From "online and offline" to "inside and outside the play"

From "online and offline" to "inside and outside the play"

——Theater expert "Meet in Beijing" to discuss the future of theater

Guangming Daily reporter Su Liping

In the epidemic and post-epidemic era, how to deal with drama creation? How does the theater get out of trouble? At the recent "Meet in Beijing" Olympic Cultural Festival and the 22nd "Meet in Beijing" International Arts Festival Art Forum, many artists and theater managers had a heated discussion on this issue and actively contributed ideas to help Chinese theater move towards a better future.

On the evening of January 12, Suzhou Song and Dance Theater's original dance drama "Yunhe" was performed at the Beijing Tianqiao Art Center As one of the performances of the "Meet in Beijing" Olympic Cultural Festival and the 22nd "Meet in Beijing" International Arts Festival Suzhou Culture and Art Exhibition Week, it was performed at the Beijing Tianqiao Art Center. Profile picture

Online and offline, creating a "theater" experience is still crucial

Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, whether it is any kind of drama in the East and the West, it has built a sense of scene, ceremony and immersion in the theater. However, with the advent of the epidemic, many theatrical performances have been forced to change to online, which has brought more challenges to theater people.

Drama director Lai Shengchuan said: "I have been rejecting online things, theater is originally a niche, how do we become the public? When you want to turn a play into a theater for everyone in the world to see, isn't it a theater? The most precious thing is the stage and offstage, we are in the room together, breathing together, brainstorming, discussing life. What kind of theater do we need? It's about being able to connect with everyone, to be able to connect to bigger things, to a better future. ”

Song Guanlin, vice president of the China Performance Industry Association, also reminded everyone to pay attention to the content itself. "Whether it is technology empowerment or immersion, it seems to have become a trend of Chinese drama." Too much emphasis on online and neglect offline is a tendency to weaken the ontology of drama. The lines, performances, and feelings of our drama actors are the basis of life, and these things cannot be weakened because of technological empowerment and immersion. The subjective desire of the artist to create, the subjective passion of the artist to create, and the relationship between content and form, the way the actor communicates with the audience in the theater, I think this is something that can never be changed in theatrical art. Song Guanlin said.

Lin Weiran, a national first-class screenwriter and editor-in-chief of Beijing Performing Arts Group's New Script magazine, believes that online provides more opportunities for young people. "The young screenwriter talent training program we undertaken, while training nearly 30 young and middle-aged playwrights in the first half of this year, did a 48-hour creative workshop, the purpose of which is to force the screenwriters to cooperate with each other within 48 hours, come up with a work, and exercise their ability to react quickly." In the process, we have seen 1.8 million online views of all courses and 300,000 online viewers of workshops, which we did not dare to think about before. ”

Although controversial, it is difficult to deny that the offline experience and online dissemination of drama will become the norm for a considerable period of time.

Service drama, technology empowerment must find a point of convergence

"In the present, how can we make people feel more of the power of drama in the future? I think the Internet is an imperative platform. Tian Qinxin, director of the National Theatre of China, believes that at present, dramatists need to iteratively upgrade the drama on the basis of guarding the original intention of the drama, so that the drama can try its best to achieve overtaking in curves or changing lanes.

"When symphonies, ballets, etc. are displayed to the audience online through the Internet, or according to the original traditional TV shooting method, the camera positions are flat, and they are directly played after filming, which makes the audience not as good as seeing it on the spot, and the audience's sense of gain and happiness online is missing." Our theater is currently actively cooperating with various scientific and technological talents, and will create an updated digital theater, allowing the audience to get the dual pleasure of offline performances and online performances. ”

Recently, Mandarin signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Unicom and Huawei to jointly build the first 5G smart theater in China. Mandarin's new work "Red Starting Point" adopts the way of VR continuous screen; the drama "Live Broadcasting of the Founding Ceremony" adopts the method of instant shooting; the first original public security drama "Hero Era" in Mandarin is also the first high-definition video drama work, which will become a new attempt at the integration of double performances. "Technology has brought some changes to the production and presentation of the drama stage, and it will also change the development and future of the theater. At present, Mandarin is actively trying to integrate drama and new technology, exploring drama line staging system, high-definition drama video works, drama derivatives and network products, and preparing for digital theater. ”

Director Yip Kam Tim has a special love for lighting, he said: "I have done a lot of stage, there is a time period that is difficult to forget, that is, when the light comes on, the lights shine on you, there are thousands of spectators looking at you, focusing on you, there is a very divine power." ”

But some experts believe that we should not rely too much on modern technology. Weng Shihui, an international theatre producer and former producer of Royal Shakespeare, said that if the presentation on the stage is particularly fresh and can make the audience feel and touch their hearts, this is a beneficial attempt. The combination of technology and drama is very interesting if the core point can be found, and if it cannot be found, it is "burning money".

Explore and try to dig deeper into the rich local mines

For the theater, the introduction of foreign classics can ensure the box office, but under the epidemic, only by attaching importance to originality and excavating local riches can we play our own brand.

Shanghai Culture Square is famous for making musicals, and its deputy general manager and senior musical theater personality Fei Yuanhong believes that the exploration of musical theater is taking many roads at the same time, "but I have come to realize more and more that China must dare to take the road of musical theater with Chinese characteristics, and we have our own responsibility." One of our self-made musicals, "Letters from Fans", was recently premiered, and another "Romeo and Juliet" was cancelled for one day in Shenzhen due to the epidemic. Under the influence of the epidemic, everyone has been walking on thin ice, but it is still continuing to speak out."

The original works of the Gulou West Theater have gradually become a scale, and Li Yangduo, the founder of the theater, the theater producer and producer, told reporters that since 2018, the Gulou West Theater has begun to transform the domestic contemporary classic literary works into the drama works of the grand theater. "Since then, we have begun to cooperate with the writer Liu Zhenyun to adapt his works "One Sentence Top 10,000 Sentences" and "I Am Not Pan Jinlian", including his latest work "One Day, Three Autumns", which we are already in the preliminary preparations."

Cao Lusheng, a professor at the Shanghai Theater Academy, is fond of dialect drama and believes that dialect is a rich mine in the mainland. "The use of dialects can bring texture to the performance, and the "Blossoms" interpreted in Shanghainese is difficult to find, which is a work that truly expresses the lives of ordinary people in Shanghai." Including "White Deer Plain", performed in the modified Shaanxi dialect, the audience can basically understand, only in this way can the emotions of ordinary people in Shaanxi be expressed. ”

Guangming Daily ( 2022-01-19 09 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily