Drama Plum Blossom Award winner Zhang Aizhen with her love treasure cavity
Wu Kang
I have long heard of Zhang Aizhen and her "Love Zhen Cavity", in the Shangdang Zizi world, a singing voice can be named after an actor, indicating that her singing has formed its own unique style. I have longed for her for a long time, but I have never had the opportunity to get close to her. Through this "Plum Blossom Award Actor Interview Activity", I had the honor to interview Zhang Aizhen, who is famous for her "Love Zhen Cavity" in the Shangdang opera circle, so that I had a preliminary understanding of this famous actor of Shangdang Zizi who is good at singing and brave in innovation.
Zhang Aizhen is very busy, and when we interviewed her, she was preparing for her own special concert. Talking about the concert, she said that it was a summary of her decades of artistic career, and it was also a summary of her artistic characteristics. After a few words of greeting, she began to tell us about her experience.
Zhang Aizhen was born in 1959 in An ordinary peasant family in Guanzhuang Village, Hexi Town, Gaoping City. Parents, out of their cherishing for their daughter, named her Aizhen. His father, Zhang Donglin, was an honest farmer, able to read and hyphenate, with a bit of bookish temperament in his thickness, and he was a literati among the older generation of farmers in Guanzhuang Village, which provided a relatively strong cultural atmosphere for Zhang Aizhen's growth. Although her mother, Xing Lafeng, was illiterate, she was kind, strong and capable. Therefore, Zhang Aizhen's childhood life is relatively happy and happy. Talking about how to like opera, she said that she did not have too much contact with opera when she was a child. In the village, every New Year's Festival, she always has to set up a stage to sing, and she thinks that the people on the stage sing really well, so she imitates the singing after she comes back. His brother Feng Laisheng was a music lover, once, he was playing the huqin at home, and saw Aizhen and a few children from Tongling playing in the courtyard, out of inadvention, he called these children into the house and asked them to sing a song from the agricultural village. He found that Aizhen's tone was accurate, her voice was loud, and she could sing along with the huqin. This unexpected discovery surprised Feng Tosheng. Although Aizhen was young, because she did not understand the meaning of the lyrics, she could not pronounce the words clearly, and sang "grain tip" into "two cents". But with the intuition of a music lover, he felt that his sister had musical talent, had a good voice, and would be a piece of singing material in the future. Zhang Aizhen naturally loved to sing, at that time, the village loudspeaker often played Guo Lanying's singing of "Qingling Ling's water to LanGe Yingying's heaven" and "Jiaocheng's mountains to Jiaocheng's water" and other songs, and she was a loyal listener of these songs. When I learned it, I sang it, and I sang it sweetly. When the people in the village are cool in the summer, they like to call her to sing a few songs; when they get together in the winter, they will not help but let her sing a few songs. At this time, the little Aizhen, who usually speaks less, is also happy in her heart, just like a little singer.
However, the weather is unpredictable. When AiZhen was nine years old, she lost her mother, and then her brother went out to live alone, leaving only her father and her two people in the family, and she provoked it with her own tender shoulders
The burden of housework left by the mother. She spent her childhood in school, cooking, feeding pigs, and doing laundry. To this day, whenever she thinks back on those days, she says with emotion that her childhood life has ended probably since her mother's death.
In 1972, the cultural department of Gaoping County opened the "Youth Literature and Art Training Class". Under the mobilization of her brother, 13-year-old Xiao Aizhen took the exam with trepidation. Despite the fierce competition, Aizhen's extraordinary performance in the examination hall allowed her to successfully enter the "youth training class" and start her career of formally studying opera. The "youth training class" is located in the Dinglin Temple in Mishan Town, far from the county seat, and the traffic is very inconvenient and the conditions are extremely difficult. But for Xiao Aizhen, who is accustomed to a hard life, what is more bitter is the training of basic skills. Singing, doing, reading, and playing a set of training is often tired and scattered. However, the teacher's teachings and the encouragement of her relatives often haunt Aizhen's mind, strengthening her determination to learn opera well. Five years of study was arduous, but as a result, she laid a deep foundation in singing skills and made Aizhen's voice more pleasant, and this experience undoubtedly became a stepping stone for her to successfully embark on the road of art.
Young people are fearless. When she was still in the training class, she once performed "Cuckoo Mountain" in the countryside, the audience entered the scene one after another, and the actor who played Ke Xiang suddenly fell ill, so she volunteered herself and took the initiative to ask for help. Ke Xiang, who was wearing shackles in his hands, came on the scene, singing into the drama, "Rush away from this..." While singing and doing actions, due to excessive force, the shackles were thrown, and even threw over his head to the back, in a hurry, his feet were quickly lifted, and the shackles behind him returned to the front. Looking back on this experience, she still can't help but laugh.
"In 1978, I performed the first traditional drama in my life, "Yingtai Anti-Marriage", and I played Zhu Yingtai. There is no such drama in the traditional drama of Shangdang Zizi, which was transplanted and adapted from the Shangdang Zizi Troupe of Gaoping County based on the Sichuan opera "Liu Yin Ji". This is the first traditional play to be staged after the resumption of traditional dramas. After a month of intense rehearsals, the play was brought to the stage. That year, I was 19 years old.
During the training course, traditional drama was still forbidden, so she did not systematically study the performance of traditional drama. In order to perform this traditional play well, she started from the fingering, steps, and running circles of Qingyi, and learned from the old artists with one move and one humility. He also went to Taiyuan at his own expense to learn water sleeve kung fu from Jin opera performance artists Tian Guilan and Xiao Guiye. In a short period of time, she has mastered the basic skills of opera body. Shangdang Zizi's performance is relatively rough and bold, pursuing thick lines, large silhouettes, strong and bright, but Zhu Yingtai, who she played in "Anti-Marriage in Yingtai", has a different charm, focusing on the subtle psychology of portraying the characters. Therefore, after the performance of "Yingtai Anti-Marriage", the audience and leaders responded well to the Zhu Yingtai she portrayed, which was an encouragement to her and a good start. Learning. In order to absorb the beautiful singing voice of Shangdang Zizi more widely, she began to learn the singing style of Wu Wanzhi, the famous character of Shangdang Zizi. In order to arrange this play well, she found the records produced by Teacher Wu Wanzhi before the "Cultural Revolution", listened carefully, and studied it repeatedly. In order to get the true transmission, she visited the door and worshiped Teacher Wu Wanzhi as her teacher. Teacher Wu Wanzhi warmly accepted her and accepted her as an apprentice. Before leaving, Teacher Wu also gave her a dress of cloth and a pair of pants as a gift of the first meeting between the master and apprentice. Teacher Wu not only taught her to sing, but also cared for her in life. Zhang Aizhen said: "We have both a master-apprentice relationship and a mother-daughter relationship." In the future rehearsals, she will ask Teacher Wu for advice, especially the rehearsal of the play "Qin Xianglian", and Teacher Wu has given her a lot of guidance. When Teacher Wu died of illness, she was deeply saddened, "Weeping and weeping, The First Master Heming, every sentence remembering Taidou Enze." ”
"The first play I rehearsed in the troupe was the modern play "Butterfly Love Flower", in which I played Yang Kaihui. In order to play this role well, I made a special trip to Beijing to observe and study the Peking Opera "Butterfly Love Flower" starring Li Weikang. Her superb performance and beautiful singing voice greatly opened my artistic horizons. After returning, combined with the characteristics of Shangdang Zizi, he worked the identity and temperament of the characters, and finally made the performance of this play a success, causing quite a stir in Gaoping, and performed more than 20 times in a row. The leader of the cultural department of the southeastern Jin Dynasty personally led the personnel of the three regiments and one school in the region to Gaoping to watch the performance, and then the drama school rehearsed the play in its entirety. ”
Since "Butterfly Love Flower", Zhang Aizhen has become a hit and has become a well-known Actor of shangdang. In 1981, the "butterfly love flower" in life had come to fruition, and this year, she was no longer alone, she was married. Her husband, Zhang Jianguo, and she were classmates at the training class, and the two had been in the same window for four years and were like-minded. Zhang Jianguo is also the son of a farmer, loyal, simple, and upright. Originally studying acting, they later switched to music, and after graduating from the training class, they were also assigned to the Gaoping People's Theater Troupe as band players. In 1983, a son was born. Looking at her son, she experienced an indescribable joy from a mother. But the arrival of her son also added many new difficulties to her. The actor's life is not fixed, adult performances are outside, the child has just passed the full moon, she has to take her son to the countryside to perform. Once, she had a high fever when the Gaoping Youth League went to the countryside to perform, when she was still nursing her five-month-old son, even the doctor said that she could not participate in the performance that night, but later, she insisted that the doctor tried to reduce the body temperature to 38 degrees to ensure that the performance was not wrong, after the performance was sent to the hospital overnight, the child was sent to the hospital because of her fever, hungry for two days, at that time the audience was watching her play, and the child was hungry and crying, after returning to Gaoping hospitalization, the grandmother held the child back and forth to walk five miles, or could not eat milk, What mother in the world does not love her child? Zhang Aizhen is also a good wife and mother, but for the sake of the troupe and for the sake of her career, she can only do this. Now, in order to better take care of his two children, her husband Zhang Jianguo left the troupe and became a teacher in the vocational and technical college. This also reduces the burden of Zhang Aizhen, who no longer worries about children when performing, and can also quietly sing, practice and ponder lines when she is at home. A perfect family is half the battle for a successful life. Zhang Aizhen's perfect home response has achieved her career.