When it comes to the new modern drama of Peking Opera, there is always a lot of controversy, mixed praise and criticism. In recent years, there have been many such new works on the stage, but most of the fans have a special love for traditional plays, not that they are "eating the ancient", in the end, there are too few successful works in the new screenwriters. Of course, this does not mean that this kind of subject matter is absolutely difficult to shine, the key is to see whether the level of "new editing" is online. A few days ago, the Peking Opera "Big Mansion Gate" created and rehearsed by the Beijing Opera House was unveiled at the Shandong Provincial Capital Grand Theater. This drama condenses the 70-year Beijing drama of director Guo Baochang and gathers three generations of outstanding creators in the Peking Opera industry, realizes the creative combination of Peking Opera and the big IP of film and television, completes the transmission and rebellion of traditional drama, and also wins the unanimous recognition and applause of the audience. While the industry regards it as an excellent sample of the exploration and practice of the marketization of Peking Opera, perhaps its greater value lies in the possibility of people seeing the intersection of traditional arts and modern trends in the theater and blooming with greater charm.
"'The Gate of the Big Mansion' is a Peking Opera for young people. Our forms of expression should not be facialized, but should be from the perspective and posture of young people, and interpret operas suitable for all ages to audiences of all ages. Li Zhuoqun, the screenwriter and director of the play, said in an interview with this reporter before the performance.
Renovating the "Divine Drama", the Peking Opera interpretation has advantages
The TV series "The Gate of the Great Mansion" is undoubtedly a "divine drama". The play tells the history of the rise and fall of the century-old "Hundred Grass Hall" medicine shop and the enmity of three generations of the pharmaceutical family Baifu. The drama has both historical vision and family and country feelings, the shaping of Bai Wenshi, Bai Jingqi, Yang Jiuhong and other characters is particularly vivid, the story is wonderful, after the CCTV hit in 2001, it has been rebroadcast in various David TV countries for consecutive years, and the fire has spread all over the country. To "Peking Opera" such a well-known classic film and television work not only means condensing more than 70 episodes of TV series on a two-hour and one-sided stage, but also having to tell this classic story in a way that is both in line with the original and full of novelty, so that fans and fans of the drama can be satisfied. The difficulty of completing this creation can be imagined. Li Zhuoqun finally locked the main story line of the Peking Opera version on the love entanglement between Bai Jingqi and Yang Jiuhong, the seventh young master of the Bai family, and intercepted the chapters around 1906 in the TV drama version, telling the story of Yang Jiuhong, the flower queen of Jinan Province, who met Bai Jingqi by chance, fell in love at first sight and redeemed himself to follow, although he faced injustice, it was difficult to enter the tragic life of the mansion.
"The story structure of the first draft is very grand, and then inspired by Teacher Guo Baochang, I decided to cut in from the perspective of Yang Jiuhong, who had never entered the door of the mansion, and it was a different scenery to look at the door of the mansion from outside the house door," Li Zhuoqun said, "At first, I did not dare to write Yang Jiuhong as a female number one, and I always felt that I had to be a figure like the second grandmother." Therefore, the first version of the adapted script is still a big male protagonist, Guo Baochang said after reading this is too mediocre, if you just want to set up such a role, greedy for perfection, then do not look for you, do not look for a young team, hope to be able to find another way, find a unique perspective. He said that after the TV series was broadcast, there was a questionnaire survey, most of the girls liked Bai Jingqi, the elders preferred the second grandmother, and the whole Chinese people liked Yang Jiuhong and had compassion for her. On the traditional opera stage, there are also many classic female figures from the Qinglou, such as Li Xiangjun, YutangChun, Liang Hongyu, Du Shiniang, etc., but they have ambition and wind bones, and still win everyone's love and respect. In the play "The Gate of the Big House", teacher Guo Baochang analyzed that no matter whether he was born lowly or noble, as an artistic image, Yang Jiuhong is very suitable for moving on the stage, which also wakes us up. Therefore, the entry point of this play is the rebellion of Bai Jingqi and Yang Jiuhong, two young people, against the feudal patriarchal system. ”
This play is not an adaptation in the full sense, but a Peking opera renovation based on the original work. The flesh-and-blood character settings and complex psychological changes of struggle have become the highlights of the Peking Opera "The Gate of the Big Mansion". The Peking Opera stage has always pursued to show the ups and downs in the minimalist narrative space, Li Zhuoqun is good at filling the stage with delicate artistic language, showing fierce contradictions and conflicts, these characteristics blend and collide, making the performance personality prominent and distinct - the relatively rare open-ended ending on the opera stage, not deliberately carved to achieve the script lyrics of "seeing elegance in customs, appreciating elegance and customs", combining the original melody of the TV series and the traditional singing voice of Peking Opera... This gives traditional opera a strong modern style.
"The audience can feel the sadness and joy of the characters face to face, which is the biggest advantage of the Peking Opera version." Li Zhuoqun said that opera on the stage is a process of dream-making, many of the subtle performances that are not reflected in the language of the lens, but also because the Peking opera actors are face-to-face with the audience to perform and reflect more profoundly, the actors through the peking opera traditional four skills and five methods (singing, reading, doing, playing, hand, eye, body, law, step), so that "The Gate of the Great Mansion" on the opera stage than in the TV drama lens more in line with China's most traditional classical beauty. Counting white and black, three or five people are a dynasty, seven or eight steps is to walk all over the world, so although this play takes love as the entry point, its radiation surface is still relatively wide.
"God's manipulation" makes people drop their jaws
Why make such a new choreography? Among them, there is Guo Baochang's Beijing plot ending. "The Gate of the Great Mansion" is about Guo Baochang's familiar growth experience and Beijing's life. In the process of creating rehearsals and touring, he has repeatedly said that the creation of the Peking Opera version is the "worry that he has not been able to put down in his heart", and even when he first wrote "The Great Mansion Gate", he did not want to make it into a TV series, in his heart, Peking Opera is the destination of "The Great Mansion Gate".
Why look for "post-80s" Li Zhuoqun to adapt? Or from Guo Baochang. He saw Li Zhuoqun's famous work, the Peking Opera "Xi Jiao" in the small theater. It is a "phenomenon-level" small theater work launched by Li Zhuoqun's team in 2013, which highlights genres, extends the industry, and innovates the program with traditional Peking opera techniques such as one table and two chairs, singing and playing, and interprets the strange passages in the classical masterpiece "Water Margin" to modern urban audiences. In the play, Yan Xijiao stomped on stilts throughout the whole process, and the three-inch golden lotus was charming and light, and the Danjiao performance skills that had been sealed for decades were closely recreated on the Peking Opera stage. This drama made Guo Baochang's eyes bright, and after watching Li Zhuoqun's "Nian Yu Guanyin" and "Spring Feast" and other works, he found that the consistent style of the "post-80s" female director was to "rebel against tradition on the basis of inheriting tradition", and decided to hand over "The Gate of the Big House" to Li Zhuoqun's team to do.
At that time, Li Zhuoqun debuted not long ago, and it was pressure and motivation to have such an opportunity. "If there is a voice saying that such a good drama, how the audience does not watch it now, I think, the first thing to review is that we are, we did not let them see, we did not do well enough." 」 Li Zhuoqun said.
Therefore, when creating "The Gate of the Big House", she and her team started from the perspective of contemporary young people and broke the "dimensional wall" between traditional opera and young audiences with new forms of expression. Not only has there been a breakthrough in the script and singing voice, but also a lot of effort has been made in the interpretation and presentation. For example, the play invited Lan Ling, a national treasure stage design master, and her daughter, Zhang Ying, a national first-class stage designer, to jointly create the costume modeling of the play, referring to a large number of historical materials of the image of "Qing Han women", and then through the process of opera, combined with the traditional Peking Opera costume shape, the costume elements of the late Qing Dynasty and the contemporary aesthetic trend, presenting the exquisite appearance seen by the audience today. "All the costumes are very precious, like the second grandmother has a set of black costumes, that is heavy hand embroidery, found the best embroidery lady in Suzhou and Hangzhou to make, when the actors put it on that day, the sun is about to set, but I feel that the clothes seem to be shining, the effect of hand embroidery and machine embroidery under the stage lighting is completely different, which is also the charm of intangible heritage." In the play, Bai Jingqi has a lot of hair, long braids, and there are many performances about braids on the stage, so we use a lot of high-quality real hair, for this play is really no cost. Li Zhuoqun introduced.
Peking opera "Big Mansion Gate" also integrates song and dance elements, on the basis of Peking Opera music to add Kunqu opera and TV series soundtrack melody, dance can see the shadow of modern ballet and tango, good sister band also for the Peking Opera "Big Mansion Gate" to create, promote the opera song "Rare Lovers in the World" ... "The art method of Peking Opera is somewhat similar to Disney's animated films, most of the stories are simple, but the plot and characters are very full, filled with song and dance, as long as it is reasonable and appropriate, it is not indispensable. Li Zhuoqun thinks.
This series of "god operations" that make people "shocked off their jaws" make Peking Opera become "tide", and even fire out of the circle, the premiere won praise, the audience praised it, refreshing the box office record for the premiere of newly compiled opera in recent years, and the proportion of young people in the audience was as high as 75%. The team has also done statistical surveys, and even one-third of them are "non-fan groups", which even includes audiences who learn from the songs of the good sister band and then buy tickets to watch the show. "The aesthetic perspective of the post-90s and post-00s deserves to be valued, and they can become the main consumers of traditional art." Moreover, opera has the saying of 'three degrees of creation'. One degree of creation is a script, the second degree of creation is performance and stage creation, and the third degree of creation is completed by the audience. I hope that young audiences can participate more in the three degrees of creation, form their own unique understanding and experience, and promote the often new performance of "The Gate of the Big House". Li Zhuoqun said.
"Find it first, then buy a ticket, sit still, come back"
Does traditional culture and high art not need market operation? Of course not, the wine aroma is also afraid of the deep alley. In today's increasingly diversified cultural consumption, Peking Opera has become a very necessary task to put down the "figure" of self-congratulation and to promote marketing. The box office of Peking Opera "Big Mansion Gate" is gratifying, thanks to its market-leading and operational-leading creative model. The production of the play is a "tailor-made" after a lot of market research and preliminary preparation, with accurate market positioning and performance operation goals. They're just going to make a "play for young people."
This kind of exploration is being carried out in depth when Li Zhuoqun creates small theater operas in recent years. "The market for modern young people is not so optimistic as imagined, many people hear the two words of Peking Opera, that is, they refuse, is it really Peking Opera that is not good? Is Peking Opera worthless? Winning a wider audience for opera is our original intention in developing small theater opera. 'Guang' is the 'cause' of small theater opera, and it is also the 'effect' we expect. How to have a more 'broad' audience? Like the 12 words I often say – find first, then buy a ticket, sit still, come back. If you want to achieve this virtuous circle, you must face up to the necessity of promotion. Not only in terms of selling more tickets, promotion should be considered from the early stage of creation: where there are points of applause from the audience, where there are different selling points, which actors can be competent, which section can be made into audio, which frame can be made into posters, and so on. All these points constitute the various factors of promotion, and only when these flash points are all gathered together, like many fireflies in a large bag, can they emit the same light as a bright light. ”
However, innovation is not a sullen head has been rushing forward, how to find a suitable balance in the inheritance of integrity and innovative development, testing the wisdom of practitioners. "If you are more traditional and slow down the pace of innovation, in the eyes of the audience, it is not to advance or retreat; but if there is too much innovation, go forward too fast, and ignore the inheritance of traditional drama, everyone will feel too radical, forget the ancestors, forget the roots." So the 'degree' is very important, you have to pinch it! Including young creators like me, there needs to be a middle ground. Taking the small theater Peking Opera as an example, doing traditional art requires the creator's aesthetic foundation to be more profound than the tradition, and it also requires that the vision, packaging, publicity and entry point are more fashionable than fashion, and at this level, meeting the performance needs of modern audiences has become a big challenge. Li Zhuoqun told reporters that the team also looked for rhythms that matched young people and modern society from the aspects of emotional concentration and narrative rhythm through watching American dramas and Korean dramas.
With the advent of the new media era, douyin, B station and other video platforms for the development of Peking opera and other operas to open a window, become a key to attract more young audiences, many Peking opera people, drama people incarnated as Internet celebrities, to show people Peking opera and other theatrical arts, of which the 416 women's troupe with Peking opera with the Peking Opera opera cover of ancient songs short video to make Peking Opera successfully break the circle, and continuously appeared on the Douyin hot list and Weibo hot search. For this kind of "short evaluation and fast" publicity, Li Zhuoqun vigorously praised: "Opera has precipitated so many traditional, aesthetic and cultural essences, and poetry and dance have been integrated to this day." Since the Chinese people can accept musicals imported, film, television, British dramas, Korean dramas, American dramas, and Thai dramas, I believe that they will certainly accept, identify with, and love the culture of their ancestors in their bones, but some people have not yet seen it, and they have not yet calmed down. Some people stand up on new media, with the identity of Peking Opera people, opera people to be seen by everyone, can show people more the beauty of opera, bring us a lot of positive traffic, let everyone pay attention to more opera culture, understand the real opera, such a promotion model is very contemporary. (Reporting by Tian Kexin, intern Wu Xiaoli and Wei Yu, a client reporter of Dazhong Daily)