Non-professional drama group "Drama Nine" has gone through 10 years of bumps Last September, their "Four Machines", "Spring Death" and "Double Maple" three plays in a row The popular online platform ratings were 8.6, 8.7 and 9.0, respectively
Doing drama begins with "jianghu emergency relief"
When eating a casual meal, a group of people drank a little too much, and then thought that they were about to graduate, and someone said between the cups and cups: "Now we play such a play, in our twenties, and we are all middle-aged people in their thirties." Or let's act for ten years in a row, until we are all in our thirties, which is exactly the age of the characters in the play, and then interpret the middle age of mourning. I don't know which friend made this proposal first, everyone was a little drunk at the time, and they were all happy to say "good, good, ten years in a row", the story began like this, at that time, it was when Zhu Hongxuan was about to graduate from Peking University.
Zhu Hongxuan is the screenwriter, director and founder of "Drama Nine". "Drama Nine" was a club with friends in school at that time, but now it is a formal troupe that has been performing for ten years, with plays every year and an increasing audience.
Zhu Hongxuan described "drama nine people" with three keywords: ten years, three nothings, and doubles. "Ten years" represents the chronicle of the nine people of the drama, "2012 is our first work, one original work a year, and last year it was the tenth, which is exactly our tenth anniversary." ”
"Three nothings" refers to the troupe's "neither official background nor traffic support, nor 'golden father', completely a private self-employed person, so often self-deprecating as 'three no organizations'".
As for the "doubles", Zhu Hongxuan's interpretation is, "There are both professional dramatists in our team, and some friends who have another job or are still studying, which is a non-professional 'doubles' model." ”
Zhu Hongxuan's reason for starting a drama is particularly simple, "In 2012, when I was still in school, I had a friend who signed up for Peking University's Drama Star Style Competition, and his position was screenwriter. But the script was about to be handed in, and he only wrote six lines. So, I, who had never written a script before, was caught and went into battle. ”
At that time, Zhu Hongxuan did not know how to make an original drama, so she chose to adapt a black-and-white movie in the United States - "Twelve Angry Men". The film tells the story of twelve jurors who decide the life and death of a little boy.
Because each play in the Drama Star Style Contest only has forty minutes of performance time, Zhu Hongxuan needs to change the two-hour movie into a forty-minute script. "So we changed the twelve characters to nine, and that's the name of our first play, Nine People, which is also the origin of the name of our troupe."
The name "Nine" was also used in many of the troupe's later original plays, and it wasn't until 2018 that each work was named independently.
"Nonsense" after drinking, the agreement came true
The original "Nine People" went to the rematch in the Peking University Drama Star Style Competition and lost to the overall champion of the year. Everyone was very reluctant, so when eating a casual meal, there was a story at the beginning of the article about "ten consecutive years" of drinking and meeting.
However, the "nonsense" said at the wine table has not been forgotten. In 2014, the "nine people" who had graduated and went to all walks of life began to get together to do drama again.
Zhu Hongxuan is still serving as a screenwriter, she found the director Mo Xiaoxiao, and the director went to find the lighting, props... Finally, a team was assembled to try commercial performances.
"It's completely different from competing in school. Going to the society, public performances, and box office, there are many links involved in the middle. To find a venue, find personnel, arrange actors, rehearse, make props, and advertise tickets, many trivial links are unfamiliar to us. Zhu Hongxuan remembers that the 2014 version of "Nine People" was performed at the Penghao Theater in Beijing, with only more than 80 seats, even if people are full, it is difficult to return the money at the box office. So that year they probably lost more than three thousand dollars. "Of course, our total cost is more than six thousand yuan." Zhu Hongxuan laughed, "After all, the stage beauty at that time was basically only stools and tables. But that day I stood on the side stage, and when I saw the end and the lights slowly dimmed, I still felt 'worth it'. This may be the charm of drama. Although we only performed one play that year and lost money, the sincere interaction with the audience in the theater gave us confidence and made us feel that there was still hope that we could go out of school and really face the audience in society. ”
The next few plays in the troupe are called "Nine People", but each year is actually a new story. For example, 2015's "Nine People" tells about a controversy on the bus; in 2016, a thinning paper media is caught in the dilemma of ideals and reality...
Rough beginnings, gradual paths
Zhu Hongxuan still clearly remembers the 2015 performance: "I'm embarrassed to say that it has a dance, but in fact, there are a few windows with paper paste." I remember the next day we were going to perform, and the night before we were still pasting that paper window. It was hung on a light pole with a fishing line, and when it was performed, it gradually fell down with the naked eye, and finally fell off to meet expectations... At that time, we did not have the concept of 'performance accident', nor did we understand that professional performances were absolutely not allowed to happen. I even feel a little bit like , 'It's exciting, it's a fun thing to do a drama'. ”
In 2016, there was a circular wall clock in the stage design of "Nine", and because of the lack of experience in the performance, only one thread was used when hanging it. The clock is a circle with a long line, so there is no way to fix it completely. So, while performing on stage, the clock turned at the same time. Zhu Hongxuan said: "That year's drama was about a newspaper story, everyone discussed from late at night to dawn, there were some discussions about fairness and justice, and there were also confrontations between positive and negative sides. After the performance, some audience members asked: Is the design of this wall clock to illustrate the passage of time, and whether when the protagonist has the advantage, the clock turns to the front, and when the clock turns to the back, it means that the dark forces have the upper hand? The audience will be very kind to interpret it, but it's all because we did it roughly. Now that I think about it, when I was in my twenties, everyone just wanted to do something meaningful together. Although they each have their own jobs, they are still willing to squeeze in a little spare time, take a few days of annual leave, and come out to make a play. It's more like a pact between old friends. As for the quality of the work itself, what kind of impact it can bring, and whether it can be used as a commercial work that can stand up, our consideration at that time was relatively superficial. ”
48 hours of darkness, bringing "a turn of thought"
The transformation of the troupe in 2017. The work performed that year was, of course, also called "Nine People", and it was a story that happened in a clinic. When Zhu Hongxuan recalls the meaning of that year afterwards, the play itself is no longer so important, what is important is the impact of the story behind the scenes on the whole team.
The choreography of this play requires more than five thousand medicine bottles to be arranged on the stage. The troupe's budget was stretched thin, and it could not afford to hire a stage factory or a stage worker. The choreography of the whole play, from design to production to stage installation, is all done by the troupe themselves. "At that time, we found a basement in Peking University, and dozens of people in the troupe, whether actors or behind the scenes, brought their relatives, boyfriend and girlfriend, volunteers, brothers and sisters, and worked in this basement for forty-eight hours. The process is very complicated, you must first punch the medicine bottle, fill it with red paper pieces, and then thread the bottle, and then fix it with hot melt glue after threading. The most difficult thing is that after entering the theater, you have to hang these more than 5,000 hanging bottles on a large steel frame of three meters by seven meters. In the basement without sunlight, on the dark stage, everyone is busy with their heads down. I looked around in that scene and suddenly felt that I couldn't do it anymore. Whether it is out of love or out of the friendship of old friends, we are here to use our own skills that are not professional enough, consume and do not use efficiently enough time, to complete a work that is not perfect in the end, or even relatively crude, what is the point of our doing it? ”
From the moment Zhu Hongxuan had this idea, the troupe began to move to a completely different new stage - began to think about how to make a work more professionally, how to withstand the real test of the market, "the work is to be able to support the team, or at least it can afford its own production costs." ”
"Just made this grand ambition, and then in 2018, we did "Falling Plum Wind", and successfully lost more than 100,000 yuan." Zhu Hongxuan laughed and said- "The ups and downs of life stories are so unexpected." ”
At that time, I wanted to do a professional play, so the troupe invested a lot in choreography, lighting, etc.
"In order to appear on the stage for less than a minute of play, we hired a martial arts instructor, and actress Lu Wen practiced for two or three months, and every day she was blue and purple.
"We also did the shadow puppet design, and all the montages in this play are expressed in shadow puppets. From designing the pattern of the shadow to buying the skin back, soaking it, drying it, and then carving it – everything is made by ourselves. During the performance, the backstage staff needed to squat in the background for two hours to operate the shadow puppet, and they all complained that in order to do this play, they had almost learned an intangible cultural heritage...
"That year's play has improved a lot in terms of color, and it has also been recognized by more audiences. Of course, we also lost a lot of money, but our producer comforted himself by saying that this is called strategic investment. ”
This year is also zhu Hongxuan's first time as a director. "Before, I was only a screenwriter, but because I started to do a lot of experiments outside the text, I felt that I felt a little bit of the way of directing, and I also strengthened my belief in wanting to do this better."
Determined to resign to make a play, the corner encountered the epidemic
After that, "Nine People" ushered in 2019, and the original work of this year was called "Four Machines", which was also the eighth year of the troupe.
This play is about a few professors at old Peking University before the May Fourth Movement in 1919—some conservatives, some newcomers, and some wall-riding factions—and several professors judging four rolls and arguing all night in the conference room to determine an admission quota.
"This is also the first time that we have used the theme of the Republic of China to express more thinking about modern society, such as educational fairness, such as why there should be universities, or how to be inclusive in universities, seeking common ground while reserving differences."
"Four Machines" was premiered around "May Fourth" in 2019, and when it reached the third performance, it began to be difficult to find a ticket, and basically every subsequent show was full.
The success of "Four Machines" made Zhu Hongxuan have a new idea: "I wondered if God had given me a signal to finally come out full-time to do this." Before, everyone in our team, including me, was 100% part-time. ”
Zhu Hongxuan has worked in Both Didi and Tencent before, doing strategic consulting, "often traveling, flying around, giving customers listing plans, product positioning, business analysis, etc., which sounds like a very high job." "Zhu Hongxuan's norm in those years was: working overtime until one or two o'clock at night, returning home from work to write a script until three o'clock, and getting up very early in the morning to have a plan meeting with the team.
At the end of 2019, Zhu Hongxuan finally decided to resign.
However, "if you look at the timeline of human history, you will find out what happened after I resigned." ”
A month later, the outbreak of the epidemic, the performance venues across the country were shut down, which lasted for about half a year. In the spring of 2020, the originally arranged national tour of "Four Machines" can only be cancelled one city at a time.
So, Zhu Hongxuan squatted at home and continued to write the script. This year, "Spring Death" was born.
Always in the middle of the night, give me stories of healing
"Spring Death" tells the story of several physicists huddled together during the Republic of China period. One of the heroines is based on Wu Jianxiong, an Asian woman who once served as president of the American Physical Society and helped develop the atomic bomb, verifying that "cosmology is not conserved".
The prototype of another character was Ding Xilin, the director of the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica at that time. Zhu Hongxuan said: "Before, I only knew that he was a playwright who wrote works such as "After Drinking", "A Horse Bee", "Oppression" and so on, but I never thought that he was still a physicist. ”
In Zhu Hongxuan's heart, "Spring Death" is a story of "minority hugging and warming", and it is also one of her favorite stories, "It always gives me a lot of healing in the middle of the night." ”
Then came the 2021 "Tale of two wings", which is the work launched by the "Nine People" for the tenth year and the third part of the "Nine People" Republic of China Intellectuals series. 枰, meaning chessboard, double maple is two chessboards. The whole play takes the chess piece as a clue, connecting the twenty years of enmity and hatred of the people in the play from youth to middle age.
At this stage, whether in the polishing of the script or the presentation of the stage, the "nine people" have made solid progress and made more breakthroughs.
"Audiences who have seen our play may know that the 'Nine People' has always been more careful, and it is free. "Four Machines" tells the story of an old Peking University, so we made the Peking University Journal, which is exactly the same format as the newspaper in 1919. There are also many anecdotes about old Peking University in the field magazine, which is convenient for everyone to understand the characters in advance when they enter the theater. "Spring Death" tells the story of the Institute of Physics, and we have made the field journal into a series of journals of the Institute of Physics. "The Tale of The Two Wings" tells the story of the prison in Nanjing's Jiangning area, so our field magazine has been made into an old map of Nanjing. I entrusted a friend who studied modern and contemporary Chinese history to find a real map of Nanjing in the year the story occurred, and every river, every street, and every railway on it was painted by our designers. We did a lot of detailed work like this, such as every warm music that the audience heard when they entered the scene was related to the age or characters in the play, and the admission instructions were recorded by the actors in the tone of the characters. ”
In September 2021, "Four Machines", "Spring Death" and "Double Orange" were performed in three consecutive plays, and the ratings on popular online platforms were 8.6, 8.7 and 9.0 respectively.
Non-professional does not equal unprofessional, the most valuable in "cherished"
In the tenth year of acting, Zhu Hongxuan had a very deep feeling: non-professional does not mean unprofessional. None of the five actors in "The Tale of the Two Wings" are from the acting class, and all are so-called "non-professional" actors. During the premiere, there was one thing that impressed Zhu Hongxuan: "We usually perform at 7:30 p.m., according to the workflow, the actors can change their clothes before they get dressed and come to the stage to try the wheat." But when I got to the theater very early that day, I heard voices on the stage. On the dark stage, two actors stood. They were there silently playing, standing up straight, and judging by the look and the look in their eyes, they must have been in the play. They were silently following the lines from the play from beginning to end. The stage was dark, the lights were dim, and before the audience could enter, they were there in silence for an hour or two. That moment touched me very much, and many people may think that professional actors must be better than non-professional actors. But in fact, many people who say this have forgotten one thing, that is, how important the original intention is. The actors on our team, whether they are professional or non-professional, they all have a common feature, which is that they cherish the stage very much. ”
"Intertextuality" inside and outside the play, the answer to the "torture" is achieved
Although the "Nine People" have stepped onto a bigger stage and been known and paid attention to by more audiences, for Zhu Hongxuan, "Last year was actually very difficult, often tired, and sometimes wanted to give up." ”
Remembering the happiness and courage when she made the "ten-year covenant" on the wine table, Zhu Hongxuan felt that "it was like a dream": "When I really reached the tenth year, there were many sources of achievement that had been copied. The first time it was full, I was very excited, and the first time it was 8.0 on Douban, I was also excited. But then, as we continued to do so, the threshold of happiness was rising, and we felt more pain and frustration. Looking back on the past decade, I don't know whether it was a little more or a little more. When the troupe was first founded, I was still a young literary and artistic woman who did not understand the world, and I felt that as long as I sprinkled my talent on the stage like a spark, it would naturally grow a lot of towering trees, and I didn't need to cultivate too much homework. But now I have to struggle with budgetary and realistic difficulties. I was hesitating in September last year, this decade is over, I promised my old friends to do this thing, I have done it, do I want to continue to take this bad road? ”
Just at the juncture of such "self-torture", a moment that Zhu Hongxuan never thought would happen appeared in front of her eyes.
That day, the rehearsal hall happened to be rehearsing "Spring Death", and Gu Jingwei and Qu Jianxiong were discussing whether to do particle physics. Gu Jingwei took Qu Jianxiong's hand and advised her not to do it, because at the stage of the industry at that time, this was bound to be a difficult choice.
Gu Jingwei: A person's talent is not endless, a long time will consume you, spend a day and spend ten years, not a concept!
Qu Jianxiong: Ten years is a long time for a person, but in the history of the whole human history or discipline, it is a short moment, ten years, what I can do may be over, but the physical feast has just begun.
Gu Jingwei: No teachers, no comrades-in-arms, and no trenches, do you still want to do this?
Qu Jianxiong: I still have to do this.
"It was a wonderful intertext inside and outside the play, and it was raining heavily outside the window at that moment, and they were talking about this conversation in the rehearsal hall, answering the question in my heart that I hadn't had time to ask anyone yet." Zhu Hongxuan said.
During the 10th Anniversary Drama Month of "Nine People", there are many viewers who will write messages on the message wall. Among them, there are two sentences that Zhu Hongxuan remembers particularly clearly: "There are more than nine people in nine people, and there are ten years in ten years." ”
This edition of the text / Qi Zhi Courtesy photo / Hongxuan Information provided / One seat (public number)