2020 is the 20th anniversary of the birth of Lai Shengchuan's "Dream like a Dream", and the performance of Shanghai Station from February 13 to 16 was postponed due to the epidemic, but the audience is still full of expectations for this work. In 2000, the play premiered in Taiwan, and the nearly eight-hour performance left the audience in a dream. For Lai Shengchuan himself, the nearly four decades of directing career is also like a long, beautiful dream.
"The people of the world" read nostalgia
Lai Shengchuan, whose ancestral home is Huichang, Jiangxi, was born in the United States, grew up in Taiwan, and worked in the mainland most of his time after becoming famous. The unique experience of growing up in a cross-cultural environment between China and the West has brought him the confusion of "who I am", and the mental process of unlocking the identity "code" has also provided an inexhaustible spiritual motivation for his artistic creation.
Lai Shengchuan
Lai Shengchuan's father, Lai Jiaqiu, was a diplomat who was admitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Chongqing Central School of Political Science in 1941. In 1945, in order to accept the unconditional surrender of Japan, his father went to Kunming, Vietnam, and Burma as a translator. In 1949, his father went to Taiwan and in 1952 he was sent to the United States.
Two years later, Lai Shengchuan was born in Washington. As a child, he had two best friends. One was Conrad, the descendant of the rich man who invented the cigarette machine, and lived in the compound of the deep house, where there were many servants, and even a hall of at least 100 square meters, which was only used to place rockeries, towns, and a toy train through it. The other, Miguel, is a descendant of Cuban refugees who came to the United States on a refugee boat with his parents.
These three children from different regions, different families, and very different identities met and played together without restraint. It wasn't until he looked back on it as an adult that Lai Shengchuan felt particularly subtle and magical. In particular, Miguel's strong patriotic feelings impressed him.
Deeply imprinted in Lai Shengchuan's mind, there is also the nostalgia of his parents. Many times, my father would brew a pot of tea and sit quietly on the windowsill, sinking into contemplation. At this time, even if Lai Shengchuan was very thirsty, he did not dare to rush forward to disturb his father and pour tea to drink. Her mother, Tu Lingling, was born in Shuxiangmendi, and because she was far away from her homeland, she often felt lonely, so she followed her female neighbor, who was also from China, made a beautiful lampshade out of silk and sold it all the way to the White House. Many years later, Lai Shengchuan bought a new mobile phone for his mother, and after getting the mobile phone, her mother immediately sewed a red mobile phone case as before and solemnly installed the mobile phone into it.
At the age of 7, Lai moved to Seattle with his parents and returned to Taipei five years later. At first, he was very unaccustomed, especially in the United States, he was excellent in every subject, and he skipped grades, but in Taiwan, he failed all other subjects except English, and was forced to repeat grades, and his self-confidence was hit. Lai Shengchuan then pleaded with his father: "There are American schools in Taipei that are running very well, can I go there to study?" The father asked him softly but firmly, "Do you want to be an American or a Chinese?" These words woke him up at once.
In January 1969, Lai Jiaqiu died of throat cancer at an early age, and Lai Shengchuan's previous dream of sending abroad with his father was also shattered, and he had to "stay" in Taiwan. But it is also this change that allows him to calm down and learn Chinese culture, and in the process, Lai Shengchuan also deepens his feelings for this land. He once said: "This land is the land of Chinese, with the background of Chinese culture. Including my friends, the way we get along, I decided I belonged here. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to write these things. ”
"Born" in the living room of "Crush peach blossom garden"
Lai Shengchuan is famous for drama, in fact, his earliest hobby is music, and later some of the dramas he directed, the theme song is also composed by himself to catch the knife and play the soundtrack. As early as junior high school, he idolized Bob Dylan of the Beatles, practicing instruments such as the guitar. In 1972, Lai Shengchuan was admitted to the English Department of Fu Jen University, and in his spare time he engaged in folk song singing and performance in a café called "Adia" on Zhongxiao East Road in Taipei. This was an important underground cultural stronghold in Taipei at that time, focusing on hippie style. Here, Lai Shengchuan slowly became famous, and Li Zongsheng, Luo Dayou, Yu Chengqing and others have all come to see his performances. It was here that he met Ding Naizhu, who was a waiter in his spare time, and later the two sparked a spark of love.
At that time, Taiwan set off a "modern folk song movement", and Lai Shengchuan was the backbone of it, and repeatedly performed on the same stage with Yang Xian, Hu Defu and others, who were known as the "father of Taiwan's modern folk songs". During his military service after graduating from university, Lai also formed a band called "NCSB". Years later, when he was on the plane, he saw the old photos of the NCSB band performing in the Beijing News, and he was particularly emotional.
"Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" crew production set
If you follow such a path, Lai Shengchuan is likely to become a musician, or even a music superstar. But in 1978, he decided to go with his wife Ding Naizhu to the University of Berkeley, one of the birthplaces of the hippie movement, to study drama. After not getting a scholarship and being tricked into being penniless, he and his wife were forced to work in restaurants to survive.
In 1983, Lai was invited back to Taiwan to become a teacher at Taipei University of the Arts, teaching drama. At that time, Taiwan was a desert of drama, and the drama major not only had no teaching materials, but also relied on Lai Shengchuan's own translation, nor did it have a decent classroom, even the school's premises were borrowed from others, and there was a cemetery nearby, and the conditions were very difficult.
Fortunately, he soon met his future important partner, Jin Shijie.
Jin Shijie is a very rebellious person, unwilling to study hard in order to get a good grade, most of the time in high school is reading literature and art books, admitted to the Pingtung Agricultural College Animal Husbandry Department, after graduation to run to the pig farm to raise pigs, every day to 2,000 pigs to play the piano, sing, feel that the days are very happy. A year and a half later, when he witnessed his familiar pigs being sent to the slaughterhouse, he suddenly felt pessimistic, and the idyllic romanticism in his heart was completely shattered, so he came to Taipei alone and began to work hard for the pursuit of artistic ideals.
In 1980, Jin Shijie and a few friends founded Taiwan's first experimental theater troupe, Lanling Opera Workshop. During the day they work around to make ends meet, and at night they gather to rehearse plays. After some unremitting efforts, Lanling Opera Studio has gradually gained a certain influence and is also opening up the drama market in Taiwan.
Lai Shengchuan often choreographed dramas with Jin Shijie and others to discuss artistic topics. In 1984, Lai Shengchuan set up a "performance workshop" and successively launched plays such as "We All Grew Up Like This" and "That Night, We Say Crosstalk", which opened up a certain degree of popularity. In 1986, he began to choreograph "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden", inviting Jin Shijie to star.
Jin Shijie and Ding Naizhu
The script is about two crews called "Crush" and "Peach Blossom Garden", both of whom signed a contract with the theater for rehearsal that night, and because the performance was imminent, no one could postpone it, so the two crews had to rehearse on the stage. The inspiration for the story comes from similar experiences of people around the director. This chaotic and disorderly situation, and the feeling of breaking out of it and seeking a sense of harmony, coincided with the social reality of Taiwan at that time, thus stimulating Lai Shengchuan's creative passion.
In order to save costs, Lai Shengchuan let his wife Ding Naizhu play the heroine, and played with Jin Shijie, and the rehearsal hall was the living room at home. Every night Lai Shengchuan came home from work, made a meal and waited for the actors to come. They ate, chatted, and rehearsed until midnight. The next day, I went back to my respective posts.
Lai Shengchuan advocates collective creation, encouraging actors to devote themselves to the role and give the character more emotion according to their own understanding. During a rehearsal on a weekend afternoon, Jin Shijie set out as a lover who had been separated for many years by the war and asked Ding Naizhu: "Have you ever thought about me all these years?" ”
At that time, the sunset shone into the living room. At that moment, Ding Naizhu felt that what she was seeing was not Jin Shijie, but her mother Ding Liu Huiru. The character in the play comes out of the Burma Highway and finally settles in Taiwan, which is the route her mother took. In an instant, Ding Naizhu burst into tears. Her emotions also moved everyone present, and it took everyone more than 10 minutes to calm down their emotions and continue to devote themselves to creation. Lai Shengchuan later recalled that this afternoon's breakthrough was very important, giving the script emotion and soul. "That day they found a passage that could lead to everyone's heart."
Navigating the "Darkest Hour" of Creation
Lai Shengchuan, who became famous for his drama, soon began to diversify his artistic development path, one of which was film. In 1992, he directed the drama adaptation of the drama "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden". Starring Jin Shijie, Lin Qingxia and Li Liqun, the film had a great impact in Taiwan and won the Best Adapted Screenplay Award at the 29th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards.
Striking iron while it is hot is also a common human condition. Two years later, Lai Shengchuan released "Flying Man Ada". The film tells the story of a young man named "Ada", who is looking for a master who can teach him light skills in the vast sea of people. The film is a mixture of kung fu, suspense, funny and other elements, but also incorporates a lot of Zen theory and social criticism. Lai Shengchuan tried to make a new style of martial arts films, but due to the overly complex and stream-of-consciousness of the film, many viewers were confused, and the box office suffered Waterloo.
This defeat caused Lai Shengchuan, who had been going smoothly, to be devastated, and even almost knocked him down. During that time, he felt that he could not do anything, did not want to rehearse dramas, did not want to make movies, and almost suffered from depression. Later, Lai Shengchuan recalled: "I have a psychologist friend who said: The biggest feature of a midlife crisis is that no matter how successful a person has been in the past, he feels completely meaningless. That's how I was. ”
The decadent appearance of the husband, the wife Ding Naizhu looked in the eyes, anxious in the heart. At that time, she was working in a television station, and in order to help her husband get out of this psychological trap, Ding Naizhu encouraged her husband to devote himself to a new industry - shooting the TV sitcom "Our Family Is Human". As requested, the show airs every Monday to Friday for 1 hour at a time. This was undoubtedly a great challenge, but Lai Shengchuan "frantically agreed" at the time because he wanted to break out of a new path.
During that time, Lai Shengchuan's brain was running fast like a highway. Every morning, he writes scripts based on the latest current events, organizes rehearsals for actors in the morning, and broadcasts on television in the evening. Originally planned to do only 40 episodes, but I did not expect to persist for 4 years, up to more than 600 episodes, and achieved great success. Through this fast-paced "thinking exercise", Lai Shengchuan regained his state, smoothly walked out of the "mid-life crisis", and also had a deeper idea of "elegance" and "custom".
After going around in a big circle outside the circle of drama, Lai Shengchuan finally found that the most inseparable thing in his heart was still drama, and returning to drama was the original intention and belonging of his art. After the end of "Our Family Is Human", he re-engaged in drama creation.
The "long drama that cannot be commercially performed" was a great success
In 1999, Lai Shengchuan traveled to Bodh Gaya, India. He saw Xuanzang's description of the Ashoka Stupa and the Bodhi tree under which Shakyamuni sat during his enlightenment, and pilgrims from all over the world walked around the tree in a clockwise direction, each with their own stories on their faces. Greatly inspired, Lai Shengchuan decided to create a drama about the passage of time and the cycle of fate, "Dream like a Dream", and pioneered the use of a circular stage, placing the audience in the center of the stage, and the actors "turned the mountain" around the audience with a pilgrimage mentality.
From left to right: Lai Shengchuan, Li Liqun, Li Guoxiu
A year later, while returning to his alma mater, the University of Berkeley, he completed the script for "Like a Dream" and premiered it in English for 3 and a half hours. After returning to Taipei University of the Arts, he completed Chinese version of the script. The show began rehearsals for 12 hours, but after repeated weighing and cutting, it became a widely circulated 8-hour version. For drama, 8 hours is relatively rare, and it is a huge challenge for both the actors and the audience. But Lai Shengchuan said, "Drama has a life, life is an organism, and every work has its own length of life." ”
In 2001, the master's class of the School of Arts Management of Taipei University of the Arts invited Lai Shengchuan to attend a class. The final exam he gave to his students was titled "Professional Performance Plan for "Like a Dream"" The results of the reports submitted by the four groups of students were the same: they could not perform! The students carefully made the budget, and the conclusion was that the cost of the play was high, the income was low, and there was no way to make a profit. Lai Shengchuan felt very uncomfortable at the thought of such a well-crafted work, which reminded him of a conversation he had with Department Chair Bob Goldsby when he was studying in the United States. As an influential professor in the theater world, Goldsby's children all left the theater and became judges and psychologists. Lai Shengchuan asked curiously what the reason was, and the professor smiled and said that because the children had said bluntly that they hoped to have food in the future.
Stills from "Like a Dream"
However, after Mao Junhui, director of the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, came to Taiwan to watch "Like a Dream", he was determined to introduce the play to Hong Kong and open up the commercialization of this long drama. Mao Junhui's decision caused the opposition of the whole team, and the theater layout and prop production also faced many difficulties, but these problems, Mao Junhui finally managed to overcome them, and held a premiere in Hong Kong in 2002, starring Wang Mingquan, Gao Wenhan, Qin Kefan, etc. "Dream of Dreams" has since become a hit. Since then, "Like a Dream" has performed more than 100 performances in many cities at home and abroad, achieving its status in contemporary theater.
The "taste" of buns in the village
The village is a product of Taiwan's special historical stage. In 1949, the Kuomintang defeated Taiwan and built a large number of villages to resettle soldiers and their families who came to Taiwan from the mainland. They left their homeland and land, trying to rebuild their former lives in their villages and relieve their strong nostalgia for their hometown. However, with the passage of time, returning to their hometown has become a distant dream, and the descendants of the village have gradually left here and integrated into the new life of Taiwanese society, and the villages born of the war are gradually disappearing.
Beginning in 2006, Taiwanese television producer Wang Weizhong spent two years telling Lai Shengchuan nearly a hundred stories intermittently. Wang Weizhong is a gold medal program producer in Taiwan and has achieved great success in the field of television, but as a son of the village, he has a strong plot of the village in his heart, hoping to retain the collective memory of a generation in a dramatic way.
Lai Shengchuan spent two years listening, thinking about how to turn such trivial and complicated stories into an organic whole. One day, he told Wang Weizhong that he had already thought about how the story should be presented. Therefore, he spent three days at home in retreat, wrote the story outline of "Treasure Island One Village", and condensed the stories of countless families in these three families.
On the stage, between the No. 98 old Zhao family and the No. 99 Zhou Ning family, there was originally a very small open space, with a telephone pole, and the old Zhu Zhuo was built with a simple wooden frame to form a beam and shared a window with the neighbors. The three families are closely connected by the simple eaves, and the fates of everyone are also intertwined, staging a tragicomedy of the times spanning nearly 60 years.
The bun is the key symbol of the whole play, pinning on the nostalgia for home. When the protagonist of the story completely lost the idea of returning to the mainland and decided to take root in Baodao to live a good life, the old lady used Tianjin dialect to teach the Taiwanese daughter-in-law the know-how of making Tianjin buns: the ratio of fat to lean meat should be adjusted according to seasonal changes, and the ratio of fat and lean in summer was three to seven, and in winter, fat and lean were four to six.
At the end of the performance, the steaming buns on the spot also became the feature of "Treasure Island And a Village". When Lai Shengchuan was a doctoral student in the United States, he once directed a Roman comedy work from two thousand years ago, and the last sentence of the play was: "The actor invites all the audience to the back and everyone eats together." Lai Shengchuan asked his wife, who is the producer, to realize the dream of inviting the audience to eat a meal, and Ding Naizhu felt very embarrassed: "This idea is simply crazy, so many buns, where to get it!" Therefore, every time he went to a performance, finding a bun with local characteristics became the most important task of Ding Naizhu.
On December 5, 2008, when "Treasure Island One Village" premiered, each audience member received a bun with the house number of "Treasure Island One Village No. 99" printed on it. Some viewers are reluctant to eat such a commemorative bun, which has been kept in the refrigerator. In October 2011, the crew performed for free outdoors at Weiwu Camp in Kaohsiung, setting a record of 25,000 people watching and receiving buns on the spot. During the tour in the mainland, the crew presented Beijing Qingfeng buns, Ding Tai Feng small dumplings, Nanjing Heshan Garden buns and so on to the audience.
"Buns taste anything, but you just can't eat what it tastes like." A line in the play has become the best portrayal of "Treasure Island and a Village", and it has also made the audience have more taste.
In Wuzhen, have a big dream
Lai Shengchuan always remembers how he felt when he first came to Wuzhen. He sat in a black canopy boat with artificial oars, and slowly shook into a silent beauty. When he wanders through the ancient, secluded streets and alleys, he sees that his eyes are full of traditional houses, with no telephone poles on either side or any vehicles, as if he is in a bygone era. "Having walked through so many small towns, I have never been to such a place. It is not only a tourist destination, it is itself making culture, making art. There is a power to 'quiet' the heart, and at the same time there is a 'vigorous' vitality. ”
World-renowned theatre festivals, mostly set in historic cities, allow ancient architecture and modern theatre art to collide with sparks of inspiration. Drama can take place in any corner of the ancient city, achieving "seeing the play without walking into the theater". Lai Shengchuan has a grand goal, to create a theater festival with Chinese cultural imprints that can produce world-class influence, so that this Jiangnan water town can bloom with new light. Therefore, he and Chen Xianghong, Huang Lei, Meng Jinghui and others jointly launched the "Wuzhen Drama Festival".
Building a theater was the first challenge faced by Lai Shengchuan and his peers. In addition to building new and modern theaters and art centers, they have devoted their main energy to "revitalizing" ancient buildings, so that they can basically maintain the original simple shape and meet the performance needs of modern theaters.
The Guole Theater was originally a 600-year-old opera stage, built on the water. Looking up, the wood carvings on the top of the stage are unique and intricate, but the audience needs to watch the play in the open air. Lai Shengchuan transformed it into an indoor theater to create a modern stepped audience seat. The most unique thing about the theater is that pushing open the back door is a small river. In the evening, when the audience enters, they can see the sunset, giving the river and water grass a golden glow, and the stage and natural scenery are perfectly integrated, which is beautiful.
Lai Shengchuan and Wang Weizhong (right)
The Silk Lounge Theater was originally a local warehouse with a history of more than 100 years. Lai Shengchuan personally presided over the renovation project, which is divided into upper and lower floors, which can accommodate 200 spectators. A unique wrap-around stage is also set up here, making the interaction between performers and audiences more convenient and direct.
In May 2013, the first Wuzhen Drama Festival was officially opened. In the first performance, Lai Shengchuan brought his classic work "Like a Dream". In addition to the two plays directed by Meng Jinghui and Tian Qinxin, the other 3 international classic works were invited by Lai Shengchuan in his personal name. With the invitation of "I hope your works are staged in jewel-like buildings", he impressed Robert Brustin, the godfather of modern Theater in the United States, The Chinese-American director Zheren Huang, and the head of the Odin Theater, Eugeno Barbara, and let them gather in this oriental town.
By 2019, the Wuzhen Drama Festival has been successfully held for 7 sessions, and its reputation in the theater industry is becoming more and more popular, and more and more Chinese and foreign classic plays have applied to participate in the theater festival. In addition to the "youth competition" aimed at cultivating and excavating young theater talents, and the "Ancient Town Carnival" staged in all corners of the streets and alleys, the most characteristic of Wuzhen is probably the Long Street Banquet. More than 100 eight immortal tables were placed on the bluestone slab road in Wuzhen, on which were placed local delicacies such as diamond horns, sugar lotus, black wine, and three whites, whether it was international big-name directors, mainland performing arts stars or media reporters, everyone had no scruples to cheer, and the high and low noise waves added rhythm to the already noisy town. Tourists fish through the past, inadvertently can rub shoulders with Lai Shengchuan, Huang Lei and others.
"Wuzhen is a place to dream. I can't imagine that the dreams that a few of us make together will have such a big impact! Lai Shengchuan said with emotion that wuzhen's big dream, he will continue to do it, and it is becoming more and more gorgeous.
Source: Magazine of All Walks of Life, Issue 8, 2020
Author: Li Zhujiao