A few days ago, the original musical "The Orphan of Zhao" completed its first round of performances in Shanghai, triggering heated discussions.
For thousands of years, this story has been continuously adapted and interpreted, full of speculation about life and destiny, and exploration of the dimension of human nature. To use a recent Internet buzzword, it is yyds (eternal God).
As the director of the play, Xu Jun, said: "Every second on the stage, the fiery vision outlines a tragic story; everyone in the audience, the heartbeat enters the same frequency." This is the dream of every original musical theater person. ”
A seed of tragedy
In the summer of 2017, director Xu Jun exchanged views with the Royal Shakespeare Company and learned that the English version of the play "The Orphan of Zhao", adapted by British poet James Fenton, was staged in 2012 and received wide acclaim in the United Kingdom. After finding the script and reading it carefully, Xu Jun had a feeling of seeing each other and hating the night.
"The Orphan of Zhao" was like a seed that fell into his heart.
The story of the orphans of Zhao first appeared in the history books of the Spring and Autumn Period, and developed into Ji Junxiang's meta-drama "Orphans of Zhao". In 1731, translated by the missionary Joseph Ma, the French version of The Orphan of Zhao in Chinese Tragedy became the first Chinese theatrical work to be introduced to the West. In 1755, the French thinker Voltaire adapted a play "Chinese Orphans" based on it, and he commented in the author's dedication at the beginning: "'The Orphan of Zhao' is a precious masterpiece, which makes people understand the Chinese spirit." To this day, "The Orphan of Zhao" has been popular on the European theatrical stage for a long time.
Many people know the story of Zhao's orphans, but when it is presented to contemporary audiences, there are two questions that are difficult to avoid: Can parents and children die? How can an adoptive father be killed? Why did Cheng Bao send his own child out to die? Why did the Zhao orphans kill the "father" who raised them? Whether in various classical operas or modern and contemporary adaptations, these two issues do not seem to be interpreted very clearly.
In Fenton's adaptation of "The Orphan of Zhao", Xu Jun sees an interpretation full of modernity, and Fenton, on the basis of respecting the original work, injects modern contemplation of Western rationality and poetry in parallel, so that the story is given new imagery. Different from the meta-drama, in Fenton's script, Cheng Bao has not received the grace of the Zhao family, he and the princess have never known each other, in the face of the princess's desperate pleas, he chooses to accept the request of the orphan to rescue the Zhao orphans. In order to find the Zhao orphans, Tu Anjia ordered the killing of all the male babies in the country, and Cheng Bao chose to sacrifice his newborn child in exchange with the orphans in order to save the lives of the orphans and the national babies. This move was entirely out of his own will, derived from his belief in justice, such as Han Yue, Gongsun Jiuusu and others who died for orphans, who were convinced that only by saving the orphans of the Zhao clan and protecting him to grow up, it would be possible to overthrow Tu Anjia's tyranny in the future and restore peace to the world.
"The noble sense of pursuing justice, facing evil head-on, and sacrificing for ideals is the spiritual value of "The Orphan of Zhao" that has been passed down through the ages." Xu Jun said.
In the process of solving the mystery of his own life, the Orphan of Zhao also becomes an active and conscious person, not just a symbol of revenge. He could not bear it but did not escape, and finally chose justice, and completed his revenge under the determination of free will. At the same time, he is sober and painfully suffering from the tearing and torment of his personal feelings. Because he knew that after all, he had killed someone, killed his adoptive father, and would fall into the abyss of sin and fear, which was the tragedy of zhao's orphans.
Cheng's wife's song "Flying Dragon Sleeps on the Tiles" brought many viewers to tears
Soul and wings
Before "The Orphan of Zhao", Xu Jun had directed original musicals such as "Jews in Shanghai" and "White Snake Shock". When he proposed to his old partner composer Jin Peida and lyricist Liang Mang that he wanted to adapt Fenton's script and make the original musical "The Orphan of Zhao", the three of them hit it off.
Literature is the foundation of musical theatre. Xu Jun asked well-known translators Jin Shenghua and Professor Peng Jingxi to translate Fenton's English script into Chinese, striving to present the beauty of the rhythm of Chinese characters.
Thought is the soul of the musical. After getting the Chinese translation, Xu Jun made several changes to the script in order to better show the ideological power of the whole play on the stage. In the meta-drama "Orphans of Zhao", Cheng Bao's son cannot resist his own death, nor does he have the right to question, which is a forgotten symbol. In Fenton's script, the soul of Cheng Bao's son appears in the last scene of the whole play. In the original musical "Orphan of Zhao", the soul of Cheng Bao's son runs through the whole play from the beginning, becoming a kind of "presence" and a metaphor for witnessing fate but not having the right to act and choose, in which he not only explores and questions his own fate, but also establishes a dark relationship with other characters. This role is one of the biggest highlights of the show.
Fenton spent five scenes to lay out the contradictions between Tu Anjia and Zhao Dun and others, which would appear lengthy and cumbersome in the musical, Xu Jun made a cut to this, directly entering the sixth scene "Zhao's Extinction", completing the first dramatic conflict in a song, and directly leading to the scene of "Tou Lonely".
After the Orphans of Zhao grew up, Cheng Baby borrowed a picture scroll to let him know his own origins, which is a very turning plot of the whole drama. In the musical, the picture scrolls are processed in three dimensions, with huge stage installations and character modeling imaging, as a microcosm of the whole play. The inside and outside of the painting divide time and space to form a kind of viewing and penetration. The relationship between the characters and the frame also gradually changes as the plot unfolds.
"My adaptation of the script was done on the high-speed train. From Shanghai to Beijing, and then from Beijing to Shanghai, the adaptation is basically complete, because these ideas have been brewing in my mind for a long time. Xu Jun told reporters.
Music is the wing of musical theatre. Jin Peida, the play's composer, said: "The birth of a musical is a long road. Someone asked me how much time it took me to write "The Orphan of Zhao", and I said that I used 60 years of life accumulation. I want to use my songs to express the theme of the story, so that the death, fate and choice in the story trigger the revelation of the moment. ”
The highly freehand and modern stage design of "The Orphan of Zhao" also made the audience shine. The unique diagonal platform extends from the stage to the depth of the stage. The stage space is divided into different scenes and areas according to the scene scheduling and light and shadow structure, and the transformation of time and space is processed by different shadow tones on the light.
Zhang Shuping's character shapes and costumes have details of traditional elements and modern avant-garde silhouette designs. The audience seat is also incorporated into the actors' performance area, as if blurring the boundaries between the past and the present, drama and reality, so that the audience can get an immersive viewing experience.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Chen Junjun Caption Source: Yin Xuefeng, Zheng Tiantian Photo
Source: Author: Chen Junjun