The Paper's reporter Pan Yu
On June 17, 2021, at the Shanghai Majestic Theatre, a documentary film "Peony Returns the Soul - Bai Xianyong and the Revival of Kunqu Opera" was released as an exhibiting film at the Shanghai International Film Festival in China. In the shot, the writer Bai Xianyong attacked the Tang costume, always elegant and humble, full of smiles, telling his lifelong love affair with Kunqu art, and the process of running for the revival of Kunqu opera in the past 20 years.
Bai Xianyong's relationship with "Peony Pavilion"
Time flies, and everything is in a trance like yesterday. Still this majestic majestic theater on the sea, in the autumn of 1945 after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Mei Lanfang, who had not appeared on stage for many years with the expectations of the people, performed Kunqu opera with Kunqu opera master Yu Zhenfei for several days, from "Dream in the Garden" to "Broken Bridge", for a time there were thousands of people in the alley, and the highest ticket price was a "small yellow fish" (gold bar). And in this melodious sound of water mill flute, the charm of Kunqu art has been deeply rooted in the heart of an eight-year-old child. And he was Bai Xianyong, a writer who later became famous in the Chinese language scene.
In 1988, Bai Xianyong returned to the mainland for the first time to give a lecture, and once again saw the whole book "The Hall of Eternal Life" starring Shanghai Kunqu Troupe artists Hua Wenyi and Cai Zhengren in Shanghai, and his fascination with the beauty of Kunqu opera has never been received since then. He sighed countless times: "Kunqu opera has no other, it has a 'beautiful' word, the beauty of rhetoric, the beauty of dance, the beauty of music, and the beauty of human feelings, which is the concentrated embodiment of China's aesthetic ideals, the product of the highly developed classical culture of China, and a world-class art, and all of us must cherish it." ”
In 2001, Kunqu art was listed by UNESCO as the top of the list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind", but it still withered away, Bai Xianyong resolutely put down his writing, with a strong sense of cultural responsibility, running around, forming a strong team - in addition to inviting Kunqu "Ji" Zi generation, Kun Da Ban, Zhejiang "Shi" Zi Generation and other national treasure artists to personally inherit and train a group of young actors of the "Little Orchid Class", they also actively entered the campus to promote.
Stills from the youth version of "Peony Pavilion". Photo by Xu Peihong
On April 29, 2004, under the care and support of the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Suzhou Municipal Government, after a whole year of meticulous preparation, the "Youth Edition of "Peony Pavilion"" created by Bai Xianyong and Suzhou Kun Opera House came into being, which opened up a new situation of Kunqu opera in the contemporary revitalization and became a colorful stroke in the history of Chinese opera and even cultural history.
2005.06.03.-05 Performance in Tongji University, graphic audience (provided by Bai Xianyong)
In the past 18 years, the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" has been performed nearly 400 times, footprints all over the motherland, a group of outstanding young actors of Suzhou Kun Theater sang "then for you like a beautiful flower, like water flowing year" into the major theaters, colleges and universities, in the three places on both sides of the strait, and even the United States, Britain, have left the figure of "white peony" in front of Tang Xianzu YuMingtang, attracting countless young audiences, from the moment they stepped into the theater, fell in love with Kunqu opera, fell in love with traditional culture.
2007.09.21-23 "Peony Pavilion" in The Jiang'an Gymnasium of Sichuan University, the largest number of spectators in a single session reached more than 7,000 people. Photo by Cai Shaohua
"Peony returns the soul" for 18 years, Kunqu art has long since come out of the predicament of that year. Nowadays, the major Kun Theater troupes across the country have staged "Peony Pavilion", which is almost full. More and more young people entered the theater and began to appreciate Kunqu opera, and more college students took to the stage to experience this ancient art first-hand, and the student version of "Peony Pavilion" performed by peking university and 18 universities in Beijing, as well as the student version of "Changsheng Hall" performed by Tongji University and major universities in Shanghai, all achieved unexpected success.
Use film to document the century-old revival of Kunqu art
Bai Xianyong, who is now 84 years old, has become more and more refreshed. But he also began to think about how to document the history of the "Renaissance". "Later people want to write the history of the revival of Kunqu opera, and they have to mention the youth version of "Peony Pavilion". If someone wants to study it, what about the data? We have a lot of information, and if we don't sort it out, it will be scattered. Adhering to the idea of preserving historical materials, Bai Xianyong gave birth to the idea of recording his 18 years of promoting the process of Kunqu revival and inheritance with images.
"Peony Returns the Soul - Bai Xianyong and the Revival of Kunqu Opera" is a documentary that shows the revival of Kunqu opera. The film takes Bai Xianyong as the promoter as the main line, from the beginning of his contact with the beauty of Kunqu opera, to the innovation, experience and enlightenment and thinking of the "youth version of "Peony Pavilion", and then to the performance of "Campus Version of "Peony Pavilion"", during which it also traces back to the Kunqu opera artists in the early Republic of China, as well as the persistence and inheritance of Kunqu opera "passing on the characters" artists to descend generations of artists.
In order to shoot, he also went to Qiandeng Ancient Town and Zhouzhuang, the birthplace of Kunqu Opera, to capture the historical traces of Kunqu opera and public life, and also went to Peking University, Nanjing University, Soochow University, Hong Kong Chinese University, Kaohsiung Social Education Hall and other places to truly record the performance and exchange of "Campus Version Peony Pavilion" and "Youth Version Peony Pavilion".
In addition to Bai Xianyong, the film also interviews nearly 50 artists, scholars and promoters such as Wang Anqi, Wang Tong, Wang Shiyu, Zhou Qin, Yue Meiti, Xi Song, Liang Guyin, Zhang Jiqing, Chen Yizhen, Fan Mannong, etc., to discuss how to inject new vitality and contemporary charm into the art that is about to decline.
The film's director and screenwriter Deng Yongxing won the Best Newcomer Director at the Shanghai Film Festival and the Best Screenwriter at the Golden Horse Award for his second feature film "Six Hundred Miles to Fuyang", and participated in the "They Write on the Island" series, serving as the director of The Documentary Film of Bai Xianyong's Literary Artists in "The Red Open All Over the World", and has a long-term cooperation and mutual respect with Bai Xianyong.
For this documentary film, Deng Yongxing said, "I wanted to make this film itself a Kunqu opera from the beginning. With the four-hundred-year history as the time span, Tang Xianzu's texts, Teacher Bai, the workmanship of Kunqu opera, the mission of inheritance, etc. are used as materials, making it a video record with 'Kun flavor' and poetry. ”
Filming
From writer to "evangelist" of Kunqu opera
As the "first protagonist" of the film, Bai Xianyong not only personally participated in the 8-month post-editing process, put forward very specific modification suggestions, just as he did for the youth version of "Peony Pavilion", but also from the conception of the project to the invitation of Wang Shiyu and Zhang Jiqing as art directors, from polishing the script to the arrangement of a piece of music, and even the pattern color of a dress, the actor's eye action of raising his hands and feet... He asked every question in every detail.
In the film, he joked that he may have been the head of the drama class in his previous life, and what he did in this life was to "walk the rivers and lakes" with the drama class everywhere.
Bai Xianyong hopes that through the filming of "Peony Returns the Soul", he will promote and disseminate the experience of Kunqu opera art in the past 18 years, as well as the "Kunqu opera view" of "respecting the classical but not following the classics, using the modern but not abusing the modern", which will be recognized and practiced by more people.
"The theme of this film lies in how to pass it down and resurrect it, just like the peony returns its soul and returns its soul." The most important thing about our film is to talk about generations. ”
Although he has written many works for Kunqu opera, Bai Xianyong has always emphasized that the success of the youth version of "Peony Pavilion" is not a personal credit, but the result of the joint efforts of a large number of "Kunqu volunteers" and cultural elites.
"In fact, Kunqu not only has me, but also needs many, many volunteers. After being tied to Kunqu for nearly 20 years, I think my biggest change is from being a writer to a Kunqu 'evangelist' in the mass media. Kunqu opera is the most beautiful treasure of our nation. I am 84 years old, in fact, I should have retired a long time ago, but for the culture and art of the nation, I have a kind of reluctance. I hope that in the 21st century, as the country becomes stronger and stronger, we can usher in a 'Renaissance' that belongs to China. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Ding Xiao