"Everything for Drama"
Wang Keran niu meng
Published by Guangxi Normal University Press
How did a good play come about? What is a theatre producer? How to open up the theater market? ......
This book shares the work method and theater concept of Wang Keran, a representative producer in the Chinese stage field for more than ten years. From multiple angles such as how to view the relationship between the audience and the stage, how to deal with the cast and crew, combined with the creation examples of important theatrical works such as "Dream like a Dream", "Jewish Town", "Thunderstorm", "After Thunderstorm", supplemented by a large number of stills and pictures of the scene of the creation and rehearsal, the book analyzes the professional qualities that theater producers should have, lists the work skills worth learning, tells the behind-the-scenes stories of many actors and directors, and expresses the cognition and expectations of the Chinese theater market.
Watching theater is becoming a way of life, and for theater people, the last full stop of the work is painted on the applause of the audience.
Stills from the Yanghua version of "Like a Dream" (photo by Prince)
About the Author:
Wang Keran
Founder, artistic director and general manager of Beijing Yanghua Times Cultural Development Co., Ltd., he was named one of the "Top Ten Theatrical Influence Producers in China" by the Beijing News, and was awarded the "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts and Literatures of France" in 2021. More than 50 theatrical works have been planned, produced and put on the market, with more than 2,500 performances, including "Jewish Town", "Love Letters", "New Fields", "Dreams like a Dream", "Thunderstorm", "Thunderstorm", "Thunderstorm", "Thunderstorm", " after" and other excellent plays.
Wang Keran rehearsed before the premiere of the Yanghua version of "Like a Dream" in Wuhan
Cow cute
He has a master's degree in film studies from Beijing Normal University, served as a film reporter for the Beijing News and Vista Look at the World, the head of corporate communications in Greater China of the Film Association of America (MPA), the editor-in-chief of App content, and is now working at the Wudaokou School of Finance of Tsinghua University.
Stills from the youth version of "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden"
What is drama and what is drama?
Jia Xingjia
That year, I went to Yungang to see the stone statue, and like most tourists, I was oppressed to tears by the vast shapes and colors, not an aesthetic impulse, but a pure physiological reaction. There was only one loose sneer, because I couldn't understand how those few tourists from decades ago could have carved their names so high, and the scenic spot had put a cover for them. Their feelings of being thieves may be similar to those of me now: the more ashamed they are, the more eager they are to be in something larger and more permanent. I have received the grace of drama, and I have actually touched the glory of a theater man.
Of course, the value of "Everything for Drama" belongs first and foremost to the person who makes the play—sorry, "theater making" is a word I coined, because there are completely different theater views and methods in the book, and I hope that this strange word will draw your attention to these contents—especially for young people who are determined to make a play. After staying in an industry for a long time, it is inevitable to mix circles and portals, calculate the stakes, and continue to rationalize absurd things, just like the frightening admonition in the book, "'Sincerity' is trained." In our sad everyday vocabulary, it's called "maturity."
If young people who simply embrace the impulse of drama, young people like Wang Keran so far in the year, can put this book on the desk, turn it around often, and know how to make the play little by little (for example, the fourth chapter even tells you how to communicate with the director), it will make the audience feel hopeful.
In the past, learning art was to find a few words in the world, like finding a few lights in the wasteland of the night. I guess that these words in the book, even if you read them well, you will have to make mistakes yourself in the future to understand, but if you don't read them today, you don't know if you are wrong at that time. There are some books that we read as early as possible, so that we can only have a chance to reread them when we remember the regrets of our lives.
Stills of "Winter Journey" (photo by Yan Nan)
The second value belongs to those of me who are outside the industry. I watch very few plays, the most of which is to watch the plays under the blue side of "Yanghua Drama". The value of my layman is to know what the public does not know, for example, when we watch Yanghua's play, we find that the daily scene is not as touching as the scene in the dream, the image in front of me has no memory of the image condensation, and the days off the stage are not as real as the days on the stage.
When I watch Yang Hua's plays, the most common question is: "Why did you decide to rehearse such a play?" ”
"Jewish Town" is a song and dance about the real events in a concentration camp in Eastern Europe. The artists who died within three months were writing poems and singing, and they set up troupes and performed the last hundred plays; the inhabitants who died within three months wore neat and decent clothes, put flowers on their chests, and called on their friends to flock to the theater to watch the play. Why is such a distant suffering, such a different attitude to suffering, playing out here today?
Producer Wang Keran replied: He wants to ask the current Chinese audience to think about "if tomorrow you will die, how will you live today?"
The most real people in the world are those who have been entangled in this kind of life and death nothingness. You read his own account in the book, from the middle school encountered drama and said to himself: "I don't know why I live if I don't do things." Drama gives me a strong incentive to live..." What we read is the life a man owes to the play.
Such a person who makes a play with his life and cares for his life with a play is qualified to answer:
What is drama?
What about drama?
Stills from "New Wilderness"
Wang Keran bypasses ancient and modern Chinese and Western, classic or avant-garde, inheritance or subversion, and lands on a "true" word: that is, the "truth" that is cold to the point of inhumanity in heaven and earth, the essential action force in human life, and is not transformed by the values and emotional systems established by any "later".
The drama goes around, but it wants to return to this root.
Looking at the "pioneer" hat that is not fresh, whether it is glory or humiliation, how many people are wrapped around, to ignore the fact mentioned in the book: the real pioneer is to answer the question correctly, open the right lock, and become the mainstream after the breakthrough.
Drama changes because the world knows the truth. When the space is full of order and meaning, the human heart is graceful, the drama is classical, and the tragedy comedy is produced; at that time, the space is made only by science to geometry and numbers, and the absurd abstraction produced is still honestly returning to reality.
Then let's look at the Yanghua version of "Ponzi Scheme". Don't dwell on the concept of "musical drama", your body sense is already in rhythm, what other music is looking for? And say it's abstract. The 20th century was a period of intense rhythm at a double speed—and the current acceleration has reached the point of fragmentation and isolation—and the place to feel that rhythm is, of course, in the United States. American writers of the same age as the originator of the scam, Pontie, have also exhausted all kinds of "postmodern" writing methods, imitating the editing and collage of news documentaries, deconstructing and parodying, and black humor. People who are not fictional cannot live, and imaginary people cannot live. Like the scam that Ponkey discovered (as if it wasn't invented), they present the true rhythm of the earth's spinning. Thus, the dramatic approach we see is to coldly strip away the set and details, stripping away the substance attached to the banknote, leaving only a group of lonely beings mad for numbers, worthy of our pity and self-pity.
The protagonist throws a dollar into the air, which coincides with the funeral customs of the Chinese, which is the paper money thrown in the last scene of "The Tea House". At the time of the funeral, the good hand can throw a stack of white money above the city tower, and when the funeral procession leaves the city, the last one will float back to the ground.
This good drama is the last piece of paper money that year fell to today. At the end of the century, we witnessed that the fire of desire burned out all the skins, leaving only a ridiculous structure. This absurdity itself has become a great truth, a great truth, a great truth, covering you and me tightly, and there is almost no way out, not to mention that you and I continue to be in the Ponzi scheme. This is the good play, the real pioneer.
Stills from "Ponzi Scheme" (photo by Guo Xiangchen)
Yanghua production, often so.
The criteria that Wang Keran mentioned in the book are all after this "true" and "true": "If you want to design, you are wrong in yourself", and creativity is to judge the background of "truth". These words are worth reading repeatedly and understanding repeatedly in the future.
However, "true" is "not to be pointed out, to the point of infinity." Seeking "truth" with drama is to chase after the universal and ontology that no one has arrived at, almost fooling people day by day, as long as people walk on this desperate road, no matter which step they fall, they have the courage to be persistent and frank, which is beautiful. Those who were called "true qi" by the ancients are also not shaken by interests and ideas, and this kind of loneliness is a painful thing, and it is also a helpless thing: "true" is placed there.
Therefore, Wang Keran said that "drama is just a plaything in the process of human development" and "it is the most shameful mistake to try to save the world with drama."
Ranking officials, then why do you come to see the play? Is it like me, wanting to pin on something bigger, to feel that I am not alone, or to be ready for thorough loneliness?
Stills of the drama "Thunderstorm" and "After the Thunderstorm" (photographed by Qi Qi)
What about drama?
This is what we will see in the descriptions, analyses, and Q&A of the later chapters.
Some people have said that traditional Chinese drama has always had a game attribute, because the world in the eyes of the ancients was continuous and transformed, and there was no breaking western civilization's opposing propositions and conflict tensions. Our ancients used to look from the side, from a high place, everything is like a game, on the pillars on both sides of the old stage, life and drama are always against each other. This is also a truth that we are in. The drama of the game is not necessarily lower than the drama of the conflict, as long as the dramatist has enough concentration and free attitude. The ancients also loved drama like life, but they lifted heavy weights on the stage, sang and played superbly, and their thoughts floated outside the play.
I always feel that this difference is a puzzle to solve when doing drama in China.
Wang Keran's theatrical approach has an answer to this, saying that today's theater people are "snoopers of the audience" and "makers of games." "Like a Dream" is not only a soothing and loving of the current soul, but also a Chinese-style game of the world that you chase after me? What he calls popular is to focus on and freely serve the world, we all live a heavy life, our hearts are floating, and the only chance to get serious is to bet on this stage game.
Rank up to see the officials, and see how the dramatist is like a businessman, a gambler, a naughty boy, a monarch, a wizard, in a shrewd, fanatical, playful, arbitrary, seductive production. They make our years still have a little temperament, a little color.
(This article is excerpted from the recommended preface IV of "Everything for Drama", with abridgements)
Author: Jia Xingjia
Editor: Zhou Yiqian