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Before a drama performance, actress Huang Xiangli set off from home 2.5 hours ahead of schedule as usual. Usually, she lives just outside Beijing's fifth ring road and can drive 40 minutes to the Hive Theater in Dongzhimen, where she has plenty of time to make up and prepare before the 7:30 p.m. show. However, more than 1 hour passed on this day, the car only moved forward a few hundred meters, and Huang Xiangli encountered a sudden traffic jam. She immediately felt, "It's over." Huang Xiangli abandoned the car and fled, stopping an electric bicycle on the side of the road, and after repeated requests, the eldest brother who rode the bicycle agreed to take her for a while. Huang Xiangli, who was sitting in the back seat, dialed the phone of the theater, wanting to tell her colleagues at the first time about the situation that had been and could happen, and when she heard the director's voice, she cried out. Finally, Huang Xiangli traveled dozens of kilometers by non-stop riding electric vehicles and motorcycles, and finally arrived at the theater at 19:36.
The performance can not tolerate any mistakes, there are no weekends and holidays, performances with illness, and it is already a common thing for Huang Xiangli. She said that her body is not only her own, but also belongs to the audience, so she must protect herself. But what is more important is to preserve more spiritual energy and maintain the freshness of the premiere for each play. For moviegoers, Huang Xiangli also brought them a sense of freshness. Directed by Lou Ye, "Lyceum Theatre" is Huang Xiangli's first film. In 2019, the film was shortlisted for the 76th Venice Film Festival, and landed in Chinese mainland theaters in October 2021. In the same frame as Gong Li and Zhao Youting, the female number two Huang Xiangli is still the first time for many non-drama lovers to hear about it.
Stills from "Lyceum Theatre"
But in the drama circle, Huang Xiangli has long been a "young old actor". From mingming in the fifth edition of "Rhinoceros in Love", to the one-man show "Letter from a Strange Woman", from "Nine and a Half love" to "Fox Angel", Huang Xiangli can control large lines in a flowing manner, and can also play and sing with ease, and can also be released by one person. Looking at such a vibrant face, it is hard to believe that it has been 15 years since she first appeared on the stage of drama to today. Huang Xiangli's life has long been integrated with drama. "I'm going to keep acting and die on stage." When she said this, she had a touching fierceness. That kind of determination, driven by love after a lot of hard work and repeated verification, seems particularly down-to-earth and extra real.
Huang Xiangli part of the starring work poster
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Drama is a sober choice
In 1985, Huang Xiangli was born in the elegant city of Yueyang, and her parents named her "Xiangli", as if to engrave people's praise for this small hunan city into their daughter's life. However, Huang Xiangli, who has had an opinion since childhood, is not willing to be "spring and Jingming waves" in childhood life. In 1997, her mother's friend suggested that Huang Xiangli go to Beijing to study dance. So Huang Xiangli took the train alone to the Beijing Music and Dance School to study, "to see the bigger world." Getting up early and practicing the basic skills in the dark, pain has become a common thing, and 12-year-old Huang Xiangli has paid several times more sweat and tears than children who have started at the age of five or six. In 2001, she ushered in the joy of being admitted to the Oriental Song and Dance Troupe, and also gained a rich vision and a good income. At this time, Huang Xiangli has developed feelings for the stage, but she understands that dance performances have harsh requirements for age and physical conditions, but theatrical performances can make her stay on the stage for a longer time. In this way, she once again overthrew the dance world she had created with countless sufferings. In 2003, Huang Xiangli, who was actively preparing for the exam, was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama as she wished.
The first time she walked into the "black box" to watch the show, she was stunned. It was the report of the brothers and sisters to perform "Little Women". The gripping plot of the play, the actors' hands and feet, and their smiles all touched her nerves; at that moment, she was completely captured by the charm of the play. So, for another four years, Huang Xiangli insisted on getting up early to work in the morning, never lazy in acting class theory class, and carefully studied each script... She quietly enjoys the great pleasure and satisfaction of learning.
In the graduation season of 2007, when her classmates were all in the group to shoot film and television dramas, Huang Xiangli fell into confusion - the only experience of shooting a TV series told her that it was not the life she wanted. People are separated from each other as soon as they become acquainted, and without long-term coexistence and deep synergy, it is difficult for her to accept whether it is emotion or creation. At this time, the classmate revealed to her: "Drama director Meng Jinghui wants to set up a troupe, do you want to try it?" Huang Xiangli immediately went happily. Meng Jinghui's standards for selecting people are not low, and the actors he cooperated with in the early years were also hao lei and Wu Yue. After layers of interviews, Huang Xiangli was selected. Behind this is her undistracted learning during the Chinese opera, after all, under the bright career prospects, not everyone can resist the temptation and withstand loneliness.
Tremendous pressure on one-man shows
In 2008, Huang Xiangli finally appeared on the stage of Meng Jinghui Drama Studio. On the night of the premiere, the actors who performed for the first time were full of excitement and nervousness. Halfway through the show, someone else made the wrong cut, and everyone froze for a few seconds, but quickly recovered. This night left an indelible mark on Huang Xiangli's heart: "That kind of moment that makes people particularly nervous, particularly excited, and particularly flying, all concentrated on that night, there is a charming vitality." ”
At this time, she found her inner love, and the grinding artistic life had just begun. Her first one-man show, "Letter from a Strange Woman," was a work polished under high pressure.
Stills from A Strange Woman
One afternoon in 2013, director Meng Jinghui called Huang Xiangli aside and said, "Lili, the other actors in the troupe have other arrangements during this time, otherwise you should try to rehearse the play yourself." Huang Xiangli was stunned: "How does a person create?" Meng Jinghui thought about it and said, "Otherwise, you can try "Letter from a Strange Woman" and create a one-man show." Huang Xiangli, who had never acted in a monologue, began to try a person's creation based on the Novella "Letter from a Strange Woman" by the Austrian writer Zweig. However, the first two debriefing performances ended in failure. Meng Jinghui gave Huang Xiangli a trick: "An excellent drama actor should know how to create a full range of creations." You start writing songs. Expressed in the form of self-written and self-singing. A few days later, Huang Xiangli came with a song she had created. The director "intensified" and came up with a new idea: in the next five days, create five songs! "Before that, I had never written a song, and I didn't know I could still write a song. But if you don't try, how do you know it won't work? Huang Xiangli didn't go out for five days, and actually completed this task that sounded impossible. Since then, she has gained a special form of expression on the stage of drama: music. She wrote and sang her own performances, and her works have a strong personal color.
Huang Xiangli depicts the process of drama creation, imagining a world out of thin air. "A play is the loneliest when it first approaches a character. You have to go to her, to know her, to walk into her, to be her. You can't rely on someone else to do the process. In fact, loneliness itself is the norm of human beings, I understand this matter more soberly, and I also feel that loneliness is not bad, because people can think more about problems when they are lonely. ”
The one-man show allowed Huang Xiangli to harvest more lonely time. She and Meng Jinghui created two other one-man shows, Nine and Half Of Love and Fox Angel. She sang, danced, spoke and released freely, making audiences everywhere feel the charm of the drama, and was named "Queen of One-Man Show" by the media, professionals and enthusiasts. The tour doesn't stop, the praise is overwhelming, but with it comes an unprecedented realistic challenge – no AB corner, no rival actors, all year round. Huang Xiangli was facing the double huge pressure of mental and physical strength.
Stills from "Fox Angel"
Optimistic by nature, she also began to have intermittent insomnia. One morning, there was a rapid knock outside the door, and she carefully opened the door and saw the angry face of the downstairs neighbor: "What are you doing in the middle of the night?!" Huang Xiangli quickly apologized. It was then that a few minutes earlier, she had been concentrating on making cakes, and in order to defoam the egg liquid, she slammed the mold filled with egg liquid on the ground a few times, waking up the neighbor. At that time, she was completely wandering in another world. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, this is a one-man actor who performs hundreds of consecutive performances, and when he is sleepless through the night, he can only relieve stress by cooking.
Premiere film suffers "cryogenic operation"
One evening in 2018, the Hive Theater welcomed a special audience. She is the film casting director Zhang Rong, who is looking for the female number two "Baiyun Dress" for the upcoming film "Lyceum Theatre". When stepping on the iron shoes, the team saw the name of the drama actor Huang Xiangli on the Internet, and also heard many people praise her stage charm. So the casting director came to watch Huang Xiangli's performance, and also filmed her training with the Dutch body teacher, as well as some conversations. Soon, Huang Xiangli received a notice to meet the film director Lou Ye. After a few brief conversations, I tried on makeup under the arrangement of the crew and left. A few weeks later, she got a call from the crew: it was fixed. Lou Ye said: "Whether the fit between the film actor and the role is appropriate, the director must bear 50% of the responsibility. This time I chose my favorite actor. ”
Many people say that in the "Lyceum Theatre", Huang Xiangli is almost a true actor in BaiyunSheng - he loves dramas, has amazing line skills, can afford a play, has a complex identity, and has a simple and transparent heart. After carefully reading the script, Huang Xiangli understood Bai Yunsheng and established a connection with herself in this parallel world in her heart. She felt that there was "a particularly stupid bravery" in this character.
In December 2018, "Lyceum Theatre" was officially launched. That year, winter in Shanghai was exceptionally cold. Unexpectedly, for Huang Xiangli, who has been performing in the indoor theater for many years, the first challenge encountered was actually "low temperature operation". There was a night scene in which she walked from the rainy outdoors to the theater, and the night rain fell on the ground and slowly froze. Huang Xiangli wore stockings barefoot, cold to the bone, trembling uncontrollably. But as soon as the boot, the conditioned reflexes of years of training made her instinctively enter the state and complete the performance quietly. During the filming, director Lou Ye asked the actors to try not to make up on the camera, and even deliberately left the texture, texture and spots of the skin; also left room for the actors to restructure the improvisation. Huang Xiangli in the movie retracts freely, her perseverance and determination and Gong Li's avenue to jane, just like the two intertwined story lines in "Lyceum Theatre", which are narratives and complement each other.
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BAZAAR: How do you define "intelligence" and "beauty"? Huang Xiangli: I think that "wisdom" and "beauty" are not only both internal and external cultivation, but also a person who knows how to "inward". "Wisdom" and "beauty" is a process of internal and external combination, and the external environment and people's inner world can discover and nourish each other. BAZAAR: In what ways do you think it is possible to attain or approach the "wisdom" and "beauty" in the mind? Huang Xiangli: There are many ways, such as reading. I like the poems of Neruda and Rilke, I also collect foreign magazines and books on fine art and video, and when I see foreign theater troupes performing, I also go to see the original literary works. The gap in the shutdown of the epidemic performances has eaten away at some of the tomes, such as "The Brothers Karamazov" and "The Master and Margaret". But my favorite is still South American writers, such as Marquez, especially flying. In addition, there are many things that can bring you closer to wisdom and beauty – listening to good music and meeting good friends, especially those who make you appreciate, admire, and share life experience or professional knowledge, are all ways to get closer to beauty and gain wisdom.
(For full text and graphic content, please see Harper's Bazaar, April 2022 issue) Planner, Editor / Li Jin Photography / Wei Wei Author / Guo Rong Makeup / Dou Kai Styling / Qin Lei Editorial Assistant / Li Xinyu