Many viewers still remember that on July 16, 1992, when the old version of "The Tea House" ended, it burst into tears, and the last time as the "Wang Treasurer", the audience in every corner of the audience bowed deeply to the end and choked: "Thank you friends for your tolerance!" The audience was in tears.
"This day doesn't mean anything to anyone else, it's just that something went wrong in my theater career that day." I've never acted again since. This year, he was only 65 years old.
"Thank you for your tolerance!"
"I've acted so badly, and the audience is still so good to me", "The audience is too tolerant, too tolerant, I feel ashamed of myself!" ”
On July 16, 1992, Jiao Juyin's version of "Tea House" was closed at the Beijing Capital Theater. This play was praised by the audience as "the complete end left by the elders of human art to the Chinese opera world", and it was also the "no singing" that bid farewell to the stage.
▲ Stills of the drama "Tea House" (from left to right: Blue Sky Wild, Zheng Rong, so zhi)
Despite his best efforts, he was unable to control the twitching corners of his mouth and forgot his words several times.
At the age of 65, he suffered from cerebral infarction, which later developed into Alzheimer's disease.
"He looked at my face, but he couldn't call out Fourth Master Chang's name." Zheng Rong, who played the fourth master of Chang in "The Tea House", looked at his old friend sweating on the stage, and his heart had already cried into tears.
After 400 mature plays, but in the last one, something went wrong, so the pain in his heart is not difficult to imagine, but the enthusiastic audience does not care. At the end of the curtain, the theater resounded with applause and cheers for more than ten minutes. In the face of such a spectacular scene, he bowed deeply to the audience in every corner of the audience and shouted: "Thank you for the tolerance of the audience!" ”
"I've acted too little in my life"
If the "Drama Emperor" Shi Hua's career was brilliant in that era that passed, and then it was brilliant on the stage of New China.
So his life is inseparable from the stage, he became famous for the "Cheng Madman" in "Longsugou", and the "Wang Treasurer" in "Tea House" is his pinnacle. However, he thinks that his best role is the coachman "Old Horse", who only appeared twice in "Camel Shoko", a role that reminds him of the old Uncle Hao who pulled the car in the courtyard when he was a child, the old man who ran around for a lifetime, but in the end it seemed that he had never lived, and he felt that he was reunited with the deceased.
▲ Wang Lifa in the drama "Tea House"
▲ "Old Horse" in the drama "Camel Shoko"
Like the experience of many celebrities, it was a coincidence that he entered the theater industry. In 1944, under the repeated mobilization of his old classmates, he joined the amateur theater troupe as a recorder (scribe) at yamen in the occupied area. His first play in life was called "The Cow King", based on a French drama, playing the embarrassment of a poor boy entering the home of a rich man. So Zhizhi once wrote: "The embarrassment of the poor entering the rich family, I have 'experienced' with my mother since I was a child, so it is not difficult to act." ”
A few years later, the "Cheng Madman" he played in "Longsugou" was really famous, and he was only twenty-three years old at the time.
▲ "Cheng Crazy" in the drama "Longsugou"
If you look at the written records of the creation process of dramas such as "Dragon Sugou" and "Camel Xiangzi" in that year, you will find that he has made great efforts to create these characters. Playing "Cheng Crazy Man", he wrote "The Biography of Cheng Crazy Man", and wrote a diary of his experience every day during the rehearsal process of several months, recording his changes in the understanding of the role and his performance experience. When playing "Old Horse", he repeatedly read the original work, recalled the old man he knew in the past, went to the front door to make friends with the old coachman, and used the 30-year-old age to experience the old, cold, hungry and tired feelings of the 70-year-old.
Therefore, he believes, "When an actor stands on stage, your ideological character, cultural accomplishment, artistic level, and degree of creativity for the character cannot be hidden by anything... The actor's heart should be translucent, and the feelings can be ignited. Those who are cynical and indifferent to life are not able to act well. ”
He said more than once that I had acted too little in my life. Since the establishment of the Beijing People's Art Theater in 1952, Zhu Lin has only played seventeen roles, Tong Chao is twenty-eight, Lin Liankun is thirty-two, Zheng Rong is thirty-five, and he himself is twenty-seven. "Since liberation, what has been contributed to the people with one's own profession is such a pitiful list. Compared with some of our colleagues abroad, our workload is really too little..."
This is what others see
Playwright Li Longyun wrote in "What I Know About It":
"If someone asks me, can you briefly summarize what kind of person he is?" I would like to say that this is such a man: he comes from a poor background, is studious, upright, hardworking, loves to read and calligraphy; he loves talent; he feels very modest in his contacts, but in his bones he is very clear; he is impulsive, emotional, tearful, and he has the temperament of a poet; he likes to get along with people and does not ask for people; he has a very high talent in the field of performing arts; he is a man who does not drink much but likes to drink; he can become a close friend of many people, especially those who like to read..."
▲ This is what happens in life
▲ Thus the calligraphy: the falling flowers are speechless, and the people are as light as chrysanthemums
Does man have a destiny? Sometimes fate is very unfair to people. Isn't it a great tragedy that the master who conquers the characters and the audience cannot conquer the laws of nature and himself?
When the media interviewed His wife Li Manyi, she once asked: "Do you think teacher Yes has any regrets in this life?" Li Manyi said, "His regrets are too much... What do you think about learning Stanislavsky who doesn't understand Russian? Therefore, he read Tong Daoming's translation and often discussed it together. He also really looked at Marxism-Leninism and wanted to find out, but he regretted that he could not understand the original text. He did not learn to show off, but as a learning, to understand. He wanted to play some roles, he wanted to play the chairman's later years, but he didn't act; he still wanted to write something, he didn't write... Too many regrets. ”
bibliography:
Li Longyun: "What I Know Is It";
Qian Yang: "So I went to the world where I could speak"
Editor: Wang Wenjing