Peking opera actress Wang Peiyu once said a widely circulated "bold saying": "There are only two kinds of people in the world, people who like Peking Opera, and people who don't know that they like Peking Opera." ”
The recent two cases of breaking the circle can become the latest confirmation of this sentence: the new character Yunyan in the blockbuster game "Original God" was launched, which circled a wave of global fans for Peking Opera, so far, the Yunwei singing section "Goddess Split View" has been played more than 17 million times on B station and more than 4.6 million views on YouTube; five post-00s girls in the Peking Opera performance major of Shanghai Theater Academy have quickly become Internet celebrities with Peking Opera singing voices to interpret ancient songs, and the short video playback of "Exploring the Window" alone has exceeded 50 million. Netizens left a message "I understand the happiness of the old ancestors!" ”
And if you replace "Peking Opera" with "Xiqu", you can also add Zeng Xiaomin, director of Guangdong Cantonese Theatre, and pop singer Liang Hanwen cooperated with the promotional song "Waiting for You to Return" of the Cantonese opera movie "White Snake Legend and Love" at the B station party, and netizens in the north and south of the world left a message in the bullet screen "One second into the pit" and "fell in love with Cantonese opera".
However, the emergence of these cases, while promoting the breaking of the circle of opera, is often accompanied by criticism of "not enough opera" or even "destroying opera" in the circle, which is very intriguing. In recent years, how to promote opera to those who do not know that they like opera is a topic that the opera industry is talking about, but "not enough opera" or "destroying opera", its essence is a judgment from the self, and what is needed to break the circle is precisely from the perspective of the other party, which is to push out the things in the circle in a way that is interested outside the circle. From this point of view, opera is better to break the circle, the first one may be: to break the industry's stereotypes.
For example, does it have to be presented with a whisker and tail?
For the controversy caused by some circle-breaking cases, Hu Na, associate professor of the China Academy of Performing Arts, proposed a pair of concepts such as "ontology communication" and "element communication". The so-called "ontology communication", specific to the context of opera, is the current mainstream of the opera industry, that is, no matter through what medium, opera should be presented to the public in a complete form, not only to sing and play completely, costume props should also be standardized; and the current several cases out of the circle are more of a kind of "element dissemination", that is, in line with the general premise of respecting opera, extract the singing voice or performance form of opera, and integrate it into another cultural style, such as "Surprise Hong" by Qiu Jirong, grandson of Peking Opera master Qiu Shengrong. With a modern dance that presents dreams, it strings together the classic repertoire fragments of six types of operas: Kun opera, Qin Cavity, Commentary, Sichuan Opera, Hebei Zizi and Peking Opera, and plays a new trick of "opera skewering".
Although it has been repeatedly questioned by the industry, it is an obvious fact that the "element dissemination" is more energy efficient in promoting the out-of-circle of opera. The author observed such an interesting communication chain: many netizens were "Amway" by "Waiting for Your Return" the movie "White Snake Legend • Love", and the movie "White Snake Legend • Love" made the Cantonese opera of the same name, also starring Zeng Xiaomin, difficult to find when touring many cities across the country - some of them are places where Cantonese opera has not been involved before.
The reason for this is not only that for a new generation of cultural audiences, it is not easy to cross the threshold of appreciation and directly enter the complete opera aesthetic system (the most typical example is that many people are often intimidated by the gong and drum points of opera because they cannot accept it), but also that as the performance venue is transferred from the former Goulan Wayan Square City to the later Tea House Theater Garden and then to today's modern theater, Opera is actually very far away from daily life, and it is necessary to find a new application scenario for it to return to the field of daily life. Reconstructing connections to everyday life. Only in this way can opera be seen again, or discovered. And this is why "element propagation" is effective.
Some people may ask: What about after being seen?
Here we will lead to a second stereotype about the breaking of the circle of opera: Is it only by leading outsiders to the theater to become opera audiences that the circle is a successful circle breaking?
There is an intriguing phenomenon: although the marriage of opera and games has not been uncommon in recent years, the active party is often the game company. The head of a xiqu theater troupe told this writer that they had invited some up masters to the theater to watch plays and make short videos, but they did not bring more young audiences to the performance, which more or less discouraged their enthusiasm for further attempts.
Behind the frustration of the enthusiasm of the academy group, the question that needs to be considered is: What is the real meaning of breaking the circle of opera?
In the author's opinion, the "DNA moving" brushed on the bullet screen is one of the answers. It reminds us that in addition to being a specific literary and artistic style, opera is also a symbol and a symbol of China's excellent traditional culture. When it is re-seen and discovered in today's mass cultural field through the way of "element dissemination", it can activate the cultural memory engraved in the audience's genes and thus truly expand the radius of traditional cultural radiation - and this will undoubtedly become the most solid soil for the future development of opera.
The second answer, I am afraid that as Tao Qingmei, a researcher at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, any kind of traditional art needs to realize the dialogue with its own era through innovation, but the strong integrity of opera formed in the long history makes it difficult to innovate it step by step, but through the collision, integration and superposition of other cultural types in the process of breaking the circle, it is possible to make opera show a new form in the local and even detailed areas, and grow new branches. New buds bloom.
Back to the Wang Peiyu mentioned at the beginning of the article. A few years ago, in response to the situation that this Peking Opera Kunsheng frequently appeared in various programs that had little to do with Peking Opera and even Opera, the opera critic Fu Jin once wrote an article in Wen Wei Po, proposing to expand the circle of friends of Opera, "need Zhang Huoding also need Wang Peiyu." Today, we may be able to push this judgment a little further - for such a comprehensive art as opera, the inheritance and display of the original flavor is of course important, and after decomposing its elements, it is equally important to integrate with other styles and media to achieve cross-border communication.
Breaking the circle is to break the barriers, but also to break the stereotype, only to create an inclusive, open and innovative ecology, so that the circle inside and outside the circle to produce a positive collision exchange, opera can better break the circle.
Author: Shao Ling
Editor: Zhou Minxian
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Xin
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.