According to the Voice of China of the Central Radio and Television Corporation, when you think of Su Shi, the first thing you think of is a poet, a lyricist, an essayist, a calligrapher, a painter, or a gourmet elbow on the eastern slope and a beautiful Su Causeway in the West Lake? What will be the first poem that pops up in your head? Is it "Water Tune Song Head, Bright Moon When There Is a Bright Moon" when I miss my relatives during the Mid-Autumn Festival, "Nian Nu Jiao Chibi Huaigu" when I am full of pride, "The great river goes east, the waves are exhausted, and the characters of the ancient winds and currents" are remembered; or when I miss my lover, I think of "Jiang Chengzi Yi Yi ZhengYue 20Th day and night dream" "I have no words to take care of each other, but there are tears and a thousand lines", and when I am open-minded, I think of "Dingfeng Bo Mo Listen to the Sound of Leaves Through the Forest" "A smoke and rain let you live forever"?
The good news is that from May 4 to 8 this year, the musical "Su Dongpo" will be staged at the Beijing Tianqiao Art Center. This is the first musical drama in China with the theme of Su Dongpo's life and his literary and artistic works, through the layered portrayal of teacher-student love, brotherhood and love, it vividly presents the shining and displaced life of Su Dongpo, a character of ancient times, in 90 minutes.
Why did the musical "Su Dongpo" come about? How to interpret the classic "Su words" with contemporary music? What's the story behind the creation? Su Yang, host of the Voice of China's "Chao Hua Xi Shi" program of the Central Radio and Television Corporation, interviewed Shen Qing, the general director of the play, and Li Hui, the producer, to take you closer to the "first literati of the ages" and feel his personality charm and open-minded attitude towards life.
He has been associated with musical theater for a long time, and Su Dongpo is half a fellow countryman
Reporter: I heard that you are going to launch a new work, many friends think it is a song, but I did not expect it to be a musical. What is the origin of "Su Dongpo"?
Shen Qing: When I entered the recording industry, I liked musicals, and since about 2015, I have done a lot of cultural and tourism integration and music-related projects with Li Hui. A few years ago, a very fortuitous opportunity. In my hometown of Leshan, there is a town called Shawan Town, which is where a generation of literary heroes Guo Moruo was born. Invited by the Shawan District Government, we tried to make a musical "Young Guo Moruo", and then found that we seemed to be very suitable for musical theater. Maybe at a certain age, the precipitation of life experience allows us to slowly express content. It is more restrictive for these contents to be expressed in a song, and it would be more appropriate if we were given the space to do it.
Su Dongpo is a native of Meishan, and in ancient times Meizhou and Leshan were actually one, so I counted half a fellow with him. Su Dongpo left Meizhou at the age of 19, and I left Leshan at the age of 19. It is this kind of geography that makes me have a different perception of him. In fact, when we were doing "Young Guo Moruo", we thought about doing "Su Dongpo", and just met our current investor, Mr. Zhou Tianxiang, and everyone decided to make a pure market-oriented musical "Su Dongpo".
Shen Qing, composer, lyricist, screenwriter and general director of the musical "Su Dongpo"
There is only one requirement when composing a song: it can be sung on the wine table
Reporter: The soul of musicals lies in music. According to the understanding of ordinary people, the musical drama of the theme of "Su Dongpo" should adopt the form of a large band that combines folk music and Western music. Is this true?
Shen Qing: I think musicals must have particularly good, familiar, grounded songs, which is a basic understanding of my creation of musicals. In ancient China, notation was complex, and learning music theory was very difficult for most people. However, so many literati will fill in the words for the song, I think the melody must be very simple, may be directly related to the tone of speech at that time. Therefore, when composing the music for "Su Dongpo", I made a request for myself - I could sing a cappella at the wine table. Without the accompaniment of any instrument, it still has the beauty of words, the taste and artistry of words.
Folk music and Western music are used in the play. We can only stand today and interpret Su Dongpo with the aesthetics of contemporary people. The beauty of our ancestral culture cannot be reproduced. But it is possible to present the music of what we think is the era based on our own views on art, on life, and aesthetic tastes. So, whether it's folk music, folk music, Western music or classical music, these are just elements that we can use. What we ultimately want to express is the broad mind of Su Dongpo's poems, his worldview and cosmology.
Narrated with music, wind and rain are all love
Reporter: "Su Dongpo" has 11 scenes, what is its structure?
Shen Qing: We divide Su Dongpo's life into three parts. Before the "Wutai Poetry Case", Su Dongpo, we define it as the young adult era of genius. If you use today's words, he is the "top stream" of the Northern Song Dynasty. He was admired everywhere he went.
After being degraded by Huangzhou, we define it as a period of contemplation, which is the period of his artistic creation. Before and after the "Chibi Fu", "DingfengBo", "Chibi Huaigu", "Linjiang Immortal", and one of the three major books in the world, "Cold Food Post", were all completed at this stage. Su Dongpo completely released his understanding and love of life and the world. I especially like the word "Dingfeng Wave", what does it mean to "also have no wind and rain and no mercy"? In fact, the wind and rain are his passion. This is the Su Dongpo we have understood since childhood, and it is also the Su Dongpo shaped in our musicals.
In the third stage, after Huangzhou, he met Wang Anshi in Jinling, and the two shook hands and made peace. Su Dongpo, like his teacher Ouyang Xiu, entrusted him, became the successor of the Great Song Dynasty literary circle, and a generation of masters was born.
Reporter: This drama not only contains Su Dongpo's brilliant achievements in culture, but also involves many aspects of his life, so why not consider doing TV dramas or stage plays, but musicals?
Shen Qing: I think there are two points in musical theater that give us good support. First, Su Dongpo's poetry works have penetrated deep into the blood of Chinese, such as "where there is no fangcao at the end of the world", "a statue of Jiang Yue", etc., which we can blurt out. We don't use traffic artists, nor are we traffic teams, so why do we have the confidence to do this drama? Because Su Dongpo's own lyrics are good enough. Chinese write the best lyrics in the middle of the world, there is no doubt that Su Dongpo is right? We have the blessing of the works of the first word people throughout the ages, which makes us very relieved.
Second, what's interesting about musicals is that we can complete all the narratives in pure music. For example, the whole scene of the "Wutai Poetry Case" is to complete the expression of everyone in one song, including the empress dowager, Emperor Shenzong, as well as the attitudes of traitors such as Zhang Xuan and Li Ding, as well as Su Rui, Ouyang Xiu and other people. The musical and the form of the music itself can sustain us in expressing a lot of things.
There is no limit to integration, reducing yourself to a storyteller
Reporter: For an 11-act musical, stage scheduling is important. How are each act connected? What are the innovations in the creative approach?
Shen Qing: For about half a year, the first thing I did every morning was to turn on the stereo at home, and put the demos (audio tapes) I had written down in the order of the play, to experience whether there was a problem with the up-and-down transition of the music connection, and to think about the logical relationship between each scene and the presentation of the story.
If you use musical terms to describe it, we are a fusion musical with a particularly high degree of fusion. Instead of taking traditional dramas and Western musicals as the logic we have to follow, we reduce ourselves to a storyteller. Therefore, between each act, through music, subtitles, choreography, or pre-screen play at the entrance of the stage, we have adopted.
Li Hui: The creation of "Su Dongpo" is completely in the form of a workshop. During the period of "Young Guo Moruo", we formed a stable core creative team and began to promote "Su Dongpo" in the way of team creation. We also went to Meishan in the workshop, and for several days, we discussed the advancement of the plot, the scheduling of stages, the visual presentation, and so on. We have explored a very new way of creation from the joint creation, that is, all kinds of work are created in parallel and promoted together.
Producer of the musical "Su Dongpo" Li Hui
Optimized in the landing for many times, looking at the market to find breakthroughs
Reporter: What are your plans for the future operation of "Su Dongpo"?
Li Hui: Regarding the future operation, we want to make a commercial musical theater work, and after the first round of performances, enter the national theater system to perform. We have also reached agreements with some theater agencies, and the tour target is expected to have two or three hundred shows, which has been basically implemented. Entering the theater tour stage, we hope to do a round of upgrades first. After the first round of performances, we will feel the audience's evaluation of the whole play, including some feedback on the music, plot, costumes, and choreography, and we can make changes. It is hoped that after many landings in the future, the relative stability of the work will be realized, accepted by more audiences, and at the same time form a commercial return.
Objectively speaking, the development of musical theater in the past 20 years has been very difficult. Because it is a brand new industry, there is no background in the industry and the theater, but it relies on some enthusiasts, including actors, creators and investors, to polish their works in the small theater little by little. In the past 20 years, we have accumulated a lot of excellent works, have a certain market cultivation, and now ushered in a benign market, with a lot of audiences who love musical theater. We hope to take advantage of this momentum to do our work well and let it "walk" benignly in the market. This is the best return for investors, creators and actors.
Producer: Bai Zhonghua
Moderator: Su Yang
Editors: Wang Xin Wu Xiaowei