Because of a drama "White Deer Plain", Shaanxi Renyi has attracted the attention of the entire Chinese drama circle and the drama market over the years, so far, this drama has traveled through more than 70 cities across the country, performed 432 times, almost everywhere it is difficult to find a ticket, and is considered the most satisfactory stage version by the original author Chen Zhongzhong. Later, the theater launched a play based on Lu Yao's novel "Ordinary World". This year, a new drama "Protagonist", which has been planned for nearly 3 years and has attracted attention from all walks of life, has finally appeared.
Poster of "Protagonist"
The drama "Protagonist" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Shaanxi writer Chen Yan who won the Mao Dun Literature Award, and is also the third drama work based on the Mao Dun Literature Award launched by the Shaanxi Performing Arts Group Shaanxi People's Art Theater after "White Deer Plain" and "Ordinary World". Director Hu Zongqi cooperated with Shaanxi Renyi again after "White Deer Plain", and the screenwriter specially invited the playwright Cao Lusheng. Three generations of actors from Shaanxi people's art, old and young, co-starred in this drama.
A few days ago, the drama "Protagonist" was rehearsed in the Xi'an People's Theater, which was also the first appearance of this new play. On the stage, the freehand dance space composed of 16 pillars and the simple props like a table and two chairs transform different time and space inside and outside the play. Three and a half hours, 40 years of life and social ups and downs, more than 50 scenes, more than a dozen characters of all kinds, a group of "song team" like the masses and viewers. The drama "Protagonist" tells the story of Qin E's nearly half-century life encounter in the narrative rhythm and time and space transformation of "flowing clouds and flowing water", behind which is also a contemporary history of the ups and downs of Qin Cavity, a grand picture of a complex world.
After watching the rehearsal performance of the play, Chen Yan, the original author of the novel, who is both a writer and a playwright, was very excited: "I have been watching this play tonight in tears. I am really touched that it is presented in this way today. I don't think my novel is as wonderful as this play tonight. The whole drama has a sense of destiny, frustration, and struggle, as well as a sense of growth in life and a sense of meaning in life. He bowed to all the creators and said, "Thank you artists for giving the novel such a stage artistic transformation and brilliance." ”
On February 25, the play will officially premiere at the Shaanxi Grand Theatre, after which a nationwide tour will begin.
From literature to drama, Chen Yan's Mao Dun Literature Prize novels were put on the stage
Shaanxi is a place where writers emerge. Writers Lu Yao, Chen Zhongzhong and Chen Yan created "Ordinary World", "White Deer Plain" and "Protagonist", all of which have won the Mao Dun Literature Award, and also conveyed the social history and humanistic spirit of the Land of Sanqin to the world from their own perspectives. This year is the 40th anniversary of the first selection of the "Mao Dun Literature Award", Shaanxi Renyi lasted for five years, based on these three works to create three dramas of the same name, in order to constitute the "Mao Award Trilogy", with stage art to reproduce the core of the literary spirit.
Among them, the original work of "Protagonist", adapted from Chen Yan's novel, has a length of nearly 700,000 words, spanning more than 40 years. The novel is written from 1976 to 2016, showing the protagonist's history of Reminiscence Qin'e from herding sheep dolls, burning fire maidens, and then to supporting roles to the protagonist. In "Protagonist", Chen Yan depicts the vicissitudes of China's oldest drama through several generations of Qin people, and the thousands of changes that the whole society has experienced in the torrent of the times. One or two hundred characters appear in the book, unfolding a complex and dense picture of life. In the world that unfolds around the rise and fall of Reminiscence of Qin E's personal destiny, there is no shortage of gongs and drums of the times, as well as the comings and goings of various people like marquees, who together constitute the image of the times.
Writer Chen Yan is also a well-known screenwriter in the Chinese drama world, who has been committed to the script creation of local operas such as Qin Cavity and Meihu Opera for many years, and has created a series of modern plays in the field of sonic boom dramas such as "Late Blooming Rose", "Big Tree Moving West", "Xijing Story", etc., and has repeatedly won national awards such as "Cao Yu Drama Literature Award", "Wenhua Screenwriter Award" and "National Five One Project Award". Chen Yan also served as the director of the Shaanxi Opera Research Institute and other management positions, stayed in the troupe for almost a lifetime, witnessed countless actors from the jerkiness of the new group to the stage of popularity, he is also very familiar with the life of opera people, has always had the feeling of writing the growth of opera artists, and these have also become the source of material for him to create two novels, "Loading stage" and "Protagonist".
After watching the drama "Protagonist", Chen Yan said, "When I watched the play, I was always thinking about why I wrote this novel in the first place, and my mind was constantly playing back, condensing and improving. This play brings me empathy for life and makes me think about the journey that life has traveled. Some viewers may not have read the novel, but I think as long as they have experienced this era, there is some understanding of human nature, the understanding of the times, the understanding of life, especially the understanding of survival, I think this play is not difficult to understand. There's a lot of empathy in it, and the show improves the novel a lot with such a fast pace and so delicate details. ”
Pu Cunxin, chairman of the China Drama Association and a performance artist, also rushed to Xi'an to watch the performance of "Protagonist", and after watching the play, he said: "The power of literature is always the resource of art, if literature is a tree, then the drama "Protagonist" is the furniture created by dedication. In recent years, Shaanxi people have taken works and talents to speak, and used the artistic style of drama to express humanities and the world, and expressed them more realistically and realistically. ”
The interpretation of the whole Shaanxi dialect is another grand work created by Shaanxi Renyi
Since July 2019, Shaanxi Renyi has signed the copyright of adapting the novel "Protagonist" into a drama, and the main creators of the crew have gone to Xi'an, Sanyuan, Jingyang and other places to live in depth many times in the early stage, listen to the Qin cavity, watch the stage, carry out symposiums, and feel the various characters in Chen Yan's pen in the process of collecting style, and the script has changed its draft eight times.
But it is not easy to condense the complex characters and stories in the novel on the stage. Cao Lusheng, a professor at the Shanghai Theater Academy and a playwright, was invited to serve as a screenwriter, and the script was basically faithful to the original novel, and only did the plot capture and downsizing. Around the memories of Qin'e's life course, the characters around her have appeared on the stage, and the road of learning art and the road of emotional life are intertwined in this drama work. It is reported that the original script had more than 50,000 words, and finally it was cut to more than 30,000 words during the rehearsal process. The final stage presentation of the work is still more than three hours long. However, because the stage narrative of the whole play is extremely compact, the viewing experience is not lengthy, and the whole play is flowing and completed in one go.
Director Hu Zongqi followed "White Deer Plain" and cooperated with Shaanxi Renyi again as the director of "Protagonist". Hu Zongqi has won the "Golden Lion Award for Chinese Drama", the "Wenhua Director Award" and various awards of the whole army and the whole country. Five years ago, Shaanxi Renyi invited him and screenwriter Meng Bing to put the novel "White Deer Plain" on the stage, which caused a sensation in the country for a while, and performed all over the country in 5 years, and received heartfelt applause and applause from the audience every time he came out. In "Protagonist", a work that is also intertwined with history and time and space, the director uses various directorial means to show a smooth and fast-paced time-space transition on a very concise and freehand stage.
As a work about Qin Lu artists, "drama within a play" is also an important component of "Protagonist". In the play, the transition between life scenes and stage scenes is often "seamless". Moving on a chair, the two costumers put on costumes for Yi Qin'e, accompanied by lighting gongs and drums, and the "in and out of the picture" on the stage appeared, and the protagonist became a person in the play. With the help of the stage vision and space constructed by the stage design of the tree maple and the lighting design Hu Huaqing, the stage and offstage, the human drama stage, sometimes the virtual and the real, there is no boundary.
"Protagonist" concentrates three generations of actors from Shaanxi, most of whom are actors of "White Deer Plain". There were dozens of people on the stage, and the lineup was very large. In order to let the actors better enter the work and shape the Qin opera actors, the crew invited a special opera teacher to train the whole crew for more than half a year in the basic skills of opera, through the practice of "four skills and five methods", to understand the art of opera, but also to feel the difficulty and hardship of the Qin people.
Youyou, who plays Yi Qin'e, is a young actor from Shaanxi Renyi, who previously played Bai Ling in "White Deer Plain" and Tian Xiaoxia in "Ordinary World". In the play, the "protagonist" recalls Qin E's age span is very large, the mental journey is also very complicated, the first time to shoulder a role so important and difficult, she also experienced a hard training of tempering, and the process of creating this play also made her deeply realize that to become the protagonist, you must pay great efforts and sweat.
It is worth mentioning that the drama "Protagonist" still follows the interpretation method of the previous "White Deer Plain" in the western shaanxi dialect of the whole shaanxi. The concise and vivid language is also a feature of the original novel. The script retains a lot of dialects, and in the process of creation and rehearsal, the directors and actors have added a lot of authentic Shaanxi dialect expressions, making the play more lifelike and real, and also giving the work a heavy texture.
The performances of many of the supporting characters in the play are quite wonderful. The old Qin artists Gu Cunxiao and Gou Cunzhong who appear in the play, as well as the roles of the old screenwriter Qin Bawa and the old troupe leader Shan Yangping are all vivid, and the actors are senior actors of the troupe, who together with other middle-aged and young actors show a group portrait of the world, showing a kind of worldly situation intertwined with pathos and hopes on the stage.