Text/Liu Heyi
At the sound of gongs and drums, the children of Pear Garden, and the life of pink ink, they all crawl and roll on this stage, telling the sorrows of the world, playing love and hate, and singing short and long.
If there is a little difference between me and children of the same age, it is probably that I have been full of curiosity about the story of Pear Garden since I was a child, and the square stage is the joy of my childhood life, as long as I hear the drama coming from afar, I am always the first to rush to the stage, and the square stage is afraid that there is a magical magic that makes me linger on the story of joy and sorrow in the opera.
According to my mother, when I was very young, although I could not understand what stories were played on the stage, I always cried and wept with the characters on the stage whenever I was emotional, and even followed by babbling, which was the song of my childhood, accompanied by my growth, and coaxed me to sleep.
In my hometown of southwest Henan, the most popular is the Gaotai song, not how elegant the art, in the field to develop and grow, the audience is also some of the most ordinary people, every time the religious sacrifices and other large-scale temple fairs in the village will always have singing, gongs and drums shake the sky, the orchestra shakes people, for me, there are always many happy days, even going to school is looking forward to the end of school, eager to plunge into the stage, let yourself also sing like people on the stage intoxicated song.
The best drama is generally arranged in the evening, nightfall, I followed my father behind, carrying a small bench, around the winding field path, not caring about looking at the famous and nameless flowers on the side of the road, striding forward, only afraid of a late step can not grab a good position, almost to the rally theater, the roadside is lively, all kinds of road vendors shouting, shouting, bustling crowds, a little inattentive, will be left behind by the father.
Looking for the sound of gongs and drums, I trotted all the way to the front of the stage, and there were already many people in front of my eyes, and I heard my father say that many people in order to grab a good position, basic dinner was solved by themselves offstage.
We can't call it a theater building or the like, the theater building is two floors above and below, the top of which is a square cornice made of black bricks, and a wind chime iron horse hangs under the eaves; in the center of the stage canopy is a gorgeous algae well. Almost all the wooden components on the stage are carved with exquisite reliefs: Qionghua Yao grass, auspicious birds and beasts, swimming beams, Suifang, three beams, head-grabbing beams, interspersed fangs and between the floors of the archway, there are many dramas.
We are tutaizi, and the sets in the back are also painted by some old artists themselves, including welcome pines, peony flowers, Yamen Gongtang and Jinluan Hall and the like. There are two layers of curtains on each side, on the left is the position of the Wenwu Field, the front is basically the troupe's signboard, there are probably couplets on both sides, the platform and the ground are kept less than a meter apart, and the audience sitting in the first row inevitably has to raise their necks. The back is often on tiptoeing.
When I got to the stage, after finding a good position, I ran to the back of the stage with a cigarette to see the old artists make up, they did not allow children to enter the backstage, I secretly watched on the side screen. They are all wearing watercoats, with a pen like painting gouache began to draw on the face, basically everyone draws the same, only some special characters will outline the face, subtly I understand that the face also represents different character images, such as white face is usually a traitor, such as Cao Cao, Qin Jun, etc., red face is loyal, such as Guan Yu, Liu Yong, etc., there are some strange similar to black and white impermanent faces, they are about ghosts and gods and the like.
What I like the most is those beautiful little Dan, most of them wear pearlescent gems and the like, always glowing from a distance, like twinkling little stars, looking so moving in the night, or delicate or shy, or beautiful or pitiful. Always let people see it and can't help but feel love, no wonder there are so many stories of talented people in the opera, who can not love such a small face?
The curtain opens, the story on the stage begins, or the emperor will be the general, or the parents are short, or the talented and beautiful people are scattered and homeless, or the heroes are heroic and righteous, or the heroes are willing to serve the country, in short, the ancient Chinese opera contains benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and faith, containing ups and downs in life, which is the channel for my initial understanding of human nature, I was moved offstage, and my thoughts drifted with the stage. As soon as the water sleeve is thrown, it is a few spring and autumn, and the joys and sorrows are all smiling. One scene starts, one scene ends. Life is only a hundred years, one night is a lifetime.
I think the beauty of opera probably lies in virtuality and stylization, a table and two chairs is a room and a hall, four soldiers mean thousands of troops and horses, walking two round fields means trekking thousands of miles, a horse whip is a fast horse whip, a gun and a knife is a battlefield fight, this kind of virtuality and the artistic conception of ancient Chinese poetry and painting are the same, the beauty of traditional Chinese culture lies in the artistic conception, not realistic art, always leaving people with countless imagination space.
The art of opera is the art of the horns, from the four famous dans to the various genres of local drama, with the horns there is a look, placed in the old society, a corner can feed the entire drama class, why many of the opera repertoire has not faded, why the classics are classics, probably lies in the charm of the horns, the script is unchanged, the music is unchanged, if you change the person to act, it is probably another taste.
So in this era, it has become urgent to inherit this ancient art, and the first step in inheritance is to spread, but the real situation is that there are fewer and fewer opera stages, and it is difficult to see the shadow of opera at temple fairs, and there are fewer and fewer young people around me who like this art, which can't help but remind me of Du Mu's sentence "Four hundred and eighty temples in the southern dynasty, how many buildings are in the smoke and rain." "Old dreams are hard to find, and how much of the glorious history of the past has been lost in the long river of history."
That small stage carries my childhood in this way, the joys and sorrows of my childhood life, the yin and the sun, the lack of yin and yang are all kneaded into the high platform music, the play is sentimental, the poor one is deeply old, and the clothes are full of old decay. There are still people on the stage who are singing to themselves, but there is no longer me and my childhood!
(There are fewer and fewer stages, and when it comes to the most memorable plays, they seem to be related to childhood, what is the drama in your memory?) What is your local drama there? Welcome to leave a comment in the comment area to discuss. ）
Liu Heyi: Liu Sheng Middle School Chinese teacher in Zaoyang City, Hubei Province, likes to share small details of life, easy to be moved by the story to a mess, hope that you can always beat to live, peach and plum do not speak, the next into their own.