How to make the drama education curriculum more suitable for Chinese children and families is a long polishing process.
Photo / Reporter Yin Liqin
Article/Reporter Wu Keyan
Before the age of 30, Xu Zheng's life trajectory had hardly left the area around West Yan'an Road in Shanghai.
Shanghai Renyi, the Youth Repertory Theatre, and later the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, where he later worked, are all nearby. The garden house in Lane 188, Changshu Road, where Xu Zheng grew up, can turn a corner to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center.
The owner of the garden house is Yu Hua, the chief justice of the Shanghai Concession period and the brother of Yu Dafu. Xu Zheng's grandparents did not really own this bungalow, and since he can remember, half of this house has been a dormitory building for Shanghai Renyi. Xu Zheng grew up in such a noisy environment.
After graduating from the Shanghai Theater Academy, Xu Zheng entered the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center and struggled between art and reality for many years.
In 2021, Xu Zheng launched the Drama Education Tinder Project and returned to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center with the "Tinder" of public welfare. During the half-month winter camp, he came first and left the latest every day, soaking in the rehearsal hall.
"Public welfare is one of my most important jobs in the future, and I can see that the territory of drama education is very large." Although "Tinder Project" sounds a bit utopian, his years of acting career have convinced him that it is great to understand life and deal with interpersonal relationships through drama, and to let children and parents find emotional outlets and understand love.
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200031, the zip code along Yan'an West Road, Xu Zheng can still blurt out this set of numbers. If he hadn't chosen to make a TV series later, he would have been working and living here.
When I was in the third grade of primary school, the teachers of the Shanghai Children's Palace came to the school to select actors for the children's drama "Kaoxue", and Xu Zheng, who had a round face and a happy appearance, was selected to play a "small landlord" and appeared on the drama stage for the first time. Since then, Xu Zheng has been considered by teachers and classmates to be a child with "artistic cells". He began to participate in the performances of the Children's Palace Drama Club frequently, and also decided that he would become an actor in the future.
In high school, Xu Zheng became acquainted with friends of the Shanghai Youth Drama Club and joined the "Friends of Renyi" drama club. Every day after school, the classmates around him are busy going home to write their homework, and Xu Zheng carries his school bag and wanders to the backstage of the Lyceum Theater. Watch other people perform, and write your homework by the way. Occasionally, he also played a small role, and in his sophomore year of high school, he played Xi Meijuan's son in the drama "Original Sin".
The thrill of acting made Xu Zheng addicted and uncontrollable. Backstage at the Lyceum Theatre, he observed the actors' every move and watched the stage rise and fall. Until now, he felt that the starting point of a play was to start with every stage installation and adjustment of lights. Sometimes he also watched a performance with a group of friends who loved theater, and after watching the actor He Zhengjun, he Zheng sent Xu Zheng home on a bicycle.
When he was a student, Xu Zheng began to write his own script, and the teacher encouraged him to perform after reading it. Therefore, Xu Zheng really called on a group of classmates to rehearse, assign roles, rewrite the script, and finally complete the performance. That sense of accomplishment excites him.
After graduating from high school in 1990, Xu Zheng received an acceptance letter from the Shanghai Theater Academy, but still could not leave the familiar string of postal codes. During college, Xu Zheng and like-minded friends watched niche dramas and listened to rock music. Avant-garde art that first entered China, Xu Zheng read it over and over again. At that time, he was always thinking about the gap between Chinese theater education and foreign countries, and the contrast was different. "Why is it called drama in foreign countries, but we can only call it drama?"
On the stage of the drama he loved, Xu Zheng became famous very early, and "when you go to Shanghai, you have to see Xu Zheng's drama" once became popular. In 1998, Xu Zheng directed two avant-garde dramas, "Crowded" and "Mother Tongue". In "Crowded", Xu Zheng sat alone on the stage and performed a 40-minute monologue play, reflecting crowding with a sense of loneliness as a single person. Unfortunately, the audience could not understand it, and Xu Zheng's expression did not resonate.
Xu Zheng believes that through drama education, it can bring about changes to the parent-child relationship.
"Zheng" Za
"The Eight Precepts of the Brilliant Spring Pig" allows the audience to familiarize herself with the name Xu Zheng for the first time. Before that, as a drama actor, he had been running on the stage for seven or eight years. He said that if he hadn't tried to shoot a TV series, he might have been working as an ordinary actor on the drama stage.
For him, the transition from the theatrical stage to the tv drama set is almost "the abandonment of literary and artistic style". He once wondered if such a choice was tantamount to abandoning the pursuit of artistic dreams.
In 2001, Xu Zheng filmed "Li Wei Became an Official", and the experience of this play also became a turning point in Xu Zheng's continuous thinking process. In this TV series that overlooks history, Xu Zheng sees the historical mission expressed by the work itself. He reflected that the artistic dream he insisted on in his heart was too lofty, and it might be more acceptable to the audience to be close to reality. In today's words, Xu Zheng wanted to understand the meaning of "grounding gas".
Because of the "囧 series" movies, Xu Zheng became famous. The public recognizes from these films that Xu Zheng is an actor with acting skills and a director with box office guarantees. The middle-aged 囧男, who stumbled and laughed all the way, became Xu Zheng's label, and eventually they would reconcile with the world and themselves. Xu Zheng loves to play such a small person, vivid and vivid.
In 2012, "Tai Yuan" allowed Xu Zheng to win the annual box office record of 1.267 billion, a record that lasted for nearly three years before it was broken. Xu Zhiyuan commented on him: In the past decade, Xu Zheng has been the most important surfer of the times, and in this rapidly expanding industry, he is not wrapped up in fame and money, and still has a good control.
"If it's a pure environment, I'll be an actor, and I still like to be an actor." He recalled on Weibo that he had embarked on the road of directing purely to make himself "have a play to act."
The artist's dream is deeply hidden in Xu Zheng's heart. He began to embrace change and constantly explore new areas, acting in films, directing, and supervising producers. Wang Changtian, president of Light Media, said that Xu Zheng likes to think and can always figure out something.
Later, Xu Zheng figured it out on the matter of being an improper artist. He recalls a short video he'd seen. No matter how the outside world changes, the craftsmen in the video are constantly creating, turning what they think into reality. "I think that's the artist." Xu Zheng said.
Pathfinding
On February 21, 2021, the "Drama Education Tinder Project" winter camp jointly initiated by Beijing Zhengai Charity Foundation and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center opened in Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, Xu Zheng stayed for half a month, and the staff around him were surprised by Xu Zheng's seriousness and dedication.
However, for Xu Zheng, returning to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center has a feeling of returning home. Su Yi, a drama director and actor who has worked at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center for more than a decade, said, "Even though Mr. Xu is now a big director, I still feel that he is still one of us. ”
On November 11, 2020, Xu Zheng and his wife Tao Hong established the Beijing ZhengAi Charity Foundation.
On November 11, 2020, Xu Zheng and Tao Hong jointly initiated the establishment of the Beijing ZhengAi Charity Foundation. He thought about it for a long time. This is not the first time that Xu Zheng has participated in public welfare, but it is the first time that he has participated in the design of public welfare projects.
After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Xu Zheng followed the "China Film Report" column group into Beichuan to donate school bags to the children in the disaster area and take them to play games. Remembering the devastated scene he had seen, Xu Zheng still felt sad. However, this also brought Xu Zheng the experience and thinking of public welfare for the first time. After leaving Beichuan, Xu Zheng has been thinking about what he can bring to more children in addition to such a condolence performance.
"Of course, the children in the disaster area are in great need of the school bags we donated, and we bring them a temporary laugh, but what will they do after we are gone?" He wanted to explore better solutions.
In 2017, Xu Zheng, Tao Hong and his wife cooperated with the Beijing New Sunshine Charity Foundation to establish ward schools to provide educational opportunities for children with leukemia. In 2018, he became the promotion ambassador of the "Warm Pack" project of the One Foundation, visiting children in mountainous areas in Daliangshan, Sichuan. In the same year, he became the love ambassador of the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation Health Poverty Alleviation Public Welfare Insurance Project.
Xu Zheng frankly said that the public welfare behavior at the beginning was related to the individual's simple sense of social responsibility. After years of gaining fame and fortune in the show business, he suddenly found that these influences were only gained in himself. "Can I also give back to society?"
Many ways have been tried, but the effect has not satisfied Xu Zheng. He wanted to find a pro bono project that would allow him to be fully engaged and deeply involved. On the occasion of continuous exploration, Xu Zheng got acquainted with Liu Zhen, the current co-founder, director and secretary general of the Beijing Zhengai Charity Foundation. Liu Suggested that he create a new public welfare project in his field of expertise, so that he can not only participate deeply, but also use his own resources to do a solid job of the project.
Xu Zheng and his wife Tao Hong, who is also an actor, finally decided to launch a professional public welfare foundation, including Tao Chuanjin, an expert in the field of public welfare, Liu Ting, an investment partner, Liu Tianchi, a teacher at the Central Academy of Drama, and Wang Yuanyuan, a dancer, to find innovative solutions for social pain points through aesthetic education.
When thinking about the landing projects of the public welfare foundation, Xu Zheng immediately thought of drama. But exactly what should be done, he did not think well. Back at his old club, the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, Xu Zheng discussed with his peers in the theater circle, and his original idea was to set up a children's drama club to provide a stage for children to show themselves.
Wen Xiaowei, an actor and director of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, asked Xu Zheng with a "series of questions", "What kind of play to play?" By what criteria are children selected? What is the purpose of the show? Xu Zheng realized that if a project cannot be designed to benefit more children, the public welfare value generated will be limited.
In 2018, Xu Zheng participated in the visit to the Wumeng Mountain Area of the One Foundation "Warm Pack" project.
Journey
Xu Zheng said that his public welfare road of more than ten years is more like an exploration and search. While working on projects at other foundations, he learned how to design pro bono projects, how they are executed, and where changes might be made.
Almost all of the public welfare projects he has participated in are related to children, and this time he personally designed the public welfare projects himself, and he did not want to only face a single group. The director's "ambition" made him determined to do a project that could benefit more children.
Xu Zheng thought of drama education, also known as "educational drama".
In the United States and the United Kingdom, theatre education developed very early. In the 1930s, there were educational institutions that used drama to train children to understand the world and society. After the Second World War, drama education became popular in Britain, and some theater education experts began to promote drama teaching on campus.
After that, drama education developed into a form of education based on role play and creation. However, in China, drama education is still in its infancy and has not yet been systematically carried out.
Different from traditional art education, drama education lies in pluralism and naturalization, leading children to experience and understand the world through the construction of drama story situations, and enhancing children's expression, imagination and creativity.
In Xu Zheng's view, drama education is not to teach children to perform, but to educate children through edutainment, so that they can deeply participate in a play and experience the growth of the characters in the play.
"If you just find a bunch of kids to act, will the kids who aren't selected be labeled as having no artistic cells?" Xu Zheng asked himself. As a teenager, he was a child who was frequently active on stage, and now he wants more children to be seen.
"When people think of public welfare and charity, they always think of funding children in poor mountainous areas for the first time, which is of course very important." But in cities, mental poverty is a big problem. Parents have life anxieties, and children have learning troubles. The conflict between parent-child relationships that arises is rarely seen and understood. Xu Zheng said that if through the way of drama experience, let the members of the family learn and feel some beautiful themes and things, it may affect the child's life.
The "Tinder Project" invited actors including Liu Tianchi and Zu Feng to participate, as well as mentors from education, craftsmanship and other aspects.
He was back in the area he knew best. The drama education "Tinder Project" is the first project established by the Beijing Zhengai Charity Foundation, which has been repeatedly discussed for half a year from conception to launch. At the end of February 2021, the first winter camp began, and Xu Zheng gathered professional partners from all walks of life, including senior actors who have been deeply engaged in drama for many years, as well as teachers who have studied drama education for many years. Tao Hong and Liu Tianchi participated in the whole process, and the powerful actor Zu Feng also joined the discussion in the later stage of the winter camp.
These professionals with more than ten years of performance and teaching experience get together, and the first thing to complete is to find the right repertoire and organize it into a clear and landable drama education lesson plan.
During the 15-day winter camp, tutors from different fields such as national theater education, public welfare, theater, psychology, etc., practiced and displayed the classic cases of drama education with different characteristics. In the form of on-site experience and discussion, he has developed more than 20 picture books and children's literature works for youth drama education courses, covering traditional Chinese culture and social reality, and also paying attention to parent-child relationship and adolescent spiritual growth.
On the last day of the winter camp, 20 children participated in a drama education experience class with the Tinder Project instructors. Xu Zheng sat in the corner of the rehearsal hall and watched intently, taking notes from time to time, or walking over to other instructors to discuss with them in a low voice.
At the end of the course, he beckoned the instructors to sit around and discuss the problem of the day's experience class while the iron was hot. Which problems need to be avoided, which links need to be strengthened, Xu Zheng can't wait to tell his feelings.
Xu Zheng admitted that this is not an easy process. Because there is no experience of predecessors, references are all foreign models. How to make the curriculum more suitable for Chinese children and families is a long polishing process.
Image source: Provided by respondent (except for special labeling)
Photo editor: Zhang Xu
Editor on duty: Qiu Yu