Author: Sun Huizhu
Two scientists look at the sky separately, can there be any "drama"? I had some doubts before I went to the theater.
Unexpectedly, the musical "Interstellar Messenger" used only 3 actors to make a moving play about the scientist Galileo Galilei, and my perception even surpassed the far more famous drama "Galileo Galilei". "The Biography of Galileo" is a classic play by the German drama master Brecht, which was staged in the 1979 China Youth Arts Theater at the Grand Theater, with 80 consecutive performances and rave reviews. Brecht has been an icon I've paid homage to and studied for decades, and after watching The Interstellar Messenger, I'm more bullish on the musical, thinking that the "Galileo" might appeal to a wider audience.
Good looking and meaningful
The story of Galileo's life is rich and colorful, which parts are the best to see and the most meaningful? "Good-looking" and "meaningful" are often inconsistent, some plays pursue good looks and affect meaning, and some plays emphasize meaning but are not good.2 The musical "The Interstellar Messenger" is good and meaningful, but its meaning is different from that of "Galileo". The first half of the musical shows more of the joy scientists find and share—something that is almost deliberately downplayed in Brecht's play. The musical horoscopes Galileo Galileo and Kepler, germans, who have only corresponded but never met in history, into imaginary dialogues—in much of the language of their letters. From the initial conversation, the two people explored the starry sky with telescopes at the same time, and also used their songs to bring the audience into a magical world.
The second half of the musical touches on the unhappy part of Galileo's life: he was tried by the Inquisition and chose to plead guilty and ask for forgiveness to avoid being burned at the stake—a point that is the center of gravity of the speculative Galileo. Brecht took the longest time to write the play, from Denmark in 1938 to the United States in 1947, and he kept writing and changing. At that time, he was saddened by the defection of some of his fellow scientists and thinkers to the Nazis, and his pen was far more cold than romantic, and his criticism was far more than praise. Today, when we watch this "Biography of Galileo", we will feel that it is too high and cold, not as arresting as the other Famous Bushi dramas I am familiar with, such as "The Good Man of Sichuan" and "The Grey Of the Caucasus".
The Interstellar Messenger created an even more adorable Galileo. South Korean screenwriter Baek Seung-woo did not shy away from the historical fact that he had asked the Pope for forgiveness to survive because he wanted to hide for His Holiness, but only proposed a new perspective: "Stay in the green mountains, and don't worry about firewood." "The scientist was forced to confess his guilt to save his life, but he did not destroy the telescope he used to conduct the experiment, but also retained the key experimental results, and when the time came, it would still shine." He always had hope: "But there will still be light, indelible starlight; The answer is always echoing, and the truth cannot be buried here. I want the world to know the splendor of the stars. ”
In Galileo's struggle against the church for science, his friendship with Kepler and his affection with his daughter Mary played a great role; And these "loves" are rare in Brecht's biography of Galileo — Galileo was so selfish that he gluttonously ate good things alone, and even forbade his daughter to marry. Mary in The Interstellar Messenger volunteered to be a nun out of faith without marrying. Although she opposed her father's opposition to the Pope, she loved him deeply and sincerely hoped that he would "bow his head" and survive and continue to engage in scientific research. Maria's hope of having the best of both worlds and inner entanglement makes it particularly easy for the audience to have a sense of substitution, and it is difficult not to worry about her. Fortunately, the Pope at the time was also a scientist, and he and Galileo reached a certain degree of compromise, although he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but soon changed to house arrest, and also provided him with conditions to continue scientific research, allowing him to complete an important book, "Conversations and Mathematical Proofs on Two New Sciences". Everything that follows proves that Galileo's disobedient "confession" of expediency is not an unforgivable stain on life.
Telescopes inside and outside the play
Galileo Galileo made great contributions to mankind, the most important of which is the proof of Copernicus's "heliocentric theory" of the "geocentric theory". He was able to prove the "heliocentric theory" because he built the best astronomical telescope that could see the planet on the basis of his predecessors. Brecht wrote this feat of Galileo as a suspicious case in the play, making the audience feel that Galilee was slightly robbed of beauty, which was quite reproachful. Most of the early scientific inventions were continuously improved one after another without the copyright being clear, and Galileo's telescope should be an upgraded version of his own design and processing.
The telescope is an important point to distinguish and connect the two scientists Galileo and Kepler. Kepler imagined writing a book of The Mysteries of the Universe and sent it to Galileo in the hope of his affirmation; Galileo rejected his hypothesis, insisted on using telescopes to see the shape of the planets as the basis for scientific inferences, and sent Kepler a telescope. Since then, they have often written to discuss the celestial phenomena they see in their telescopes.
The telescope is both a prop throughout the play and a wonderful metaphor. Everyone can appreciate the brilliant starlight, but who can understand the mysteries of the vast heavenly dome? Only with the help of high-powered telescopes can it be possible to see the face of the planet. With a telescope, Galileo could sing: "Don't be deceived by your eyes, don't assert by your imagination... After countless sunsets, the news of the stars flickered before my eyes. In the past, I was alone in confusion, and many things I had never imagined; But now it's different, and it's gradually sketching out the contours of the mind. A good play can also be a "telescope" that helps the viewer to recognize people and things that are at a distance in time or space.
"Interstellar Messenger" is the fourth small musical produced by Shanghai Culture Square in recent years to introduce Korean team re-translation. This kind of musical, performed by only two or three actors, is barely seen in the musical's home camps on Broadway in New York and the West End in London, and the small and medium-sized theaters on Off-Broadway are occasionally available, but not many—two-man "Uncle Long Legs" is one of the very few examples from Off-Broadway.
The production team at Shanghai Culture Square had the unique vision to discover this rare genre of small and medium-sized theater "inventions" on Seoul National University Road, believing that this "small and beautiful" model, such as Lei'er's luxurious musicals, was more suitable for the needs of Chinese audiences, and decided to introduce a series and cooperate with the original team to carry out a certain localization adaptation. The previous "My Bucket List", "Rachmaninoff", and "Maybe a Happy Ending" have all toured for many rounds and are quite popular. Although these plays are small - at least 2, up to 4 actors, but the pattern is not small, generally performed in medium-sized or even large theaters. There are more than 600 theaters in the upper theater of "Interstellar Messenger", and a vast blue sky dome and curved angle on the stage make the audience feel that they are in a large planetarium. The change of light projection on the sky dome and the actor's performance of watching the sky are integrated, becoming another important "point of view" of the play.
"Small and beautiful" musical theater mode
The series development of "small and beautiful" musicals shows that some theater people already have their own "telescopes" that can focus on and select suitable drama styles according to the needs of Chinese audiences.
Since the introduction of Western drama more than 100 years ago, the discourse system of Chinese drama has mostly used Western conceptual terms. The old predecessors who first led the introduction had a very strong vision, and according to the urgent needs of domestic enlightenment and salvation, they chose the main style of introduction - realist drama, and reasonably ignored the musical drama with song and dance stories and strong entertainment. For more than 40 years, we have learned to introduce many superior conditions, but we have not learned many dramas that are popular with Chinese audiences. Many people only know how to take the "telescope" given to us by Western teachers to see their plays, and even in the eyes of those professors living in ivory towers, the most advanced dramas are all kinds of novel tricks that even ordinary People in the West can't understand but facilitate scholars to write papers. Musicals that are popular with the public are considered unworthy of study, because they have the largest audience, and professors disdain to follow the herd and "follow the customs". Some Chinese scholars also consider musicals to be "vulgar", but they probably haven't seen many musicals, but have followed western professors.
Later, the market for musical theater was too large to be ignored, and the country also began to introduce and produce musicals, but mainly practitioners were busy, and still rarely saw in-depth research on musicals. For more than 30 years, the vast majority of musicals imported and imitated by the mainland have been broadway and West End models - mainly luxury musicals represented by the early "four major musicals", large investment, large choreography, and large cards. Such a drama is not bad, but the southern orange and northern citrus should not learn to act well. A new Broadway musical has to be performed more than 400 times a year in the same grand theater to recover its costs, and in the Chinese performance market, which mainly relies on touring to survive, the survival rate of big musicals is really low, and no amount of government subsidies is difficult to maintain. The situation in South Korea is somewhat similar — it's not as big as the broader musical theater market on Broadway and the West End, so after learning from Europe and the United States, they created their own "small and beautiful" musicals that are more in line with their national conditions, which also happens to be more suitable for the needs of Chinese audiences.
When we decide what kind of drama to study, we must observe it carefully with our own eyes – including using precise "telescopes" of our own design. This time, Shanghai Culture Square produced a good play about the telescope, and the play itself is also a good "telescope". It may help us see that in addition to the Popular European and American dramas and luxury musicals, there is also a "small and beautiful" musical theater model that we need. (Sun Huizhu)
Source: Liberation Daily