Yang Ting was once the brightest star on the Chinese drama stage.
In the eyes of many theater lovers, she is an irreplaceable literary and artistic goddess, and she is the red and red of "one riot, two charms and three purity" in "Rhinoceros in Love". At the peak of her career, she graduated from the Chinese Opera Acting Department, but suddenly did not want to perform, and since 2005, she has officially become a theater director. He has successively launched many stage plays such as "Outsider", "My Sister, Anna", "Bride" and so on, becoming a female creative talent recognized by the Chinese theater industry and excellent in acting and directing. In June 2021, she co-planned the first Aranya Drama Festival with Meng Jinghui, Chen Minghao and Liu Chang, and brought the drama "Universal Robot" immersed in the sea and sand during the festival, "From Sunset to Nightfall", gathering with hundreds of dramatists, artists from music, dance, literature, architecture and other fields, as well as countless theater lovers on the Aranya Sea.
The south beach of Aranya, with the background of the sky dyed pink by the sunset and the deep blue sea, the fiddler plays on the hillocks piled up in the sand, the actors chase in the sea, rolling in the sand, and the sky darkens as the actors close. Yang Ting's new drama is a story about "love, death, and robots".
Before the interview, we gave her a propositional essay: Suppose now, you are going to direct a play, a three-act play about the life of the woman "Yang Ting". How are you going to rehearse this play, what are you going to talk about in this play?
She worries that there are no magnificent ups and downs in her life, but in fact, life is full of memorable bits and pieces. These memories of the past are stacked together, which ultimately make up what we are today and pave the way to tomorrow.
Yang Ting moved the beginning of the story to when she was four or five years old.
"It's a big theater for kids. I watched my father's play in the theater. He plays a little Ah Fei in "Sentinel under Neon Lights". I saw him just say a few words on stage before he was taken away by the police. At that time, my brother and I were sitting under the stage. At the moment when my father was taken away, I saw two children suddenly rush up from the stage, and in full view of everyone, while crying, he shouted: Don't arrest, that's my dad, don't arrest my dad, he's a good man. Then it was carried aside by the staff in an instant. ”
"Sentinel under Neon Lights" ▎
I still remember a rainy night when I was young, lightning flashed and thundered, which was frightening. She had wanted to ask her parents for comfort. But it was in this storm that my father turned off the lights and played a symphony of Beethoven at maximum volume. For a young child, this scene is both shocking and eerie.
Yang Ting is a post-70s, and in the childhood memories of the post-70s, every family has a wall calendar. "Other people's homes are tigers coming down the mountain, and ours is a world-famous painting, like the painting of Rubens or Delacroix, and there are a lot of nudes on it." My friends all said that they couldn't play in my house, saying 'their family is not serious'. ”
These fragments of memories from childhood have been buried deep inside her. Until one day a few years later, Yang Ting went to the British Museum to see the exhibition and looked at all the paintings in the exhibition hall, each of which felt very kind. It was then that I suddenly realized that they had all appeared on the wall calendar at home!
"At that time, I learned that my parents' generation had been subtly passing on some things to me in this way. The art that I did not understand at the beginning will follow in the days when life continues to move forward, so that I understand what is true beauty, and the shock and emotion brought by that beauty. ”
In 1991, despite the strong opposition of her parents, Yang Ting was admitted to the Chinese opera. The reason for the opposition is simple, his father is an old graduate of Chinese opera, and his artistic path is not smooth, and there is always some undesirable sadness. But if you think about it, doesn't the love for theater and stage in her bones stem from her father's influence on her? This is actually quite a bit of mulan's father's intention to go out on the expedition.
What many people did not expect was that in the first year of being admitted to the Chinese opera, she wanted to quit school. He wrote a letter directly to his father, saying that he was not used to performing in public. "There is a saying that learning to perform is 'liberating nature', but some people's nature cannot be solved. I belong to the kind of person who does not want to be liberated, and I always carry a certain resistance. ”
Recalling her experience of acting in a TV series when she was in school, when she auditioned, people asked her to walk or laugh in front of the camera, and she would measure three circumferences and measure her legs. "Being looked up and down by a group of people, I knew it was necessary. People don't look at you, how do you know if you are suitable for this role? But I just can't accept it, and I especially don't like the feeling of being picked up as a commodity. ”
After graduating from the Chinese Opera Acting Department, she decided not to be an actress, but to work as a choreographer at a television station. "I wanted to learn the craft. I feel that choreography is a technical job, and you can rely on this craft to support yourself. ”
I remember working overtime until two or three o'clock in the morning, and a few little girls came out of the TV station with a stack of heavy beta tapes. In the middle of the night, the bus stopped, and only "noodles" could be played. "The noodles are the cars that pull goods, a bit like the small goods we have now, the high-end rental, like Xiali, is too expensive, and there are very few, and you can't hit it."
"After three years of studying the craft, someone even asked me to act in a drama." At this time, I felt that I could come back and try acting again. You know, when people are young, they are always willing to try various options. You may lose what you have been learning before, but you also want to try more things that you have not tried, and these tosses cannot be said to be wrong. ”
I have to admit that in terms of acting, some people are more talented than others. 1999 is a very important year for Yang Ting, even if she has been away from the stage for a few years, she still shines in the repertoire of "Rhinoceros in Love". And one performance is 100 times, until 2003, "Rhinoceros in Love" rehearsal, she is still there. The role of the "red red" role of the young girl not only had a deep impact on her, but also opened her own theatrical road, but also allowed her to leave an indelible trace on the stage, which is quite "circle fan" in today's words.
"At that time, director Meng Jinghui found me through his classmate Li Xiaohong and asked me if I would like to act in his drama, and I was particularly happy at the time and immediately agreed, and I reacted after agreeing, and I didn't even know the name of the drama and the role I wanted to play." In what she called "sunny days," she felt the purity of the theatrical stage again.
Since then, she has also acted in many film and television dramas, Meng Jinghui's film "Fly Like Chicken Feathers" and Pan Jingcheng's "Eternal Phoenix". "But both of them are very good friends of mine. They trust me, don't limit me, don't say anything to get me from here to there, so it feels free to work with them. But then I stopped shooting, it was all when I was young. ”
So why do you want to be a director? Yang Ting said: "Because I want to try more things. ”
"Maybe for me, directing a play is not as difficult as acting." I'm talking about the kind of performance that goes without reservation and with all my might. You have to give all your emotions, all your pain, all your perceptions of life, its fragments, its hypocrisy, its sincerity... Carry it all on your back and show it as hard as you can. ”
This kind of self-indulgent performance is too heavy for her. "I don't want my nature to be released like that, I want to keep a part of it, I don't want people to see it."
In fact, being a theater director is a bit of a mistake for her. In 2005, ten years after graduating from Chinese opera, college classmates decided to line up a play together to commemorate it. "Holy Well" was the first play directed by Yang Ting, but now I recall that in the rehearsal process of that play, there were too many situations.
"'Holy Well' is the first commemoration of the reunion of our Chinese opera classmates in the tenth year of graduation, and most of the students in the class have returned to participate in the performance. Because during that period, I had been working on the drama stage, and naturally I became a drama director. But they are all classmates, no one listens to you, everyone argues every day, for a line, for a dispatch, every day in the rehearsal hall, the next day they reconcile. Reconcile and fight, fight and reconcile. But it is this dedication to "fighting" for the play that makes her finally gain everyone's trust and cultivate the confidence to become a director.
Immediately after that, she directed the play "Che Guevara", in which Tang Wei participated. "I was particularly impressed with Tang Wei. At that time, I was going to direct a female version of "Che Guevara", and Yuan Hong came to me and said that he wanted to recommend a girl to me, she was very good. One afternoon, we were rehearsing at the theater and the girl came. She didn't dress up much, so she wore a white T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a ponytail. As soon as I came in, I felt that the whole house was lit up, what a girl with a sunny atmosphere! But at that time, Tang Wei was still just a piece of jade, and like Yang Ting, who had just become a director, it still needed time to add luster to it.
2003 "Che Guevara" re-arranged stills ▎
Talk to Yang Ting, you will find that she should be a director by nature. All of her descriptions are graphic, like a set of shots, a movie. During the interview, Yang Ting's new play "Universal Robot" is about to premiere at the Aranya Theatre Festival. It was a theater festival that took place by the sea, and there was no stage, no curtain, and the actors walked barefoot on the beach to perform, half seawater, half drama.
"Theater is a dream, light and shadow are dreamers." All the atmosphere, emotions, and actor transitions must be completed by the light and dark changes of the lights. But all of this is gone, and the props have to be moved around directly in front of the audience, no longer have any sense of mystery. It's hard not to play, or even not laugh.
"I was nervous and at the same time I felt novel. We spent three days digging sand and diverting water, creating two huge sand dunes, setting up a stage in the water, something we had never done before, and I thought, let's just take it as an adventure. ”
Yang Ting described the mood of the moment: like a moving train, its speed is not slow, but it is not so fast. I stood on the roof of the car, and even if I jumped down from above, I wouldn't fall to my death. It's at this moment that I'm getting ready to do this now.
The future of life is the same, she said to herself: "Any new challenges encountered later, I will also take it as an adventure." The train didn't run so fast, and I couldn't fall to my knees, so maybe after experiencing these jumps, I fell in love with this extreme sport. ”
▎COSMO: At present, more and more young people are entering the theater and taking watching stage plays and celebrating drama festivals as a fashion lifestyle. Do you feel that the drama is "out of the loop"?
▎ Yang Ting: Why do you have to call it "out of the circle", why not say that it is to let others "enter the circle"? More and more young people like drama, and I don't see it as a new phenomenon. I think everyone has this kind of literary and artistic gene in their bones, and has this kind of literary and artistic pursuit. It's just that there weren't as many theaters as they do now, and once there are conditions, there will definitely be more and more people watching.
▎COSMO: Before you helped interview new people for Meng Jinghui Studio, what new observations did you make in the process of communicating with these young people?
▎Yang Ting: I found that many young people who come to interview as actors are cross-cutting. Among them, there are Tsinghua Peking University, there are science and engineering students. Frankly speaking, throughout the interview process, I have been lamenting that there are many young people who have graduated from top universities and learned "high-end" professional skills, but they all want to change careers to the field of theater.
▎ COSMO: Why do these young people want to switch to theater?
▎Yang Ting: They are actually not satisfied with their own lives, they want to do more things that they have not done before when they are young, or they have always longed to do what they want to do in their hearts. So why not do it?
▎ COSMO: What are the dramatic lines that impressed you the most?
Samuelov: "Start venting now, you have to keep putting it." In a faint and continuous silence, you release your soul until you are completely empty. There was nothing left inside, only an empty void. This is death. ”
Balagoncele: "Is this what the soul is all about?" ”
Samuelov: "That's all the soul is all about." ”
BalagonCele: "The spirit of the whole life?" ”
Samuelov: "The spirit of the whole life." ”
Balagon: "I never knew that the foundation of our lives was as simple as that. ”
▎COSMO: Can you recommend some entry-level dramas for Xiaobai?
▎Yang Ting: There is no entry-level drama, as long as it is rehearsed carefully and honestly, we can all benefit from it.
Source: Fashion COSMO, August issue
Swipe to view
﹀
Editor & Image: Wang Yimin
Text: koma
Photo by Effy Yu
Makeup and hair: wood dingzi
Vision: Bian Yuqing
Editorial Assistant: Liu Yingzhou
Photography assistants: Lin Xiangbin, Wang Yutong
Image source
Fashion COSMO / Sina Weibo