All days, all days come!
Let us weave you, with the golden thread of youth,
And the wisps of happiness, weave you.
Beijing, May 5 (CCTV) -- According to the Central Radio and Television Corporation's Voice of China's "Chao Hua Xi Shi" report, what do you think of when you mention "youth"? The state of youth, why not grow old? The drama "Long Live Youth", jointly produced by the National Drama Theatre of China and the Shandong Provincial Drama Theatre, will soon be put on the stage. The play is adapted from Wang Meng's novel of the same name, "Long Live Youth", which shows the enthusiastic youth life of young students in the early 1950s, and portrays the unique spiritual outlook of a group of young people who grew up in the era of the alternation of old and new: they have ideals, enthusiasm, and positive optimism about life. What kind of excitement, insight and enlightenment will today's vibrant and infinitely beautiful youth, through more than half a century, come to the audience again in the form of drama? Li Jing, screenwriter of the drama "Long Live Youth", recently accepted an exclusive interview with Su Yang, the host of the "Chao Hua Xi Shi" program of the Voice of China of the Central Radio and Television Corporation.
How do the stories of young people in the 1950s be expressed from the perspective and language of modern audiences?
Reporter: What made you choose the novel "Long Live Youth" for drama creation?
Li Jing: Because this year the theater hopes to launch a play related to youth and young people, it just so happens that I have read Wang Meng's novel "Long Live Youth" before, and I feel that at this special time node, it is very suitable to make this novel into a drama that expresses youth from the perspective and perspective of young people, so the theater decided to try to adapt this novel, which is why it began to create.
Reporter: Where do you think it is more difficult in the process of adaptation?
Li Jing: First of all, in terms of length. The original novel is about 250,000 words, but the length of the drama is limited, and it is certainly not possible to adapt all the plots, character relationships, etc. according to the original novel, nor can it be like the movie, because the movie has a rich lens language. Therefore, in the process of adaptation, we must first reduce the length of the article, which brings the second problem, that is, in the process of adaptation, we must re-establish the main line of character relationships and scenes, and define the most important main line of the main plot contradictions of the characters, which cannot be said to be difficult, this is a very important work that must be done in the creative process.
Secondly, how to use this story describing the young people in the 50s to be expressed from the perspective of a modern audience and the language of the audience, which is more of our main creators and I consider when adapting the script, that is, what kind of topics to talk to the modern audience, and how these topics are mixed, docked and reflected with the characters and plots in the original novel, I think this may be the focus and difficulty of our work.
Reporter: It's more like a process of exploration.
Li Jing: Yes, yes!
"Long Live Youth" screenwriter Li Jing
How to make the modern audience understand the spiritual characteristics of the young people of that era?
Reporter: In the process of this exploration, have you found the spiritual qualities that can be expressed in young people of different eras and backgrounds through different eras?
Li Jing: The main reason why we insist on performing this drama is because we want to express the topic of "youth". Youth is not a time, an era or a stage of life, I think youth itself lies in the long life, is a state of mind, a state of mind. For the whole society, youth is also a kind of faith, a spiritual trait, it does not represent which era but is full in the entire human society, and will not be erased with the change of the times, because there will always be stubble of young people in the struggle. Those who are no longer young, most of them still maintain a youthful mentality, a mentality of active struggle and active exploration, so the topic of youth is actually an eternal topic.
If you connect with the present, I think the young people of the 50s under a specific social environment are very energetic, and they are very able to closely integrate their own state with the fate of the country and the construction of the country, which is their distinctive characteristic. This feature is placed in today's society, and it is also very suitable for our current young people. For example, in many news reports, film and television dramas, people around them mention or witness, has been fighting in the front line is not only the post-80s, many post-85s, post-90s and even post-00s students have done some extraordinary things in their posts, they will combine their personal future and destiny with the fate of the entire country and the entire era. I think this spiritual core is unchanged, so we must firmly grasp this "core" in the work, and then start from this "core" to explore some issues that young people are more concerned about, such as the problem of learning motivation, about faith, about growth and maturity, and even about love.
Reporter: Mr. Wang Meng is a male writer, and the main characters of his "Long Live Youth" are women. As a female screenwriter, have you had a deeper feeling or adjustment in gender in the process of adapting the script of the play?
Li Jing: In fact, it is good, because in the original novel, Teacher Wang Meng's portrayal of this group of young female students has been very full, and all aspects of personality and other aspects are very deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and in the process of adaptation, I am very receptive to these character images. In fact, when writing female characters, men's views may be more objective and the angles will be richer. When women write about women, they are more likely to depict delicate inner changes, which may be presented with insufficient three-dimensionality. So I don't think there is any need to adjust or reinterpret, because the original character personality is very distinct, and in the original work, it also gives a lot of character background and character story, and there is a strong content behind each character. What we screenwriters have to do is to better introduce this character to the audience, how to let the modern audience understand the spiritual characteristics of the young people of that era, and do more about the interpretation of the role.
"Long Live Youth" novel author Wang Meng
In the storytelling and character shaping, the resonance with modern audiences is considered
Reporter: Today's young audiences prefer to think and discover on their own rather than indoctrinated expressions, but there is not much time on the drama stage to lay out the background details in detail, and the efficiency of heuristic expression is inevitably inefficient.
Li Jing: I very much agree, I also found this problem when communicating with young people, people don't like indoctrination, they prefer empathy and empathy. I think this is also a reminder to the screenwriter to write the story well, so that the audience can listen to it and watch it. Throughout the plot setup, it needs to be carefully arranged and needs to serve the performance of the characters. Whether it is the intensification of contradictions or the resolution, it is all to better enrich the characters, and ultimately reflect the spiritual essence of the characters, so that everyone can resonate. In the process of adaptation, I refine the key plots related to the characters, combine the plots related to the relationship between the characters, and enrich the content that our creators want to express into the actions of the characters, including physical actions, psychological actions and language actions. Then it is possible to design some repeatedly emphasized lines or actions according to the character personality, which can also allow the audience to deepen the capture and perception of the character's personality in a short period of time.
Reporter: The connotation of "Long Live Youth" is very rich, how to express this rich change on the stage of a drama with limited duration? How are the rhythms and layers conveyed inside?
Li Jing: In the whole creative process, we grasped a few points: the first point is whether the timeline is still in accordance with the order of the original work. Because it is a campus story in itself, in the last semester of the third year of high school, the protagonist, like us ordinary young people, will go through big and small exams, experience festivals, experience summer vacations and important graduation moments, and we still follow this timeline of the original book in general.
Second, we have made some adjustments in the relationship between the characters, focusing on the three people of Zheng Bo, Yang Qiangyun and Li Chun, and the secondary characters are shaped around the contradictory main lines of these three main characters, and the background characters are appropriately deleted. In the shaping of the characters, the resonance with the modern audience and the docking with modern phenomena are also considered. For example, in the role shaping of Suning, we have weakened a lot of the class part of that era, but connected to the part of the adolescent children in today's society that has no material basis but is extremely spiritually empty, and through Suning to allude to this part of the young people. The character of Humari also made adjustments, blurring her background and using this role to talk to the audience about faith. In terms of character relationships, HuMari and Zheng Bo have a lot of getting along, Zheng Bo is a young Bolshevik in the original novel, with a very lofty faith, but he is not out of reach in life, but very approachable, willing to help others, his noble light shines everywhere in ordinary learning and life, and hopes to use this light to illuminate everyone around him. I think the collision between the two of them on the topic of faith is very good, through this collision of character relationships, so that the output of ideas is more acceptable, it is easier for the audience to empathize, rather than indoctrination.
The third point is the main scene and the main line of the erection, the key events we will retain, such as the May Day celebration dance and other large scenes. These scenes are mainly set around the generation, development and resolution of the main contradictions between the characters and the characters, which is a more interesting process of laying out and interspersing. I hope to be able to add drama color through these key plots and changes in character relationships, including the fact that we have added some of the initial opening of the emotional sinus, which may not be too clear in that era, but in this era we can put it on the table to talk, and express our adaptation of the creator's view of love in this way, that is, after the appropriate time and the ability to love, and then taste love.
Youth is not related to age, it is the ideal state of life full of sunshine
Reporter: "Long Live Youth" is a joint presentation of various departments after communication, is the effect of joint efforts, then what kind of youth core does the various departments want to tell the audience through this new version of the drama?
Li Jing: We hope to use this drama to reproduce the spirit of the people of the whole country in the 50s when New China was just founded, and to vividly expound the connotation of the times and the huge strength of the Chinese spirit with the growth story of a group of young people. I hope to use the protagonist's idealistic, collectivist and optimistic temperament to interpret positive optimism and courageous struggle is the most beautiful background of youth. I also hope that through the theme of youth through 70 years, we can express that youth is not related to age, the times, and the group, it is a burning belief, it is a courage to move forward, and it is an ideal state of life full of sunshine, which is the core that we especially want to express.
Producer: Bai Zhonghua
Reporter: Su Yang
Editor: Xie Yuzhu Wang Xin