony Pavilion" who can accompany the young lady to read and make trouble. Therefore, if such a mane is acted into a small cute with a small mouth and no city, it is a bit vulgar.
Mu Yuandi played cuixiang, the character as a whole still takes the cute route, the strength of the white, the handling of the body, the pungent energy, the sophistication of the momentum is insufficient, perhaps the state of the day, the performance is somewhat unable to let go, always a little thirsty.
As Hua Dan's pawn play, the "seesaw gong" in this play is naturally also "a sale". Through the performance, it can be seen that Mou Yuandi has invested and paid in the training of stilt skills, but with the increase of age and the change of posture, the image of him stepping on stilts is not comfortable, and the visual contrast between his legs and stilts is too large. Although many movements are in place, Cui Xiang is not like a three-inch golden lotus girl, but like a young man wearing high heels.
In the past, Huadan stilts originated from women's foot binding in life, and later abolished stilts because everyone recognized the destruction of women by foot binding, and now people's controversy stems from the confusion of tradition and modernity, aesthetics and morality. But the times are always moving forward, today's real life has no three-inch golden lotus stage, the audience's attention to the stilt gong is probably more curious than aesthetic, let alone resonant. In addition, in contemporary opera education, there is no special training for actors from an early age, and the actor's use of stilt skills cannot reach the realm of nature at all, and it is even more impossible to satisfy the appreciation of beauty.
There is a misconception that it is difficult to practice stilts, so it is "valuable". But in fact, it is far more difficult not to borrow things than to borrow things, and the kind of light steps that come out after the waste of stilts in Lianquan looks easy, but in fact it is light, and the difficulty of achieving this effect is far more difficult than the stilt work.
Although the stilt skill has no real life foundation today, it is not impossible to retain, it can be used as a practice, or it can be combined with the character of the character, so that it becomes an extension of the character' personality, not just the display of the skill. For example, some snarky, beautiful or narrow-minded female characters with stilts will perfectly combine personality and skill display.
Frankly speaking, only from the performance of the performance on the day, if Mou Yuandi has deficiencies, the first thing is not the understanding of Peking Opera and the industry, but the understanding and selection of life, so that this role has less fireworks. Even so, the performance scene of the day was really hot. Fans, insiders or acquaintances who have cut off the horns, many ordinary audiences, whether yellow-haired or haired, are full of belly and applause.
The plot and lyrics of "Left Behind Green Flower" are far less ridiculous than "Double Back Stool", "A Piece of Cloth", "Hitting a Knife", "Playing a Lever", and the opera skills have not reached the difficulty of "Little Cow Herding" and "Little Grave", but the audience still likes it so much, the key is that the repertoire text itself is close to life: the language of life, the contradictions and conflicts of life, the plot that does not need to think too much as long as it is brought into life a little to get resonance, let people laugh for it, applaud it.
As long as a play is stained with a little breath of life, as long as there is a room for people to relax, it can be welcomed by the audience. But we are too short of such works, and even more lack such creative concepts and attitudes.
For a long time, opera creation likes to talk about "big", even if it is a small play, it also likes to say that "small drama is not small", accustomed to standing on a "high place" to educate people with opera works, deliberately building a wall between the stage and the audience, but opera does not have the concept of "wall".
The advanced embodiment of Chinese opera is that it can always connect with the present, rather than the plot required by the script, if Mou Yuandi says "yyds" or "absolutely desperate" in "The Remaining Cuihua", it will not cause scolding - let the ancients say modern words and joke about modern people, this seemingly unreasonable is the biggest rationality of Chinese opera. Today, however, it is difficult to see in those big plays, in those small plays.
Luckily, we have a lot of "little plays" – ones that have been preserved and are waiting to be excavated. Perhaps, constantly seeking and expressing this connection between the ancient and the present is the practical significance of the repetition of the old drama.