Mammoth News Oriental Today Chief Reporter Liang Xinhui /Wen Yuan Xiaoqiang/Photo
In the colorful and red Chinese opera Grand View Garden, Yu opera modern drama closely follows the pulse of the times, close to the real emotions of the masses, it uses beautiful and changeable melodies, singing voices with great life breath and colloquial dialogue, interprets the mottled and vivid worldly human feelings, vividly explains the simplicity and complexity of human nature, entanglement and calmness, truly reproduces the development and changes of the times, ups and downs and ups and downs, so that the audience can undergo the baptism of art in the lamentable, sad and ridiculous, cute and respectable, pity and pitiful, and complete the precipitation of thoughts. Realize the sublimation of the soul. "Fragrant Soul Girl", starring the famous Yu opera artist Wang Quanzhen, is undoubtedly a classic in the modern drama of Yu opera.
As early as 21 years ago, in 2000, "Fragrant Soul Girl" won the Grand Prize of the 6th China Arts Festival, filling the gap in this award in Henan Province. The following year, Wang Quanzhen won the Plum Blossom Award, the highest award of Chinese drama, for her outstanding performance in the play.
As a "100-year 100-year- and 100-year- performance" outstanding stage art exhibition in Henan Province to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the Yu opera "Fragrant Soul Girl" was recently staged at the Chaoyanggou Grand Theater, and Wang Quanzhen once again dressed up after 6 years to perform the classic image of Xiangxiang (Xiangyi), a stage art. Before the performance, Wang Quanzhen, who was the party secretary of Henan Yu Theater, was interviewed by a reporter from Mammoth News Oriental Today. She said with deep feeling: I am "Xiangxiang" on the stage, and "Xiangxiang" is me when I get off the stage.
[1] Tears flowed from the corners of her eyes, and the audience under the stage quietly shed tears
"Ring ring she bowed her head wordlessly and gently left, the jack stone pressed me mentally and physically paralyzed... Twenty thousand yuan I married Huan Huan, she is like when I sold myself to the Shen family to raise a daughter-in-law, my life has been mistakenly swampy, how to teach her to learn me to live in the sun and the moon and walk thorns ... How much grief she has endured, how much grievances she has swallowed, how much she has cried on her pillow in the middle of the night, she has had the flames burning and extinguishing in her chest, she has ever wanted to live lightly by the pond of incense souls, she has sighed on the stone of incense souls..." On the stage, when Xiangxiang, played by Wang Quanzhen, sang this familiar singing segment, the corners of her eyes were filled with tears, and the audience under the stage was quietly crying.
"Speaking of Wang Quanzhen, I think of "Fragrant Soul Girl", and when I talk about "Fragrant Soul Girl", I think of Wang Quanzhen. The fragrant soul girl played by Wang Quanzhen often looks at Changxin and moves people more and more each time. At the scene of the performance, an audience member surnamed Zhang said the voices of many fans.
In the Yu opera "Fragrant Soul Girl", the protagonist Xiangxiang was sold as a child bride since childhood, with a desolate life, and became the richest man in the party by virtue of intelligence and hard work. However, she was unfortunate in her family life: her husband was a gambler and often punched and kicked her; her son was mentally handicapped and had epilepsy.
The traditional concept of "virtuous wife and good mother" binds Xiang Sister-in-law, who has a deep affection for the workers but does not dare to be together; she loves her son and loves her son and spends 20,000 yuan to marry a stupid son, thus causing the pain of another poor girl like her back then... After repeated ideological struggles, in the end, Xiang Sister-in-law resolutely decided to open the cage to liberate the ring, and in the reflection and remembrance of changing the fate of the two generations of women, what flashed was the brilliance of humanity of goodness and beauty, which profoundly reflected the profound theme of the reincarnation and transmutation of women's destiny.
The rhythm of the play is tight, the ups and downs, the love to the sound, the singing to the drunken, the theater applause... The audience follows the development of the plot and is happy and sad with the protagonist.
Since it was put on the stage in 2000, the Yu opera "Fragrant Soul Girl" is 21 years old and has become a classic play on the theater stage. Today, Wang Quanzhen has performed "Fragrant Soul Girl" again after a gap of six years, and her performance is relaxed, more skillful, and more mature and sophisticated.
[2] She endured severe pain until the end of the play, and the audience was deeply moved
On the stage of Chinese Yu opera, "Fragrant Soul Girl" can be called a landmark work.
Since 2000, when it was pushed onto the stage by the three troupes of Henan Yu Theater, it won the highest award of the 6th China Arts Festival - the China Arts Festival Grand Prize in October of that year, filling the gap that Henan opera has no national award, and adding a wonderful page to the cause of Henan opera. Since then, in 2011, the play has been rated as the "Top Ten Fine Repertoire" of the National Stage Art Quality Project, achieving a historic leap forward in Henan drama.
Today's "Fragrant Soul Girl", Wang Quanzhen is acting, and her apprentices are also acting; the three troupes of Henan Yu Theater are performing, and other troupes in the province are also performing; the troupes in Henan Province are repeatedly performing, and the theater groups outside the province are also constantly performing... The artistic charm of "Fragrant Soul Girl" can be seen.
When "Fragrant Soul Girl" was put on the stage in 2000, Wang Quanzhen was only 37 years old, and today she performs "Fragrant Soul Girl" again, and Wang Quanzhen is 58 years old. After 21 years, Wang Quanzhen, an actor of Yu opera at that time, has become a famous Yu opera artist recognized by the audience, the well-known party secretary of Henan Yu Theater, and the leader of Yu opera.
"Many viewers told me that after watching my performance of "Fragrant Soul Girl", I had different feelings every time. But I knew that due to the busy administrative work, I had not been on the stage for the whole performance of "Fragrant Soul Girl" for six years, and I still had a problem in my heart. Wang Quanzhen said that if she did not perform for many years, her ability to control the stage would become weaker, so before this performance, she used all the available time to rehearse and run in with the cast and crew of the whole play many times. After many years of not acting, the audience's aesthetic vision of this role may still be in the stage of the original award, and this time on the stage, all the performances can only be more mature, relaxed and comfortable.
More than ten days before the performance began, Wang Quanzhen kept practicing. "I'm afraid of the character being damaged, and I'm afraid of my own image being damaged. I am afraid of losing, so I have to work harder and find deficiencies in practice and rehearsal. ”
Despite this, in the performance of the night, Xiangxiang, played by Wang Quanzhen, was accidentally injured in the process of tearing up with her husband. She endured severe pain until the end of the play, and the audience was deeply moved.
[3] Becoming an artist is not accidental, it comes from her unremitting trek
It is no accident that Wang Quanzhen can perform wonderfully in the Yu opera "Fragrant Soul Girl" and become a performance artist that people praise, which stems from her unremitting trek on the road of Yu opera performing arts.
Wang Quanzhen was born in Zhengyang County, Henan Province, a family of scholars, her grandfather and father are literati, she has 6 brothers and sisters, four older brothers and one sister, she is the sixth oldest, is the youngest child in the family.
At the age of 13, with her love for opera art, she was admitted to the Opera Performance Major of Henan Provincial Opera School and studied the basic skills of Opera performing arts assiduously. Go to bed late and get up early, listen to and read imitations, and learn like a drunkard; sing and do chanting, one move at a time, and learn to be serious. In the past five years, she has devoted all her energy to learning, and does not dare to relax a little.
Kung Fu pays off. When she graduated, at the age of 18, she not only ushered in the most beautiful years of her life, but also laid a solid foundation for herself in theatrical performance. After that, she became an actor in the Henan Experimental Yu Opera Troupe; later, she became an actor in the Henan Yu Opera Troupe and officially began her artistic career. In the yu opera troupe, a collective with a famous earthquake in the central plains, she carefully learned from her predecessors and peers, forged ahead in art, and kept improving, and successfully created a series of dramatic characters with different personalities and full images on the stage and screen, winning countless audiences for herself and making outstanding contributions to the literary and artistic undertakings of Henan Province.
In 1986, Hong Kong held the "First Chinese Local Opera Exhibition", the famous director Yang Lanchun rehearsed "Sachet" for her, and her role of Zhou Fenglian was a great success, and was praised as "asia's best female Dan character". She has starred in plays such as "Gui Ying Goes to the Countryside", "Broken Chen Zhou", "Khao Hong", "Eight Pieces of Clothing" and "Fengguan Dream", which have been unanimously praised by the audience and artists, and have become the proud protégés of The Yu opera master Chang Xiangyu.
In 1989, Wang Quanzhen was transferred to the Henan Provincial Yu Opera Third Troupe, which is famous for acting in modern opera. In the 1990s, when drama was the most depressed period, faced with the gap between opera art and real life, Wang Quanzhen bid farewell to the opera stage and entered the financial system.
It was this change of career that laid a solid foundation for her later success in "Fragrant Soul Girl".
[4] Return to the stage, after layers of tests, selected to become the female number one
Bidding farewell to the Yu opera stage that year, a large number of people in the theater industry, including the famous director Yang Lanchun and the mentor Chang Xiangyu, regretted it endlessly. After working in the banking system for many years, in countless nights of silence, Wang Quanzhen, who had calmed down, found that her life still belonged to art, and the stage was her root.
In 1998, at the invitation of the Zhengzhou QuQu Troupe, Wang Quanzhen, who was still working in the financial system, rehearsed "Yushu Ancient House". Wang Quanzhen was indeed Wang Quanzhen. Her every move was extraordinary, and the crowd was amazed.
In order to break the gap that Henan opera did not have a national award, in early 1999, the third troupe of Henan Yu opera wanted to arrange the playwright Yao Jincheng's "Fragrant Soul Girl" based on the famous writer Zhou Daxin's novella "Fragrant Soul Pondside Fragrant Oil Factory". In order to perform this play well, the three groups issued a "recruitment list" to select the female number one for the whole province.
For a time, the Henan theater industry boiled over.
Wang Quanzhen returned. After registration, preliminary examination and re-examination, Wang Quanzhen finally entered the C group of three groups of candidate actors in "Fragrant Soul Girl" A, B and C. After that, after layers of tests and selections, Wang Quanzhen finally won and became the female number one "Xiangxiang".
Xiang xiang is an unfortunate and competitive woman, especially Xiang Xiang's image as a female entrepreneur, which has aroused the emotional resonance of Wang Quanzhen.
"I played Xiangxiang well, thanks to my experience working in the financial system. At that time, I first served as a trade union cadre, then as a manager of a security company under the bank, a manager of a pharmaceutical company, a gas worker at a gas station of a security company, and a sales of health care equipment and a book stall by the Jinshui River in Zhengzhou. I have tried every means to open up the market, faced countless difficulties, suffered countless setbacks, and tasted bittersweet and bittersweet. Fragrant life has something in common with me. Xiang Xiang's hardships are similar to mine. The emotion of fragrant fragrance resonates with me. So, when I played her, I felt that it was not a performance, but a real reproduction. I couldn't even tell which ones were incense and which were myself. ”
[5] Half of the incense is me, and half of mine is incense
As soon as "Fragrant Soul Girl" was unveiled, the praise was overwhelming, and various awards followed. Wang Quanzhen was credited once by the Henan Provincial Government as a national first-class actor, and then won the plum blossom award, the highest award of Chinese drama.
In the words of Wang Quanzhen, before "Fragrant Soul Girl", whether it was traditional drama or modern drama, she rehearsed, basically imitation, singing, action, are stylized things, completely in accordance with the director's intention to present, from the depths of the soul of the things limited. And the play "Fragrant Soul Girl" let her know what the actor really wants to accomplish on the stage, not only to complete the stage to complete itself, but also to find the positioning of the character. It's like a painter painting, whether it's painted in the same way, or it's created from the heart.
"When I rehearsed the show in 1999, I was in my 30s and had a lot of energy in every way. The knowledge and theories I have learned are more fully reflected in this play. Wang Quanzhen said.
In every performance of "Fragrant Soul Girl", Wang Quanzhen will shed tears. In her words, the emotion arrived. "Half of the incense is me, and half of mine is incense. On the stage, I am Xiangxiang. Off the stage, Xiangxiang is me. The two of us are a community of destiny. ”
"Fragrant Soul Girl" was a great success, and Wang Quanzhen's artistic performance skills were also greatly improved. After participating in all the performances, no matter how big or small, she has not been lazy, and tears will be shed in the emotional place. Her sense of substitution is extremely strong, and Wang Quanzhen calls it "the basic skills that an actor should have.".
Wang Quanzhen always believes that acting with heart is the basic duty of an actor, and he is firm in his artistic pursuits, rather than to win the praise of others. Of course, an actor should humbly listen to the expectations of experts and the masses for himself, and use diligence and hard work, sweat and blood to impress the fans and the audience.
"Can't live up to the audience's love for me, respect for me. This is because the audience cannot always recognize a person, a play recognizes you, and the next play does not necessarily recognize you. Therefore, as an actor, as long as you are on stage, you must seriously act and convey the hottest emotions to the audience. ”
Art is like an elder, and I will always be in awe of it
A drama is like a towering tree, and the branches and forks need to be pruned.
For Wang Quanzhen, her "pruning" is to repeatedly speculate on every singing voice, every action, and every look in the play, and only by repeatedly modifying, improving, and then modifying, and improving, can the art become more and more refined.
Before every performance of "Fragrant Soul Girl", Wang Quanzhen had a habit: sleep late and get up early. This may be the result of stress. "One thing, if you don't value him, he's not going to give you good results. Art, like my elders, I was in awe of it. ”
In Wang Quanzhen's eyes, there are two main manifestations of the success of a play: the name of the play, the audience may not remember, but some singing segments must be remembered; the actors in the play, the audience may not be able to remember, but the characters in the play will definitely be remembered.
Nowadays, "Fragrant Soul Girl" has been performed nearly a thousand times, and the "Xiangxiang" played by Wang Quanzhen has entered the Shengshi Pear Garden with its distinct character image and rich era connotation, becoming a dazzling and dazzling wonder.
"Fragrant Soul Girl" for Wang Quanzhen established her position in the theater industry. Wang Quanzhen's "Fragrant Soul Girl" has pushed Henan opera to a new height.
Of course, Wang Quanzhen did not stay on "Fragrant Soul Girl", and later also portrayed the "Zhu An" of pain and helplessness, tolerance and generosity in "The Garden of Wind and Rain", and played "Liu Qingxia" in "Liu Qingxia", who was both talented, heroic, courageous, and ambitious.
The famous writer Qi Fei once praised Wang Quanzhen like this: a real artist always uses his works to illuminate his own name, rather than his own name to illuminate his works. Wang Quanzhen is famous in the drama world with her masterpieces, and let the audience know and love.
"In the thick Central Plains culture, opera culture occupies an important position, and the revival and development of Central Plains culture is inseparable from the prosperity of opera culture." I hope that Wang Quanzhen can use the influence and efforts of her artists in the years to come and promote Henan opera art to achieve more impressive results faster. Zhou Daxin, a famous writer and winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize, said.