He doesn't seem to be on camera for a long time. On the head of the New Year, I saw him walk into the opening chapter of the Oriental Satellite TV "Sven Jiangnan", a burst of dark joy. Still so robust and Sven. Seemingly casual talk monologues, gradually reflect the green mountains and waters, misty, deep.
"My Jiangnan, your Jiangnan, is it the same Jiangnan?" I grew up here, and when I was old, I didn't dare to say, I knew Jiangnan clearly. Gangnam has countless faces. ”
This monologue contains his life footprints and lifelong pursuits. "Growing up here", born in Beijing; more than sixty years on the stage, more than seventy years in Shanghai, "and in the old age" eighty miles away, "do not dare to say, I know clearly." It's not just "Gangnam". The mission of drama is to present the "countless faces" of the human world on the stage and wake up the world. He started this in the 1950s and will continue to do it.
On October 9 last year, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles awarded him the "Lifetime Achievement Drama Award", which is well deserved. He wants to give his life to the stage completely and completely.
This is Jiao Huang.
Jiao Huang's close-up photo by Zu Zhongren
1. At this age, start missing your mother every day
I have visited many times, first to invite him to perform in the performances I have made, and then out of admiration and study. His home is the classroom. Every time I communicate with him, I always have an epiphany.
When I visited him a few years ago, as soon as I took a seat at the door, he asked me how old I was. As is customary, I reported my age. "No, no," he said, "why doesn't your mother count for a year in which she was pregnant with you?" When a mother is pregnant, she is the beginning of a new life." He believes that everyone's virtual age should be the real age. The suffering and kindness of mother's october pregnancy cannot be erased.
Jiao Huang with his mother
"I'm older, and now I miss my mother every day, and I don't know why?" He said to himself. I nodded slightly. I remembered that Mo Yan recently had an answer that seemed to be prepared for him, "Go to the end of life, dream of a baby born; go to the end of love, meet a mother."
Jiao Huang was deeply in love with his mother. When he was five years old, his mother took him and his sister and fled from Beijing to find his father and went to Chongqing with great hardships. Soon after, he went to Shanghai with his father. In order to raise a pair of children, the mother has been engaged in housework all her life and has never gone out to work. The mother's devotion is also so complete and thorough. "I've been acting all my life, but my mother hasn't seen me play." As he spoke, his eyes turned red. Guilt looms in the mood of guilt.
This afternoon, he talked from his mother to his alma mater and tutors, full of gratitude.
Dramatist Huang Zuolin (first from the left) gives Jiao Huang and others a play
He is a 1959 graduate of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. The famous actors Liang Boluo, Yang Zaibao, Zhang Xianheng, Du Yeqiu, Zhang Mingyu, Li Jiayao, Lu Shichu, etc., who are very familiar to everyone, are all classmates of Jiao Huang. Jiao Huang is "outstanding" among the candidates. One of the examiners, his homeroom teacher, Mr. Hu Dao, said in his memoirs: "As soon as Jiao Huang walked in, his eyes lit up. "Tall figure, long legs, full of black hair, looking at ease. He benefited from his birth in Beijing, fluent in Mandarin, and after the training of drama activities on the campus of middle and high schools, in front of the examiners, he was not afraid of the stage, but also eager to try.
"This is the best actor to play Zhou Ping", Teacher Hu was overjoyed. Excellent candidates often bring a certain image temperament of drama, which is a natural manifestation of acting talent.
Jiao Huang was fortunate that as soon as he went to school, he received the inheritance of the great Soviet dramatist Stanislavsky. His mentor, Leptovskaya from the Leningrad Academy of Dramatic Performance, taught him how to build a life and shape characters in the process of character creation.
Jiao Huang and his classmates took a group photo with Lepkovskaya
Hu Rongrong, the classroom teacher of ballet, was later the principal of the Shanghai Dance School and the president of the Shanghai Dancers Association; the national dance teacher Fang Chuanyun was a famous character in the Kunqu opera circle. Everyone taught art, and the students were used all their lives: "I play Kangxi and Qianlong, how to sit, how to stand, how to walk in robes, that is the basis for learning ethnic dance in schools," Jiao said with emotion.
He is extremely attached to the study life of the play: "The teachers never taught us how to make money, never talked about this thing, but taught us how to act well. ”
Teacher Hu, the class teacher, from the first grade to the graduation, for four years, is Jiao Huang's "good teacher and friend": "He does not have five cents in his pocket, and he is still writing books at the age of 90." The computer on which Teacher Hu wrote the book was sent by Jiao Huang's lover Xiao Li. He typed word by word on the keyboard, and forced out a copy of Drama Acting. Teacher Hu died at the age of 98. Jiao Huang was so sad that he attended the funeral and sent a couplet: "The adults in heaven and earth have been poor all their lives, and the father of the student garden has carried out a hundred years of merit."
2. It feels like he's like that tree, always there
I often discussed recitations with him. Once, mao Zedong's "Seven Laws and the Long March" was discussed. This poem describes the Red Army's smooth journey through the ups and downs and hardships, and finally successfully reached the Northern Shaanxi General Division. Many actors recite high-profile recitations with high emotions. Jiao Huang was not impressed. He believes that many reciters have not yet read and understood the poem. For example, he said: "After the three armies", who is "cheerful"? He asked himself: "Obviously, it is not the 'three armed forces' that 'opened their faces', but after the Red Army completed the Long March, they should comfort those heroic martyrs who sacrificed for this, they have knowledge underground, 'open their faces'."
It was the first time I had heard such a rich and profound reading of the Long March. The audience may find it hard to believe that this "Prince of Shakespeare" and "Emperor of China" have such a thorough understanding of the history of the Communist Party of China and the Long March of the Red Army. Jiao Huang said: "Actors must have a very broad cultural vision, and they must work extremely hard to do a good job."
Of course, acting out a play is much more complicated than reciting a poem. For more than 60 years, Jiao Huang has made "character image conception" for each dramatic character, and has created a real and vivid character image with a unique external shape and corresponding temperament.
Jiao Huang Zu Zhongren photo
As far back as 1993, Shanghai's original drama "The Wife from the United States" sensationalized Beijing and Shanghai. The plot is very simple, the wife Wang Mingjun returned from the United States, the only task is to divorce her husband Yuan Mingqing, let the husband also go to the United States as a single to settle down, but the husband refused. Yuan Mingqing is played by Jiao Huang.
It was an afternoon in the fall. He told me that he had written a character for the character of Yuan Mingqing called "A Tree." Nearly forty years later, he can still recite it fluently like this:
"There is a tree growing alone in the street, it is very inconspicuous, but it is a tree, standing there in all its appearances in spring, summer, autumn and winter." "Sometimes its branches and leaves are born in a mess, twisted together, and it still collects a lot of dirt, which is very messy, but when it rains for several days, it washes and brushes, and when it sees the sun again, it is cheerful again." "Later, there were a number of fashion stores and seafood restaurants around it, and the lights were red and green. The tree became more and more eclipsed. One day, a small bird that had perched in the trees in the past flew in, from a new world. Fluttering in the trees for a few days, it flew away again. The tree remained there. ”
This should be a poem written by a literary artist. This tree is to shake itself: rooted in the soil of art, dedicated to drama, unswerving; the fierce wind has cut away its leaves, ten years of catastrophe can not take away his faith, it stays there, alone on the stage; the sun shines again, thousands of purples and reds, never seeing different thoughts, still standing there.
Regardless of good times or bad times, over the past 60 years, Jiao Huang has created dozens of classic artistic images, like a tree full of "flowers", and has been praised by the public as "Shakespeare Prince" and "Emperor of China".
In September 2021, Jiao Huang participated in the "Power of Sound - Famous Artists Multimedia Audio-Visual Recitation", which was photographed from left to right by Ding Jianhua, Lü Zhong, Jiao Huang, Yao Xijuan, Xiao Xiong, and Sun Jie
3. Lower yourself and put the audience on top of you
In the fall of 2017, I worked with Shangdian. The main and subtitle of the promotional poster was set as "The Line Is Like a Song - Jiao Huang and His Classmates Reciting the Grand Ceremony". Jiao Huang looked at it and shook his head repeatedly: "No, no, how can I do this?" There are more students than me. Then, he counted several big names: "Lou Jicheng is very good, Zhang Mingyu is also good, Ren Guangzhi is also very good..."
I considered the box office, first insisting on the design of the subtitle. Later, he said he would not participate in the show if his name was removed from the poster. I had to obey. As a result, he did not participate in the performance due to illness, and some audience members also refunded their tickets for this reason.
But he always felt that he had to work hard. He once told me that recitation is not easy, unlike dramas, which have plots and character exchanges, but recitation is a play by yourself, involving almost all the elements of performance: inner vision, emotional memory, experience and embodiment, language and body... Only with these elements can the recitation be good and beautiful.
At the end, he said, "I recite, and eight times out of ten fail." I was taken aback that his self-evaluation was so humble. In fact, the recitation "Line Board Like a Song" recorded by CCTV for him has become a classic model in the national recitation circle.
It was shortly after the TV series "No War in Peking" was broadcast, and the audience spoke highly of the economics professor he played. He said to me, "No, I'm going to re-record it." It turned out that he was dissatisfied with the voice he was recording: "I told the director that I wanted to re-record, and I would pay for it." Jiao Huang is almost harsh on his artistic image, and he is willing to give everything for it.
Jiao Huang won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the 6th Shanghai Literature and Art Award
I always thought about throwing a personal recitation party for him. When talking about the venue, I proposed to go to the Shanghai Grand Theatre or go to the Oriental Art Center, and he said no.
He chose the concert hall of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra: "The stage there is sunken on the ground, and the audience sits up in a row, and the actors will not look like they are high." He said, "Actors are face-to-face communication with the audience, to be kind and affinity."
Lowering himself and putting the audience in a supreme position, Jiao Huang has always made such an effort.
4. There is nothing in the storehouse of the heart except drama
It was the end of 2016, and I went to visit him at the Sixth People's Hospital. When it comes to art, his eyes shine, and his voice "rises".
On December 6 of that year, there was a branch of the fourth meeting of the China-UK high-level people-to-people exchange mechanism, "Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare", two Eastern and Western theater masters, 400 years after the death of the two Eastern and Western theater masters, "on the same stage" cross-time and space dialogue. Jiao Huang had an impromptu speech at this meeting, and he seemed to be very satisfied with the speech, and "reproduced it" with me on the hospital bed. His memory, too amazing. That's because in the storehouse of the heart, there's nothing else but drama.
Jiao Huang won the "Lifetime Achievement Dramatist of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles"
"400 years on, the world is looking forward to beauty. However, we are facing the continuous impact of various commercial tides on people's aesthetic vision. At this moment, I think what the stage needs to adhere to more should be the fine tradition and humanistic care advocated by the two masters. ”
This is the echo of Shakespeare in China 400 years later, the solemn declaration of Tang Xianzu's descendants. Jiao Huang is willing to take the cause of human art as his own responsibility, and dares to "challenge himself" and "embarrass himself" for this purpose. His mind is so broad, which is like the general "old age" mentality.
Jiao Huang starred in the Shakespeare classic Zu Zhongren photographed
Trees are not old. It's growing at any time, it's just not visible to you. It "elongates" underground. The roots are deeper and deeper, the roots are getting longer and longer, stretching farther and farther, and finally grasping the roots and whiskers of other trees, intertwining with each other, intertwined, forming a powerful force for common protection and inheritance. Spring has arrived, and the birds have flown again. The "blossoms" on the trees are in full bloom, so beautiful. The beauty of spiritual culture will never be surpassed by brilliant materials.
In the New Year, I sincerely wish For The Blessing of Teacher Jiao Huang for a long and healthy life. Chinese audiences need you. (Shuoyuan)