Lin Zhaohua, born in Tianjin in 1936, is the director of the People's Art Theatre in Beijing, and is a unique "great director" in the Chinese theater industry. His representative works include "Absolute Signal", "Hamlet", "Master Builder", "Wotou Guild Hall" and so on. Photo: Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing
In the field of Chinese literature and art, there are thousands of people engaged in directing work in film, television, drama, and even online dramas and variety shows. But there is only one person who is qualified to refer to the word "great director" and is not controversial, and he is the theater director Lin Zhaohua.
He began directing plays at the age of 46 and is 82 years old this year. In the past 36 years, Lin Zhaohua has independently directed more than 60 plays, operas, operas and other works, in addition to nearly 20 works of cooperation and cross-border directing.
His creativity is so exuberant, his creative style is so unique, and his creative density is so amazing. With Lin Zhaohua, the look of modern Chinese drama has changed.
In the 1982 experimental performance of "Absolute Signal" in the Beijing Renyi Rehearsal Hall, Lin Zhaohua had a flashlight in his hand as a light, and the audience sat on the floor and even sat on the scene in the corner, after which Lin Zhaohua opened a new door for Chinese theater, and people saw a more free stage performance, which was also regarded as the beginning of The Drama of Chinese Small Theater.
Lin Zhaohua has since broken the traditional stage viewing relationship many times, and the audience was amazed that "the original drama can still be performed like this": he has raised horses on the stage; he has summoned Hundreds of migrant workers from the construction site in the alley next door to perform on stage; in order to rehearse "Cherry Orchard", he has contracted an orchard...
People have commented on him as "one play and one grid", and nearly 80 works have hardly repeated themselves.
Many of his works have been controversial, but he says that "don't be afraid to be scolded, as long as it is valuable!" ”
His "Lin Zhaohua Drama Studio" is the first private theater studio registered by industry and commerce in China. He was also the first artist after the reform and opening up to cooperate with universities to establish a theater research institute that can issue diplomas.
In 2010, he launched the Lin Zhaohua Drama Invitation Exhibition in his personal name, which was the earliest international large-scale drama exhibition initiated in the name of an individual sponsored by non-governmental forces in China, and since then, the annual "Lin Exhibition" has become the most anticipated drama platform for Chinese theater fans every year.
In theatrical practice, Lin Zhaohua is a wise man who explores the ultimate, in real life, he is a fashionable "old naughty boy", he always holds the latest smart phone, the old age is rare to go clubbing to experience life, and now he can stay up late until 3 a.m., 8 years ago he has begun to update his personal Weibo, the circle of friends new information he knows for the first time...
Lin Zhaohua, born in 1936, is still so fashionable because there is light in his heart, or it can be said that he has been living beyond the times.
Reclaimers
There is only one "ism", which is the shame of drama
In the early 1980s, Lin Zhaohua had no concept of drama, but his keen intuition captured that there was only one ideological concept of theater at that time, which was ridiculous, "When you watch a play in a remote part of the country, you basically know what a national drama looks like, which is not normal," and even Lin Zhaohua felt: "In the 80s, drama was only Stani (founded by the Soviet theater theorist Stanislavsky, one of the three major performance systems of world theater), which is the shame of Chinese theater!" ”
Before becoming an independent director, Lin Zhaohua was photographed by director Xia Chun with the image of "Xiaosheng" and recruited Ren yi as an actor. After the "Cultural Revolution", Lin Zhaohua found in the two-pot-to-head liquor bureau with Ying Ruocheng, Yu Zhi, and Diao Guangqin, whose predecessors had eight cents and one or two, that these intellectuals "had culture and ideas", so he forced himself to read a large number of famous works, even if he could not understand them, and when he directed independently, he was 46 years old.
Beijing Renyi had an art committee specially responsible for judging plays, and "unemployment" was a big social problem at that time, and there was a character of "unemployed young black children" in Lin Zhaohua's "Absolute Signal", which was characterized as "ideological problems". In the end, Lin Zhaohua finally held out a theme that could pass the pass - "saving the runaway youth", and two months later, the book passed.
In July 1982, "Absolute Signal" began to be rehearsed in groups. This stream-of-consciousness script structure was hardly seen on the drama stage of that year, and the actors could not imagine and understand the psychological state of the characters, let alone perform. Lin Zhaohua took the whole group to sit on the guard car several times, and deliberately looked for a route with more tunnels, in order to let the actors feel the loneliness of the car keeper for 365 days without seeing the light.
Absolute Signal. Courtesy of Lin Zhaohua Drama Studio
After the formation of "Absolute Signal" in the most tense time of the play, the light in the performance area was completely black, only four cigarette butts flashed in the dark, which was very rare in the stage at that time, and the lines were also processed like music multi-voice multi-channel appearance, "The audience looked stupid, I couldn't imagine that I could perform like this, but in fact, how simple!" Experts also say why don't you say lines well? The psychology of different characters erupts at the same time, which is a very real situation, and language is multi-voice in real life. Lin Zhaohua hehehe
In August 1982, "Absolute Signal" was not allowed to perform, only got an opportunity to perform internally, after the performance, no one spoke for the first 9 minutes of the day when the art committee reviewed the play, Lin Zhaohua did not dare to come out, and finally the artist Tian Chong said "Strange bean-like drama, you can ask the audience to taste and taste", which made him breathe a sigh of relief. Subsequently, audiences from all over the country came to see the play, and the audience found that in the small space theater, the relationship between the audience and the performance had undergone a new change, breaking the "fourth wall" of the Steine system under the traditional frame stage. The media rushed to report, and even foreign media recorded that "China's avant-garde drama was born." After 60 to 70 performances, he moved to the Grand Theater and performed more than 100 performances. But so far, Lin Zhaohua recalled that performing "Absolute Signal" in the colossal theater is still grumpy, "it is not the kind of watching relationship, it is not right." At that time, Lin Zhaohua, a newcomer director, was in the praise of "this boy is a bit crooked", a hit.
successor
Why doesn't the "Chinese school" inherit it well?
Lin Zhaohua has said in many interviews, "So far I think that Beijing Renyi is my father, but he still thinks that I am a contrarian son, and so far my mother, the Central Academy of Drama, still thinks that I am an outlier and does not recognize me as her son." Lin Zhaohua is lonely in beijing who adheres to the tradition of realism, and he wants to break through the tradition and step out of a different "realism". What pushed Lin Zhaohua to the position of "ren yi reverse son" was the rearrangement of the family drama "Tea House", and the reason why "Tea House" can become a classic is largely due to Jiao Juyin, who proposed the "Chinese School" of theatrical stage art on the basis of Chinese opera aesthetics, and Jiao Juyin is the master that Lin Zhaohua worships.
When rehearsing "Tea House", Lin Zhaohua knew that he could not jump out of the circle of realism, but wanted to explore the new expression method of "realism", he wanted to make the contemporary consciousness stronger on "Tea House", but moving the old ancestors' things themselves was a matter of scolding. He picked up the deleted fragments of Lao She's original work, wanted to break the original stage enclosed space, let the stage staff play a quarter of the role, introduced the shouting, asked the actors to bid farewell to the "stage cavity", and let the stage designer Yi Liming design the crooked building of the leaning tea house...
Criticism poured in, and the old audience and the old masters of the art believed that he had lost the living characters of the old version of "The Tea House", and that the treasures of the old ancestors could not be blindly moved, but the young audience liked it. At that time, Lin Zhaohua could not understand that this drama had been acting for decades, if it was just to continue to carve the mold and depict the red, what was the significance? At that time, in order to encourage himself, he copied a passage of Mr. Jiao's words, which read: "The art of directing should continue to explore and innovate, and acting in the old way will suffocate the vivid content of the script." But in the end, Lin Zhaohua did not have a "traditional voice" after all, forced to choose moderation, he only scored 60 points for his "Lin version" "Tea House", and in 2005, Ren yi completely restored "Tea House" to the old version of the performance so far. Lin Zhaohua admired Mr. Jiao's rebellion, but he found that he could only "rebel to this point" in the play "Tea House".
The Teahouse. Courtesy of Lin Zhaohua Drama Studio
Years later, in 2010, the ultimate use of a large number of opera techniques can still be seen on the stage of "Lobbyist" - actors jump in and out of the role, a horse whip is a horse, and three pieces of cloth of different colors are against the three kingdoms army... These "things handed down from the ancestors" made Lin Zhaohua feel that Chinese drama could have staying power: "Why don't we inherit the Chinese school proposed by Mr. Jiao?" Lin Zhaohua believes: "Opera actors always maintain themselves on the stage, the actor is both me and not me, both in the play and not in the play, and Stanley's performance system is to play characters from the self, And Chinese drama should not be like this." Whenever he talks about Chinese drama to excavate what the ancestors left behind instead of blindly learning the West, Lin Zhaohua always has a sad face.
rebel
I don't want to be a master, I want to keep climbing
Lin Zhaohua is "restless", even though he has produced a large number of successful works of "realism" within the Beijing renyi system, such as "Wotou Guild Hall", which set a record of more than 10 million at the total box office of 36 shows. But he felt that artists' creations have always been free, and they only need to follow their own hearts, regardless of which era, whether the people who hold the right to speak are conservative people, so he is ready to "do it yourself!" ”
In 1989, Lin Zhaohua thought of setting up a studio to do plays, pulled his own team to find funds, and wanted to recruit children to attach the performance license to various units, just to rehearse the plays he wanted to rehearse. The so-called studio was originally just an "underground organization", "the funds I found myself, but the money is not easy to talk about, they think the drama does not make money, and then ask me, can you pay back this money?" I'm even being fooled! ”
Lin Zhaohua first discharged "Beijinger", and in 1990, he discharged the first studio play "Hamlet" in the real sense, bringing together Pu Cunxin, Chen Jin, Gao Yuanyuan and others, Lin Zhaohua made a drastic adaptation of this world famous work: several broken electric fans of the 30s that "turned for a while and did not turn for a while" were hung on the stage, a broken chair bought from a barbershop, the actors wore their own clothes on stage, even makeup was not applied, and the line of "gravedigger" was carried out separately throughout the play. At the same time, several main characters constantly swapped roles on the stage... When the Beijing Film Academy performed, most of the audience was blinded, but the young people were crazy about it.
"Hamlet" Photography: Yang Chunyan
Lin Zhaohua Studio has maintained a loose state of doing plays when there is money and resting without money, until it was officially registered in 2003, with registered capital, with official seals and performance certificates, becoming the first private theater studio registered by industry and commerce in China, but Lin Zhaohua has no concept, but he feels that he finally does not need to borrow performance certificates with other units.
Lin Zhaohua Drama Studio has no so-called establishment, the staff is only one or two people most of the time, young people have always been the protagonists of the studio, Lin Zhaohua has the heart to cultivate a group of actors who can really achieve his "performance exploration". There were more than three batches of young actors in and out of Lin Zhaohua's drama studio, and they all gradually picked up the beams in various film and television crews and became the "stars" in the public's mouth, but as long as Lin Zhaohua said hello to rehearse the play, they returned to the studio one after another, regardless of the role, without talking about rehearsal fees, without grabbing the role to create together, Lin Zhaohua himself defined his studio and with these young people is a "loose drama alliance": "That is, if there is a drama row, you will come back, and if there is no drama row, you will be busy with your business, to make money, I can't afford to raise them to pay wages." ”
In 2005, Lin Zhaohua again wanted to realize his "educational ideals", and after discussing with Chen Danqing, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Guo Wenjing, Yin Zhixian and others, he wanted to add a practical part to the traditional educational concept of the "Drama Department" and invite the best foreign directors to do workshops and lectures. Subsequently, the "Peking University Drama Research Institute Advanced Research Class" began to enroll students, and students can also get the nationally recognized MFA diploma of Peking University after graduating from the advanced research class. There were many people who came to register that year, and his son Lin Xiyue also wanted to register but was blocked by Lin Zhaohua and said, "You wait for the next session." As a result, this advanced research class was only held for that one session.
After the millennium, Lin Zhaohua seemed to have broadened the boundaries of rebellion beyond the stage, and in 2006, Lin Zhaohua made a play called "Master Builder", in which Pu Cunxin achieved a breakthrough in self-performance, but the significance of this play is not simple for Lin Zhaohua. Later, when he toured, Lin Zhaohua held out a sentence: "I don't want to be a master, the master is already on the top of the mountain, and I still want to climb." ”
Guides
Chinese drama is too contrived, what exactly is drama?
In 2010, Lin Zhaohua initiated an invitation exhibition in his own name, with the original intention of thinking about "what kind of drama does China need?" in a period when there was already intensive exchanges between Chinese and Western theater. ”。
The original invitation exhibition had plans to introduce foreign classics on the territory, but he did not want Western plays to come to China just on the stage, but to bring some extended thinking to the audience. At the same time, he has "ambitions" to let the audience see that traditional opera can bring a new look to Chinese drama.
So in the first year of the invitation exhibition, Lin Zhaohua invited his old friend "Hamlet" from the Thalia Theater in Germany, and recalled the original team of the 1990 version of "Hamlet" that he directed, and "played on the same stage" at the Capital Theater, many viewers saw his intentions, he just wanted the audience to see the difference between Chinese and Western directors, and firmly believed that although the drama was an imported product, Chinese could have the confidence to make a loud work.
Two versions of Hamlet
Lin Zhaohua adapted to Weibo because of the invitation exhibition, and understood that the Internet has become a new channel for theatrical publicity, and he took the initiative to advise that publicity can change into tricks. The first invitation exhibition Lin Zhaohua was "made up of his own money", his daughter Lin Cong became famous for directing "Family with Children", had some savings, and then joined forces with Huang Jiling, a producer who has been cooperating with the studio for many years, and others "put together a family of 108,000" to support the stall. In Lin Zhaohua's view, the first invitation exhibition was successful, "the purpose was basically realized, and only 300,000 yuan were lost."
Since the second session, Drive Media has taken over the Lin Zhaohua Drama Invitation Exhibition, and then gradually moved the main position to the Tianjin Grand Theatre, inviting foreign dramas to become larger and larger, and gradually the "Forest Exhibition" has become a warm thought of Beijing audiences in every winter. However, after Driving Media lost the right to operate the Tianjin Grand Theatre last year, its whereabouts are unknown.
Lin Zhaohua began to think again in 2018 about the significance of Lin Zhaohua's drama invitation exhibition, and perhaps he wanted to overturn the previous model and start over. At the second invitational exhibition seven years ago, Lin Zhaohua set the theme as "What is drama in the end?" For a "big director" who had been directing plays for 29 years at that time, he once again raised such a question, and there was too much helplessness in the eyes of outsiders: "Drama originated from folk entertainment, and now China's drama is too contrived, does this country still love drama?" After issuing this question, Lin Zhaohua's external caliber in recent years has also been changed to "I no longer rehearse plays, don't talk about plays."
For forty years from the early 1980s to the present, Lin Zhaohua is like a person who has been walking on the steel rope, the wind has blown, the rope has trembled slowly, but he can always take the next step fearlessly, and the two ends of the rope support him with his original passion for drama and the people who love this field as much as he does.
Photo: Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing
Rewind for 40 years
Beijing News: The first electrical appliance added to the home?
Lin Zhaohua: The Hungarian TV set that came back from Eastern Europe during the international tour of "The Tea House" was small, black and white.
Beijing News: The first time to go abroad to direct a play experience?
Lin Zhaohua: In the 1980s, Germany rehearsed "Savages". I negotiated three times in Germany in more than 20 days beforehand, because they initially didn't let me rehearse Chinese drama. After the negotiation, I bought 20 pairs of cloth shoes and went to Germany to teach foreign actors to practice qigong every day. They have big noses, deep eyes, and their facial features can't change, but at least their body shape can be trained to be close to Chinese, and foreigners wear cloth shoes to meditate every day.
Beijing News: How to maintain a fresh sense of touch in today's era of information explosion?
Lin Zhaohua: Looking at the newspaper, your Beijing News is what I have been reading for many years, reading every day, and now the news on my mobile phone is unreliable and unreliable.
Beijing News: Who are the people you admire most in the field of drama?
Lin Zhaohua: Jiao Juyin, proposing the Chinese school. The roots of Chinese drama lie in the traditional aesthetics of opera, but our dramas never learn Chinese opera well and do not dig up what our ancestors left behind.
Jiao Juyin
Beijing News reporter Tian Kaini Intern Liu Shujun Editor Wu Qihan Xu Qiaoyang Proofreading Wu Limit
Note: Some of the information comes from the "Book of Director Lin Zhaohua", which was compiled by Xu Xin and Lin Weiyu