Centenarian woman Yue opera: If you don't put it in the museum, "I can still support myself"
Lift the curtain of the small theater, the wind hunting blows past the ears, the light and shadow flow on the transparent curtain, and the yellow dust of the desert fills the eyes. Sitting on the rattan chair, everyone turned into the guest officer of the Longmen Inn, placed in the lobby opposite the gold-encrusted jade boudoir, and then stepped into a feud between the rivers and lakes.
The owner of the Longmen Inn, Jin Yiyu (played by Li Yunxiao), and Jia Ting (played by Chen Lijun), the head of the East Factory, negotiate. (Photo courtesy of interviewee)
On the afternoon of June 3, 2023, the 40th performance of the Vietnamese opera "New Dragon Gate Inn" was performed, and ninety percent of the audience were women. When Jia Ting, played by female student Chen Lijun, took the stage, there was a small commotion in the audience less than three meters apart.
Several groups of casts are from Zhejiang Little Hundred Flowers Yue Opera Troupe (hereinafter referred to as Zhejiang Bai), Wenzhou Yue Opera Troupe and Social Recruitment, and the common point is "all-female class". The tradition of women's Yue opera has continued for exactly 100 years.
The environment-style Yue opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", born in the spring of 2023, is the second play to be performed in the Butterfly Theater after "Three Smiles", and Mao Weitao feels "done". When rehearsing new plays, she is clear that the target audience is more focused on young people who have little exposure to Yue Opera. This time with the "A Good Show", which created the blockbuster musical "Apollonia", it has a bit of potential to break the circle.
Mao Weitao sat in the audience to watch the play and observe, and found that several weekend afternoon performances were "almost all hipsters, young people in Hanfu, young people in Tang costumes, usually like camping, barbecue, and going to Internet celebrities to check in." These non-Vietnamese opera fans did not know her, so she quietly entered the room and asked them what they usually watched, and the answer was immersive small theater, drama, musical. She asked again, will she come to see it again, some people said to brush at least five times, Mao Weitao was very happy to hear it.
"The play has to have an audience. As a stage artist, we must work with the audience to complete a creation on the day, and he is your consumer. Mao Weitao told Southern Weekend reporter, "The entertainment and artistry of the work are worth his spending this money, spending this time, spending this cost into it, and it has become a consumption style in his life." ”
"If a girl has fat powder, the audience is unlikely to like it"
Like many other local operas, Yue Opera, which originated in Sheng County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, was originally an all-male class, commonly known as the "Xiaoge Class". In 1923, Wang Jinshui, who ran a small song class in Shanghai, returned to his hometown and established the first women's class in Shijiaao. In the mid-1930s, women's classes blossomed in the cities and villages of Zhejiang, and they followed in the footsteps of the men's classes and broke into Shanghai. In Shanghai before the Songhu Campaign, Yue opera was still a pattern in which male and female classes coexisted. In 1938, after the actor Yao Shuijuan returned to Shanghai, the stage of Yue Opera was almost exclusively occupied by all female classes, and the same was true in other areas.
Jiang Jin, a professor of history at East China Normal University, emphasized that Yue Opera's "female identity and accompanying gender concern fit the wave of women's liberation in China in the 20th century, and among the more than 300 local dramas at that time, women's Yue Opera was the only single-sex (female) stage."
Yue Opera, especially Yue Opera girls, conquered urban female audiences centered on Shanghai. Since the appearance of the women's class in Shanghai, the audience of Yue Opera has been mainly women. When upper-class men go to listen to Peking Opera and hold famous roles in Peking Opera, their wives and daughters interact with Yue Opera celebrities. To understand why women's Yue opera has always tenaciously occupied the territory of Yue opera in several twists and turns, female students are the most delicate key.
"I'm still more suitable for students by nature, only the span of voice is slightly larger, because I learned Hua Dan before, and there are more female voices. After the overall student, more self. During the interview, Chen Lijun compared a danjiao gesture and teased herself, "I may not be so soft." ”
She plays the eunuch Jia Ting, known as "Jade Face Shura", who is thoughtful, good and evil, and cannot find a corresponding in traditional opera, and is a character who goes the wrong way, but it is easy to poke at the aesthetics of modern audiences.
Jia Ting (played by Chen Lijun) appears and meets the heroine Qiu Moyan (played by He Qingqing), who is disguised as a man, in the inn. (Photo courtesy of interviewee)
Li Yunxiao, a Danjiao actor who plays gold-encrusted jade, often plays with Chen Lijun, and she throws out "Confucian" as the keyword for female students in Yue Opera, "Yue Opera was originally in the Wuyue area, and the unique male charm performed on female students is very in line with the characteristics of this local drama of Yue Opera."
In May 2023, Zhejiang Baihuadan actor Zhang Yiqing won the "Plum Blossom Award" with the new version of Yue Opera "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", and Mao Weitao once again played Liang Shanbo to play with him. After performing on stage for 40 years, Mao Weitao's image of the ideal man is very clear: wearing a shirt and a woolen vest, with the modern heritage of Jiangnan, not smiling, and a sense of humor. This image comes from ancestors who loved to read.
In her understanding, the man created by the girl is an idealized creation that is impossible in real life. "I am first a woman, to examine the man, and then to play the man with the body, so that this thing presented under the dual aesthetic is very assumed, idealized, and romantic."
In 1984, at the beginning of the establishment of Zhejiang Bai, Kunqu performance artist Wang Shiyu taught the young actors in the troupe the body and basic skills of Kunqu opera for one year. When teaching fingering, Mao Weitao changed the fingering of the boy in Kunqu, and took back the little finger that was going to be bent, she considered that the girl's hands were already delicate, and then did this, there was no difference with Hua Dan.
"If a girl has fat powder, the audience is unlikely to like it, she must have masculinity, rigid on the outside and soft on the inside." Mao Weitao pointed out that if male students in Yue opera imitate the appearance of female students, they will have fat powder.
She believes that this art style will surely exist, especially in the current rapid development of society, people need it. She observed that in her female audience, most of those who are extremely loyal are people with bumpy love paths, and they have an extreme pursuit of the emotional or spiritual world, "only in women's Yue drama, they find a kind of inner comfort."
"This is how normal modern people should react"
In 1947, Yuan Xuefen, Yin Guifang, Fan Ruijuan and others, known as the "Ten Sisters of Yue Opera", in order to oppose the old opera class system, prepared to build a new theater and drama school, jointly performed "Mountains and Rivers Love", and grafted the story of the French writer Alexandre Dumas's novel "The Three Musketeers" onto the head of Liang Xigong recorded in the "Records of the Eastern Zhou and Lieguo". Previously, Yuan Xuefen also changed Lu Xun's short story "Blessing" to the Yue opera "Xianglin Sister-in-law".
Known as the "Ten Sisters of Yue Opera", ten Yue opera artists have created many new plays for women's Yue Opera. The picture shows Yuan Xuefen, Yin Guifang and Fan Ruijuan after tutoring students at the Shanghai Opera School in 1997. (Visual China/Photo)
Since the day of its birth, women's Yue Opera has been a conscious theater art, and innovation is integrated into the blood. In metropolis Shanghai, the performance market is fiercely competitive, and the cultural environment is mixed with the West. Drama and Kunqu opera are the two "milk ladies" of Yue Opera. Before her death, Yuan Xuefen recalled the reform and innovation of that year.
There are many young people in the main creative team of "New Dragon Gate Inn", and Mao Weitao hopes that they will bring something with a sense of the times, and at the same time have an audience of the same age.
The existing groups of actors show a gradient in age: post-00s, post-90s, and post-80s. In Zhejiang Bai Group B, Chen Lijun, Li Yunxiao, He Qingqing and Cai Ming are classmates, graduated from the 2008 Little Hundred Flowers Yue Opera Class jointly opened by Zhejiang Art Vocational College and Zhejiang Bai, and it was rare for them to concentrate on such a compact rival in the past. From rehearsal to stage, they were given less than ten days. He Qingqing pointed out, "Because our group is a classmate, the tacit understanding will be higher, and there is another one, we dare to say." "It's been five or six games, and they've been tweaking the details, seeing the problems with their partners, and being outspoken.
Yue opera is young and does not have a complete performance program, and after the reform of Yue opera, it emphasizes shaping the image of characters, so it often breaks through the restrictions of the profession and performs in an eclectic manner.
"In the past, when I talked about the Mei Lanfang system, the industry represented the role, for example, in Peking Opera, wearing this dress is the person, and the whip of that color is the person. Not now, you have to rely on a lot of details to stack it up, and you are a complete three-dimensional person. Li Yunxiao's views are representative among the new generation of actors in Zhejiang.
She played a gold-encrusted jade in the play, and after Zhou Huai'an said "I'll give you a name, call you a lady", there is the longest singing section of the audience. At first, according to inertia, she showed sadness and grievances here, "the plate style began to cry together", but she felt that she was uncomfortable and unmoved, and then her thoughts became clear, the style of gold inlaid jade is not an external posture, but comes from her spiciness and confidence, here, she is to sting and wake up Zhou Huai'an. During the last performance, Li Yunxiao heard that sentence, smashed the bowl, and unexpectedly received applause from the audience, "It shows that this is the reaction that normal modern people should have." It's okay to act like that, but it may not stimulate something that really empathizes."
Drama director Director Hu has seen Mao Weitao's "Kong Yiji" and once told director Guo Xiaonan that he finally saw the characters of Yue Opera. Mao Weitao hopes that his students can do it, even if "it is very difficult."
Screenwriter Sun Yuxi is 28 years old, a younger sister one year lower than Li Yunxiao and others, and her grandmother and mother are both actors in Yue Opera. When embarking on adapting Tsui Hark's original work, Sun Yuxi was very devastated, and the biggest problem was his singing voice. In small theaters, the audience and the actors are close together, and the time of the drama is synchronized with the time of feeling, resulting in the previous format of a single actor singing a large section is no longer suitable. Chen Guoliang, who is the singing voice designer, is the oldest creator in the crew, who has been engaged in the composition of Yue opera for half a century, and he bluntly said that the singing voice in this play is almost all "passing scenes". Sun Yuxi has heard feedback from some audiences who are familiar with traditional Yue opera, and they said that they couldn't understand it at all, "I feel that you don't have a core singing voice."
This is a question left to be solved. She talked to Mao Weitao, "Opera is half a play, half a song, and the song must evolve." Unless it is like Kunqu opera, then whatever, anyway, there are so many songs. But something like a plate cavity is very difficult if it does not progress in the curve. ”
Traditional opera composition, composed according to words, the emotional requirements of each play are very clear. However, in this play, the characters have many subtexts, and just from the singing words, the emotions become difficult to grasp. Watching his sweetheart Zhou Huai'an and gold-encrusted jade become married, Qiu Moyan sang "Raise a glass without stopping", Chen Guoliang felt that this word was quite happy, and Sun Yuxi's original intention was exactly the opposite.
Sun Yuxi told Southern Weekend reporter: "We definitely need this kind of old man to keep the tradition, and Guoliang teacher is more willing to break through in this batch of compositions." I think this is the premise, you must have enough confidence in tradition, you will know where the boundaries of breakthrough are. ”
"Why did you disappear after every household had a TV?"
Yue opera used to be the second largest type of opera in China, and before the Cultural Revolution, when Yue opera was at its peak, there were no professional Yue opera troupes in the country except Guangxi, Guangdong and Tibet, and there were everywhere, including Taiwan. Today, professional troupes of Yue opera only exist in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Min and Jiangsu.
In the past, Mao Weitao was very tired of the title of "intangible cultural heritage", "intangible cultural heritage" seems to mean "has been perfected to the point that it can no longer be touched", and needs to be protected, but Yue opera is still very young, far from the stage of stereotyping, "I am still an advanced productive force, why do I want you to protect, I can still support myself". Zhejiang Province wants to declare world-class "intangible cultural heritage" for Yue Opera, and Mao Weitao suggested that it must apply for that best practice project, rather than adding another layer of color to the museum.
The night before the interview, Mao Weitao stayed up late to watch Zhou Qin's program about Kunqu opera. Zhou Qin came from a Kunqu family and was the chief singing director of Bai Xianyong's youth version of "Peony Pavilion", and Mao Weitao introduced him as a confidant, "He said very well, there are two kinds: don't touch it when it is intangible cultural heritage, that is, fold the play; But innovation can still be innovative. "Specific to Yue Opera, the bite of the word is round, and the line cavity of each genre is the bottom line and cannot be changed.
After going through the stage from imitation absorption to rebellious reform, she feels that she has returned to the state of "looking at the mountain or the mountain". In "Kou Liulan and Du Liniang", Du Liniang partially retains the melody of "Peony Pavilion". On June 2, she went to visit her teacher Yin Xiaofang, who bluntly said that she could not accept that she sang "Peony Pavilion" so much like Kunqu opera. Mao Weitao did not argue at that time, after watching the show, she suddenly thought about the reason why she did this, just like learning Sichuan opera in "Xixian Ji", and borrowing the "stacking of curtains" of Peking Opera in "Kong Yiji", she intends to absorb the rhythm and aesthetics of Kunqu opera and empower the young genre of Yue opera.
"Kunqu opera is Yabu, and Yue opera is a flower department from the people, but when it enters the theater, it naturally has to become Yabu - more humanistic and more cultural - so that white-collar workers and intellectuals are willing to consume." Mao Weitao believes that the reason why "New Dragon Gate Inn" has been recognized is to achieve a balance between elegance and custom, which not only contains martial arts culture, but also can cut into the spiritual world of contemporary people.
This is also a new nutrition for the new generation of Zhejiang. When he was still in school, Li Yunxiao and his classmates had enough opportunities to liberate their nature, learn various dances, and familiarize themselves with drama performance thinking. From the end of 2017 to the beginning of 2018, they were also sent to South Korea for women's group training, which opened up their understanding of physical and vocal performance.
Chen Lijun was very excited to perform "New Dragon Gate Inn" because she came into contact with something she had never touched in her previous acting career, "There is a new blood to hit me, maybe when I act in the next traditional play, or perform other plays that I have acted in before, I have different feelings." She does not resist any new attempts, even musicals, "I don't sing Yue opera if I sing musicals, I just try something new." We are constantly absorbing other things back for my use."
These years of performance experience have also made Li Yunxiao more and more determined, the most important thing is that the idea of the play should be in line with the aesthetics and values of modern people. "Innovation is to have a new market, to make it more vibrant, and the audience is one of the most important vitality."
On November 1, 1953, the first color film after the founding of New China was born, which was the Yue opera film "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai". Sun Yuxi felt sorry that Yue opera and even opera were originally advancing and retreating with emerging media, "Why did you disappear after every household had a TV?" Because then they saw the mass media as an enemy. "The contradiction between entertainment and indoctrination runs through the history of the development of Yue Opera. Sun Yuxi tends to believe that today's opera is in decline, which is related to being too conservative and cautious, "Today the Internet is coming, if it is still like this, I will really go to the museum, goodbye."
After stepping down as the head of the regiment and leaving the system, Mao Weitao saw some things more clearly: subsidies may breed hotbeds, and there are many works of "swords and guns into Kuma and Nanshan", but on the other hand, in the absence of big support, people who want to do things are still cultivating. She believes that good drama can silently influence a generation from the aesthetics and value system.
"If he thinks it looks good, he won't look at the things that don't look good, or the kind of foamy things he won't get." I personally feel that our generation should not complain, do not shout, or be angry, we will use a spirit of holding on to the incomplete to touch and explore the boundaries of a genre. Mao Weitao said.
Southern Weekend reporter Zhu Yuan