Cover news reporter Yan Wenwen
In the second half of 2020, an ambient musical "Apollonia" opened in the city center quietly opened. Since its inception at the end of August, the resident musical "Apollonia" has been performed more than 50 times, and the stable frequency of performances has still not been able to meet the strong demand of the public. This novel musical has become the hottest punch card in Chengdu.
In fact, the western cultural industry center where "Apollonia" is located will also introduce the musical drama "Lighthouse" of the whale culture, and the small theater culture is rising on this old street, coupled with the newly upgraded Jinjiang Theater and the Chengdu Sichuan Opera Art Museum, the theater on Huaxing Street has once again become an important cultural landmark in Chengdu.
Centennial Huaxing Street is one of the cultural centers of Chengdu
Huaxing Street has always been a cultural gathering place in Chengdu in modern times. A hundred years ago, eating tea and watching dramas in Huaxing Street was already popular, and Guo Moruo once wrote in his autobiography "Boyhood": "Chengdu's first new-style opera garden is called 'Yuelai Tea Garden'. ”
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Guo Moruo's "Yuelai Tea Garden" is actually an important landmark in Chengdu's modern cultural history, witnessing the prosperity and development of Huaxing Street's cultural industry. In 1908, Fan Kongzhou, associate of the Chengdu Chamber of Commerce, raised 80,000 taels of silver, bought the old site of the Lao Lang Temple, where the Chengdu Sichuan Opera Artists Guild is located, built a Yuelai tea garden, and the word "Yuelai" took the meaning of "the near and the distant" in the Analects, and signed a contract with the artists: "The site of the garden is for the Lingren du and Yuelai Company, to undertake the improvement of opera, and to make a living for the Lingren forever." Since then, it has become a performance venue mainly for Sichuan opera, and people even for a long time have equated "Yuelai" with "Sichuan opera".
But "YueLai" is not only a nest of Sichuan opera, but also the first place in Chengdu to perform a new drama. In the 1930s, Chengdu Yuelai Tea Garden brought a Sichuan opera "Fashion Drama" called "The Return of the Black Slave Righteous Hero" to the stage. This play is adapted from the Famous American anti-slavery book "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the story of black slaves on the other side of the ocean resisting oppression and fighting for freedom, and has also become the ideological beacon for Chengdu people to resist aggression.
In fact, not only Huaxing Street, but dozens of tea gardens scattered around huaxing street and later professional theaters provided a stage for Chengdu people at that time to watch and taste plays. The Daguan Tea Garden on Zitongqiao Street, the Qunxian Tea Garden on Zongfu Street, the Yongle Theater on Cotton Street (now the IFS area of Zongfu Road), the Chengdu Grand Theater on Buhou Street, and the Sanyigong and Chunxi Grand Stage on Chunxi Road are all favorite places for Chengdu people to go.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Huaxing Street is still one of the cultural centers of Chengdu. In 1952, the Yuelai Tea Garden was demolished, and in November 1954, a new theater was built on the site of the Old Yuelai Tea Garden, and the name of the theater was named "Jinjiang Theater" after Du Fu's poem "Jinjiang Spring Colors Come to Heaven and Earth", which was also the first choice for Chengdu people to listen to opera for a long time.
Today, the newly built Jinjiang Theater and Chengdu Sichuan Opera Art Museum are about to be completed. The Western Industrial Center adjacent to the Jinjiang Theater has also become a landmark for the cultural life of the city center. In addition to the "Alai Study" that has just been grandly opened and the "Apollonia" that has won a good reputation with high-quality performances, the musical "Lighthouse" of the whale culture in 2022 is also about to debut here.
As a cultural landmark in Chengdu over the past 100 years, Huaxing Street will bloom with more dazzling brilliance.
Theater culture can increase the three-dimensional sense of urban scenes
As a symbol of the vitality of a city, the cultural industry occupies an indispensable part of many cosmopolitan metropolises. Broadway in New York, West End in London, 9th Arrondissement in Paris... Theater culture has become a symbol of the city.
As early as 1750, the 280-seat theater on Nassau Street in New York became the cornerstone of Broadway and the birthplace of American musical theater. Today's Broadway is already a neighborhood with dozens of theaters with more than 500 people, and it is the most concentrated area of New York cultural life, especially the cultural life of performances, attracting fans from all over the world to punch in every year. London's theatre culture dates back to Shakespeare's time.
In fact, theater culture can increase the three-dimensional sense of urban scenes, making cultural life an attraction for urban innovation. Xie Wei, the producer of "Apollonia" and the head of a good play, believes that the city can not only be a monotonous place, it is a pluralistic, fun, interesting place, and good drama can bring new vitality to the city: "A scene in the city should be three-dimensional, we say to play in a city like London, some people will say what to play in East London, what to play in West London, there is a scene of theatrical performance." I hope that such a theater scene can also be formed in Chengdu, and the significance of a small theater is also to provide such a place where you can enjoy the theater. ”
Theater culture is also expected to become a cultural business card of Chengdu
Because of the development of performance culture, cities such as New York and Paris even have their own musicals of the same name, such as "New York!" New York! and "Notre Dame de Paris", but not only that, there are many plays named after the city or mentioning an important theater, such as Weber's musical "The Phantom of the Opera" set in an opera house in Paris, and the German musical "Elisabeth" is the symbol of Vienna and has swept the world with its high-quality performances.
Chengdu, in fact, also engraved with such genes.
In 2005, China's first large-scale original musical "Sands" not only created Chengdu's urban cultural business card, but also opened the era of "Made in China" musicals. The drama is based on the mysterious ancient Shu civilization represented by Chengdu's "Jinsha Ruins" and brings together the sincerity of the top domestic creative elites. Among them, the classic songs "Someday", "At That Time", "Beyond the Sky", "Birds and Fish", "Miss" and so on still have a super high degree of singing. Chengdu, like New York, London, and Paris, has such a golden business card.
The scope of the Chengdu City Center Theater is not only Huaxing Street, but also on Shudu Avenue, the east-west trunk line of Chengdu City, across the street from Huaxing Street, within a range of 2 kilometers from the Western Cultural Center, the theater of the Shuinian River on the First Ring Road, and the Sichuan Grand Theater on the side of Tianfu Square, through the upgrading of the overall repertoire, the complementarity of large and small theaters makes the cultural life circle also become a brilliant landmark in Chengdu.