Wu Qisheng "put on makeup" for the puppets.
The puppet dance "Sealed Box" won the Gold Medal for Performance, the Gold Medal for Works and the Gold Award for Creation in the 6th Lingnan Dance Competition in Guangdong Province.
The puppet drama "Haizu Story", which combines tradition and modernity, won the third prize of the 13th Guangdong Provincial Arts Festival.
Wu Qisheng teaches the members of the group to carry out the puppet technique of string.
Wu Qisheng's innovative marionette calligraphy performance.
Actors perform puppets on a 2.5-meter-high three-dimensional skybridge stage. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Fingertip hanging, singing, reading, doing, playing, offline puppets, twisting, pinching, flashing, shaking, lifelike, vivid and vivid.
"Give awareness to the unconscious, give life to the inanimate, and dance out the state of life with the hanging silk of the fingertips." For the provincial intangible cultural heritage project "Puppet Show (Meixian Marionette)", Wu Qisheng, a representative inheritor of the provincial level, described it this way.
●Text/Huang Taowei Photo/Yuan Qunhua (except by signature)
In 2009, it was included in the provincial intangible cultural heritage list
Meixian line puppet show, Hakka called "hanging line drama", commonly known as "line drama", its long history, accompanied by the third great migration of Hakka, in the Ming Dynasty Wanli period (1573-1620), from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions through Fujian Province spread Mei County.
The shape of Meixian line puppets is exquisite and vivid, and the height of a single puppet is about 70 centimeters, which is connected with 3 hard lines and more than 20 soft lines more than 2 meters long. "Of the puppets we make, there are more than 50 lines, all of which are manipulated by one actor." Zhang Yanchuang, an actor of the Meixian District Puppet Troupe, told the author that the production of puppets requires a series of processes such as modeling, inversion, and drawing, which takes a month.
According to reports, Meixian marionette show is the most complete of various puppet shows and puppet stage art images, the most complex action performance, and the most difficult to operate a puppet art species. During the performance, the puppet's movements are all completed by the actor on the high platform through finger connection, sometimes one finger has to manipulate more than 3 lines, and through the continuous switching from soft and hard, from hard to soft, so that the puppet "can do what people can, can not do people".
In puppet shows, the roles are generally divided into six major trades: "sheng", "dan", "net", "ugly", "gong" and "po", and the performance program is "singing", "doing", "reading" and "playing", of which the singing is mainly based on the costume Chinese opera Xipi, the two yellow cavity plates, and the folk minor tunes.
In the process of creating and exploring the innovation of artistic performance, the ancient puppet performance art of threading has been continuously innovated in Meixian County, becoming a diversified and unique puppet art performance such as Han opera, Han music and Hakka mountain songs and folk minor tunes of the ancient rhymes of the Central Plains, as well as modern music song and dance, costume drama and modern drama, mythological drama and fairy tale drama.
"Today's Meixian puppet show not only has the usual sense of literature and art, performance art, stage art, etc., but also contains elements such as puppet modeling art and the language art of Zhongzhou ancient music and Central Plains ancient rhyme." Wu Qisheng said that all of this has given Meixian a distinctive Hakka local character, making it a Hakka local opera that is different from the puppet show in all parts of the country.
On October 16, 2009, Meixian Puppet Show was included in the List of Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage of Guangdong Province by the People's Government of Guangdong Province, and on January 21, 2015, the Meixian District Puppet Learning Institute was listed as a provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritance base.
In the inheritance of perseverance to the new born
Meixian puppet show has experienced a process from prosperity to decline, and from silence to rebirth.
In 1978, the Meixian Puppet Troupe was re-established to 1990, which was the golden period of the Meixian puppet show, and the troupe's tour to the countryside was warmly welcomed by the masses, and often needed to be performed, and the masses shouted "addiction" after watching it.
The elderly old man recalled that as soon as he heard that the puppet troupe was going to perform, the whole village of old and young would put down the work in their hands, carry a small bench and sit together in front of the small stage, watching several lifelike puppets "singing and playing", as if alive, the whole village was lively like the New Year.
However, in the early 1990s, due to the impact of multiculturalism, the ancient puppet show was gradually forgotten, and the puppet troupe also experienced the dilemma of surviving in the cracks.
"I remember performing in Jiangxi once, the tickets could not be sold, there were few people in the first performance, and the second performance was simply not performed." Wu Qisheng recalled that because they could not receive ticket money, the actors had no money to take the car home, so they could only send a telegram back to the troupe, advance next month's salary, and let people send them to the performance site before buying tickets to go home.
In the most difficult times, Wu Qisheng also sold pork and bread, and with his persistent love for puppet shows, he gritted his teeth and insisted. "At the bleakest time, the monthly salary was only 5 yuan, and the members of the same group as me at that time went several times at once." Wu Qisheng said.
The merciless beating of the market, coupled with the relatively difficulty in the inheritance of the stunt and art of the marionette, the situation of the artistic talent of the marionette in Meixian is increasingly aggravated and the lack of successors.
In order to change the situation on the verge of "disconnection", with the support of the local government, the troupe recruited a new group of young trainees, and Wu Qisheng, who had reached the retirement condition, returned to the troupe to bring new members.
"After the integration and development of the puppet troupe and the mountain opera troupe, we currently have more than 70 members, most of whom are post-90s, and many post-00s." Lai Yuming, head of the Meixian District Mountain Song (Puppet) Troupe, introduced that there are now five representative inheritors of district-level intangible cultural heritage projects, namely Li Weiyi, Li Jiazhen, Liao Jiaping, Lu Yiting and Nie Yu, which have injected new vitality into the development of Meixian puppet show.
Cultivating talents is only the first step, and how to win back the audience is an urgent problem for the troupe to solve.
Under the impetus of Lai Yuming, the new "leader" of the post-80s theater troupe, a drastic reform began:
The puppet puppet cup flower dance "The Sound of Cup Flowers Welcomes Guests" toured the Pearl River Delta, Meizhou's first puppet drama "Super Campus" was popular with young audiences, "Three Little Pigs" and "Snow White" and other children's dramas were staged successively; "Face Change" won the gold medal of the first China Puppet Show, "Haizu Story" won the third prize of the 13th Guangdong Provincial Arts Festival, the puppet dance "Sealed Box" won the gold medal of the 7th Mass Music and Dance Flower Fair and the gold medal of the performance, the gold medal of the work and the gold medal of creation of the 6th Lingnan Dance Competition in Guangdong Province.
Inheritance is not old,innovation is not far from the roots. Lai Yuming introduced that at present, the troupe is planning to create a puppet mountain opera "Nezha Noisy Sea", in the inheritance of adherence, to promote the Meixian line puppet show to a new birth.
"This is a good start, inheritance, innovation, development, Meixian marionette show still has a long way to go..." Looking at the young man practicing marionettes on the stage, Wu Qisheng's hand couldn't help but dance and showed a bright smile.