Collection of Contemporary Russian Drama
Chinese version of the play "Advanced Ward" is being rehearsed
◎ Su Ling
As we all know, Russia is a world-famous theater power, and Chinese audiences have learned about Russian drama classics of the 19th and 20th centuries through the works of writers and theater artists such as Gogol, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Gorky, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Arbudov, Rozov and Vanbilov. And what have changed and new faces have been in Russian theater since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991? Chinese drama posters, which are filled with repertoire from all over the world and local repertoire, rarely see Russian repertoire, especially contemporary repertoire. On the occasion of the 2018 Sino-Russian Year of Cultural Exchanges, thanks to the cooperation of the State Press and Publication Administration of China and the Russian Publishing and Mass Media Agency, the Chinese Character Copyright Association and the Russian Translation Institute jointly organized the "Sino-Russian Literature Mutual Translation and Publication Project • Russian Library", and the five-volume "Russian Contemporary Drama Collection" came into being, with as many as 23 plays, which can be described as the most Russian dramas introduced by the mainland in recent years. The two-act comedy "Senior Ward," which will be presented on the Chinese stage next month, is from this drama collection.
The double revelation of bribery and stealing
Alexander Kolovkin, the author of The High Ward, is both a writer, an actor and a theatrical activist. He graduated from the Performance Department of the State Lunacharsky Drama Academy, one of Russia's most prestigious states, studied drama at the Gorky Academy, and after graduation entered the famous Gorky Model Theater in Moscow as an actor, and participated in the films of Russian directors Fedor Bundalchuk, I. Dhovićny and A Silenko, who are familiar to mainland audiences. In addition to being an actor, Kolovkin is also an active playwright, creating plays such as "The Bride's Puppet", "About Love", "The Man and the Cabbage", "The Senior Ward", "The Room with Fruit", "The Monster", and is also a well-known Russian film and television screenwriter, including the light comedy "Editorial Department", the crime TV series "Turkish March", and the Russian court drama "Poor Nastya" (translated as "Love Petersburg" in mainland China). His previous work experience as a supervisor of the Russian magazine Contemporary Drama provided him with a good vision and platform for him to explore theatrical genre, so that he could make a significant contribution to the development of Russian contemporary comedy and "farce".
In people's impressions, drama and tragedy seem to be better able to present the appearance of drama, with a sense of solemn ceremony, full of noble sentiments, majestic spirit and awe-inspiring sense of sublimeness. Comedy, on the other hand, is that everything that seems "sacred" is ridiculed sarcastically. In the contemporary Russian theatre scene, the current situation of comedy creation is difficult to systematically and strictly classify because of its complexity, contradiction and polysyrinism, and can only be summarized into two basic forms, namely satire and humor. These two forms of drama in the contemporary Russian drama scene are one after the other, and in addition to popular comedy, grotesque drama and lyrical comedy, we can also see the gradual integration of satirical drama and humor drama or farce.
"Advanced Ward" is a representative play of this trend. Bureaucrat Raznitsky, who was obsessed with the desire to be admitted to a single ward, had no choice but to live with retired meritorious actor Izum Rudov in a double ward known as the "senior ward," where one had hemorrhoid surgery and the other hernia surgery.
Raznitsky, the head of the Land Planning Department of a Moscow government agency, accepted a large bribe from the "Giant Construction" company, and when he learned that the matter had been exposed at the time of admission, his wife Lola and her lover Jeanne visited the ward one after another, and while arranging for his assistant, the lover's husband, to deal with the money to avoid bribery and failure, on the other hand, he was afraid that his wife and lover would meet and cause trouble, and the double anxiety and the change of events like a roller coaster, he suddenly became high and angry, suddenly anxious like a headless fly, so that he was ridiculed by his wife." Not hemorrhoids but hemorrhoids but the head."
The meritorious actor was initially disliked by the bureaucracy, so he retaliated by stealing the sky-high French wine brought into the ward by the bureaucracy, claiming that the "local tycoons" who squeezed ordinary people should "fight back as much as possible" and "maintain social balance", but he was kind by nature, although he also knew that "everyone cannot be handed over" and cannot be "defeated outside the gold and jade", but he still intentionally or unintentionally helped the bureaucracy to break the siege. The bureaucratic assistant Felix was originally an honest man, led by the bureaucrat's nose because of money and profit, but the weak man still raised his arms to strangle the person who made him wear the green hat when defending his love.
If the bureaucracy concentrates on the playwright's dirty and dark satire and criticism of society and reality, in assistant Felix it embodies the playwright's mockery of weaknesses in human nature, such as cowardice, stupidity, and blind obedience, and in the meritorious artist, the humor of his humorous qualities. In these three characters, we see a fusion of satirical comedy, humorous comedy, and farce.
Compared with the three men with clear identities and personalities, the three women highlight the contradictions and helplessness of reality and life with their respective emotional sorrows and joys. The bureaucratic wife Lola is materially dependent on her husband, and at the same time wants to be equal in personality with her husband, she has the bluff and pompous style of the official wife, and the weakness of losing her independent personality. When she discovers her husband's private affair, her heart is contradictory and tangled, and she will let herself have no way out, swallowing her anger and not being willing, so she wanders between half-belief and willingness, and at the same time finds confidence in the admiration and compliment of the meritorious artist.
Nurse Irona is arguably the only person in this comedy to be admired by the playwright with gentle approval, she is dedicated, kind and humorous. She worked two jobs to support her family, originally wanted to entrust the bureaucratic relationship to find an errand for her husband, but after learning the bureaucrat's character, she consciously gave up, and returned to a hard-working life in desperation. In the small people at the bottom of this society, the playwright lets the audience see the human dignity, independence and self-improvement and optimism and kindness that people should have. It is such a small person who is the strongest cornerstone of society. In her, we can even find the shadow of Valentina in Vanbilov's pen.
Jeanne, the playwright's only comic-like character, focuses on the characteristics of the materialized personality of contemporary consumer society: shallowness, gold worship, vanity, hedonism, ruthlessness, and even shamelessness. She is attached to bureaucrats like a parasite and contributes nothing to society or others. The playwright asks her to finally express her desire to return to her husband Felix, both out of her conscience and the helplessness of life. In the shaping of these three female characters, we see how the playwright combines elements of lyrical comedy, humorous comedy, and even the main play.
Explore breaking boundaries and inheriting critical traditions
It is worth mentioning that the integration of comedy genres and the breaking of the original boundaries of the comedy genre of "Advanced Ward" are not uncommon in the contemporary Russian drama scene. This phenomenon was more common as early as the end of the 20th century, and it arose from the general trend and demand of playwrights who sought to break away from the original genre paradigm of drama and deform the traditional genre structure according to the dynamic development of the content of the script, and playwrights such as Yu Edris, A. Slavovsky, Shea Nosov, Ye Isayeva, Le Zorin, Lyu Razumovskaya, and S. Shulyak, etc. have made such attempts.
Of course, the blurring and dissolution of the boundaries of the comedy genre at the turn of the century does not mean the disappearance of comedy. In "Advanced Ward", we see that both satire and humor retain the main attributes of the genre, which not only shows the greater possibility of humor in the form of the genre, but also allows the satire to give the comedy itself a stronger particularity, not only raising social issues closely related to the times, but also highlighting the new characteristics of the comedy aesthetic. In this regard, it can be said that "The High Ward" inherits the Gogol comedy tradition in the history of Russian theater, focuses on the critical spirit, and belongs more to the category of satirical drama.
In addition to the arrogant, arrogant, and brazen satire of bureaucratIc Raznitsky, the television reports that run through the series express the author's critical attitude toward society more bluntly and directly: from the suspension of Prosecutors of the Moscow Region, the suspected involvement of the Police and the Procuratorate in the formation of illegal gambling institutions and the provision of shelter for them, to the long-term forgery of court resolutions by assistant judges, years of extortion by officials in the Northeast region of Moscow, fraudulent gangs disguised as social workers to blackmail retirees, and the "Giant Building" of a large construction group. Confiscated and some officials charged high kickbacks, and so on. It can be said that through this phenomenon, the social chaos in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the entry into the new century has been almost completely eliminated, and it is no wonder that nurse Irona will say: "I knew that I was full of private pockets before, but now there is simply no change!" And the voice of the anchor sounded again at the end of the play: the previous media news that the headquarters of "Giant Building" was robbed of a large number of documents was a rumor, the company was operating normally, and the procuratorate had no criticism of it. It seems that the situation of the bureaucrat Raznitsky has been turned upside down again, and his wife Lola has not completely broken with Jeanne.
Unlike traditional comedy, "The High Ward" does not have a happy ending, nor does it end with a "pantomime" like "Chincha Chancellor", allowing the "fear mentality" to continue to spread, which arises from the guilty conscience and is also the punishment of the guilty person. We can see that the end of the play is completely out of the comedy track, deviating and approaching the main play. Such structures and settings reinforce the playwright's attitude towards society and life, reflecting his bold exploration of the boundaries of comedy.
What the descendants of Gogol and Chekhov did
Along with the times, there is also the nature of laughter in comedy and its form of expression. The laughter in "Advanced Ward" comes from the shortcomings of the characters, some from the cleverness of the dialogue collision, and most of them come from the tense effect of space and time superposition. In the cramped space of the ward, the six characters come and go separately, so there are all kinds of coincidences, misses, motives for escaping embarrassment, and lying to avoid encounters.
In the coincidence of the playwright's great skill, the conflict of the whole play is focused, that is, the double exposure of bribery and lovers. It's a double anxiety, and it's also a double fear. Under the influence of anxiety and fear, coincidence becomes an opportunity provided by the environment, exposing the true face of the bureaucrat Raznitsky, the main object of ridicule of the playwright.
Unlike traditional comedy, which gives normative prescriptions and moral doctrinal advice, contemporary comedy reveals in laughter a life that is intimately connected to the essence of the characters. The laughter at Raznitsky is a bitter and pleasant laugh, a laugh that redeems him and purifies ourselves; a laugh at Felix, though pleasant, is accompanied by bitter irony, for behind this laughter and bitter irony is sympathy and criticism of his cowardly and blind nature. However, the important way of making laughter used in "Advanced Ward" is not unfamiliar, and it can be said that it is also in line with traditional comedy, that is, the use of concealment and lying to dominate the progress of the plot. Early in the 19th century, Gogol's "Chincha Chancellor", the contemporary Goering's "Strange Things", Blazinski's "Two-Man Game" and Koliada's "Persian Lilac", etc., are all examples of this, of course, this is also a common method of satirical comedy.
How to make the plot move forward and laugh out, Kolovkin made this self-description in the interview: "I was trying to find a certain style a long time ago, but I only found it not long ago. It's called a situational comedy, or 'bedroom comedy' to be precise. No playwright in Russia has created in this style. The first to explore this style was the French playwright Eugene Scribble... Scrib calls this style 'numbering'. When creating, he and his assistants worked together to reform the plot and mix the story together. When something impresses Scrib, he writes 'Wonderful Things' under the numbering and constructs the script according to the numbering. The point is that the plot should be dynamic and the complex entanglements should remain unchanged... To have a complex entanglement occur in the first place, and then this entanglement will appear in unexpected turns, conflicts, and it is impossible to get rid of it. ”
Kolovkin's method of situation creation can indeed be found in "Advanced Ward", although it is like a rigid process in expression, but as a concrete and feasible method, it can connect the three nodes of drama creation, writer, playwright and audience, and jointly serve the attitude of life, social position and theater concept he wants to express. In this sense, Kolovkin is indeed a playwright who pays great attention to theatrical effects and audience reactions, and his exploration of the field of comedy is indeed all-round. This is also in line with the trend of the development of the concept of theater in the world today.
"Senior Ward" was created in 2011 and moved to the theater stage in 2014. In addition to the central cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, from Murmansk in the north to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk in the east, and Volgograd in the center, the play has traveled to more than a hundred theaters in Russia. As of the first half of this year, many theaters still include it in their rehearsal plans. Ten years later, this play is about to appear on the Chinese theatrical stage.
It should be said that this is the most "fresh" Russian theatrical work on the Chinese stage. In the face of the Russian works of our contemporaries, how will The young Chinese director Xu Xiaopeng and the actors interpret them? Are the "laughing points" of Chinese and Russian audiences consistent? And how should Chinese audiences, who have been accustomed to being immersed in Chekhov's plays for nearly a decade, accept the exploration of comedy by Gogol and Chekhov's descendants? What kind of enlightenment and thinking can these explorations bring to China's comedy art? Chinese audiences, like Kolovkin in Russia, are full of expectations for the "Advanced Ward" staged by Chinese artists this time.
Photo / Reporter Wang Xiaoxi