Russian Novosibirsk Red Torch Art Theater version of "Three Sisters"
◎ Black Pick
"High-definition theatrical image" is a new art form of video intervention in drama since the new century. This form may sound like a fusion of the best of theatre and video, but in fact it is still an image, because it is ultimately "pretending to be live".
Cinema turns drama into a "new work"
Undoubtedly, the advantages of theatrical images are also obvious: first, people do not always have the opportunity to see high-level classic performances and stars starring; Second, it's not a simple camera recording of a stage performance, and it's not possible – because the camera position is always limited and can't claim "this is the scene". However, the camera can achieve various scheduling through cinematic means, so that the audience in front of the screen can see the perspective and performance details that the audience cannot see; The big close-up also gives the theater actors nothing to hide, the good ones are better, and the bad ones are worse (but this is completely different from film acting). This is what distinguishes theatrical images from films: they are "uncorrected". From this point of view, it makes the audience have a "sense of live".
There are some repertoire strengths that can be enhanced or amplified by theatrical imagery, or a new art form that makes it a "new work". The "Three Sisters" directed by Timofey Kuryabin and produced by the Red Torch Art Theater in Novosibirsk, Russia, is a successful example. The play is performed in sign language, and not only that, but the subtitles (Chekhov text) are also part of the performance. When montage can come into play, it all reminds people of Soviet cinema in the silent film era.
The special features of this version of "Three Sisters" are: first, the sign language drama is not a traditional European "pantomime"; Second, the actors themselves are not hearing-impaired, and although such performances are theoretically beneficial to the hearing-impaired, "public welfare" is not the artistic driving force of the works. I believe that live performances must be exciting, but I also think that most live audiences will have a hard time really seeing the faces and body language of the actors. And the big close-up, somewhat exaggerated body language and subtitles (for us foreign audiences, what we need to understand is that we should ignore the fact that we should "watch the translation" and pay attention to Chekhov's text is the primary meaning of the use of subtitles in this work), which is a powerful tool for early films to capture the audience. The combination of these elements makes the "theatrical image" very harmonious, and also gives the play a new expression that goes beyond the stage play.
When "talking" is forbidden
As a Russian director, Kuryabin admits that "Three Sisters" is a work he has been familiar with since childhood, and it is also one of his favorite works. But the first thing he has to face is that today, Chekhov's plays have a kind of "classicality" all over the world, and the performances of European and American theater companies are also bright and innovative. However, there seems to be a consensus on one thing, and that is that Chekhov's drama is like the "iceberg theory", and its intensity is hidden under the surface of the everyday and calm.
Because of the excellent interpretation of Chekhov by the Stanley system, the "methodists" have some "right to speak" about Chekhov's plays. This requires the actor's performance to be "restrained", not "crazy". In this way, this version of Curiabin is somewhat dangerous - the actors adopt a language that is completely foreign to them. But as we have seen, sign language does not "speak". The use of gestures is always a more obvious and even intense body language, and the actors' movements and micro-expressions, especially facial movements, are very different from the general "drama" - the translation of "drama" has its reasonableness, for veteran drama fans, when thinking of a memorable performance, the voice of a famous character in the ear always rings in the ear, just like Lawrence Oliver's "live or not".
And when "talking" is forbidden, our other senses become sensitive. The stage of "Three Sisters" is by no means a quiet world, of course, a lot of sounds are deliberately designed, electronic music, simulated natural sounds, noise, etc., which are even more unsettling. The uneasiness and oppression of body movements and facial expressions, which sometimes appear to be hideous and distorted, are even stronger. Of course, it is not that there is no one who is "talking": Felaponte, the gatekeeper of the Home Townsman who comes to deliver a letter to André in the second act, "speaks" normally - this is because he has a bad ear, that is, he is hard of hearing. In the play, he had to shout because he was hearing impaired and thought that others could not hear. So we found that here the director did an "inversion".
As we know, "talking" is good for lying, and the body is more honest and more likely to directly expose the hidden nature of the person. It can be said that a single gaze or a shake of facial muscles can express something that cannot be conveyed by any words. This is true not only for the face, but also for our limbs. And the richness of this can only be perceived by looking closely. This is where close-ups and montages come in handy. If we feel that the play gives people an unbearable sense of oppression (rather than a sense of dullness), then it means that the image has worked—the image and the text (Chekhov's text) play a role at the same time, doubly "oppressing" the audience.
Compared with "The Seagull", "The Cherry Orchard" and "Uncle Vanya", there are not many versions of "Three Sisters" staged in China. However, among Chekhov's most famous plays, "The Three Sisters" was named a "serious drama", and the depressive "The Seagull" and "The Cherry Orchard" were instead designated as "comedies" by the author. Well, if we accept Shestov's call Chekhov a "desperate singer", then "Three Sisters" can be described as a despair within a desperate one. Despair, an existential understanding, is one of the reasons why Chekhov was so popular in Europe and the United States in the 20th century. But where does the sense of oppression we feel in the theater come from?
"The Sixth Finger"
In the movie "Lichun", screenwriter Li Qiao wrote that the heroine Wang Cailing (played by Jiang Wenli) called her talent for singing Western opera "the sixth finger". Because in a small town where there is little cultural life, this is a luxury, even unnecessary burden, and can lead to trouble - the main plot of the film revolves around this. This metaphor comes from the first scene of "The Three Sisters", a dialogue between Martha, Andrei, and Vershinen. André recalls that when his father was alive, they were taught French, German, English, and Italian, and they learned it with great difficulty, but to no avail. "Learning three languages in this city is an unnecessary luxury," Martha said. It's not even a luxury, it's an unnecessary burden. It's like the sixth finger. We learn a lot of superfluous things. ”
However, the same sentence contains completely different questions. Wang Cailing's problem mainly comes from a kind of "misalignment", that is, in terms of the actual local situation at that time, learning bel canto was the main life channel for music art candidates, but there was an obvious "adaptation" between Western vocal music and local folk music culture and even local pop music. Of course, we can also say that Wang Cailing has a higher artistic pursuit, but this pursuit is still vague.
In "Three Sisters", Chekhov did not write this rather comic point as a "comedy", including the fact that the three sisters "went to Moscow" is not a "laughing point" at all. The study of these European languages is the determination of Russia since Peter the Great to integrate into the world (to speak of "the world" in a specific historical context, when their "world" is Europe), and it is "the nostalgia (or longing) of world culture". This includes the "universal responsiveness" of this people, which combines their religious beliefs and Byzantine traditions with a "universal humanity" character. There was no Renaissance in Russia itself, but under Alexander I, the victory over Napoleon in 1812 and the "open-sightedness" in Europe gave Russia a "Renaissance" in the true sense of the word, a kind of humanist ideal for all mankind. Russian intellectuals do not laugh at "love for all mankind" (even if it sometimes seems to be cynical), but there is always a certain messianic overtone to this love, and the ideas of equality, freedom, and fraternity are combined with the Gospels.
The father of the three sisters, an army officer, let his children learn various European languages and cultures, not unrealistically fanciful, but because he has the characteristics of an intellectual. Military-intellectual, this is not a contradiction, you must know that the "Decembrists" were almost all military. As Martha put it, these soldiers were "the most cultured men in the city" and were mainly embodied in Vershinin. The most representative figure of the "universal spirit" in Russian history is Pushkin (Pushkin also has a military status) - it is not difficult to understand that we always "hear" Martha repeatedly chanting the first line of Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila": "There is a green oak tree on the other side of the bay...... this is the education of the three sisters". The three sisters were educated by this humanistic spirit, such as goodness and love in the sublime sense, and the affection for the old nanny Anfisa as a family member (the relationship between Pushkin and the nurse can be seen as the prototype of the Russian writer writing about "people's bonds"); Yes, Moscow is their ideal, but what is this ideal? If the so-called conflict between ideals and reality, which is usually interpreted in the play, is only understood as a conflict between the life of a big city and a small town in other provinces, it is obviously insufficient. It may be said that going to Moscow means that Olga and Irina have the possibility to develop their spiritual life according to the education they received from childhood.
Chekhov's sorrow is called "longing"
However, the fate of the three sisters' lives has met with a historical fate - they have lost their father; The land of Russia is full of social currents, which become even more agitated during the time period in which the story takes place, that is, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Three Sisters" was written in a special year: 1900 (staged in 1901). In five years, the 1905 revolution will take place. Chekhov, who had a strong sensitivity to socio-historical shocks, depicted the sound of Russian forests being cut down in the last hours of his life, as if the rolling wheels of history were recorded with a tape recorder; Or, as the officer in the play, Tursenbach said: a behemoth is pressing down on us all, a powerful storm is ready, it is coming, it is approaching......
So, it wouldn't be surprising if the audience felt a huge sense of oppression. The "silent" face, body language, and Chekhov's words together reinforce this feeling – all the more necessary at a time when fragmented information is dulling the viewer's senses. To put it simply, this version seems to turn up the volume of Chekhov's work to the lowest point, so much so that the viewer must prick up his ears and hold his breath. Of course, the "methodist" rendition can also be very exciting. However, many similar performances led to more audiences framing Chekhov with a "touch of sadness".
It's just that the melancholy-like atmosphere in Chekhov's works is actually a kind of "тоска". The word is very Russian and cannot be translated into any foreign language. It's not sentimentalism, it's not touching the scene, and it's not self-pity. It is closer to a kind of loneliness where no one can complain. This loneliness borders on despair, but at the same time there is a longing or longing in this loneliness. This longing is oriented towards a perfection, an ideal. It usually belongs to the "people who have come before" with life experience, because they know that the ideal is a faint glimmer of torment and waiting. If you touch the ideal too closely, you will be easily burned. "To Moscow" is a kind of тоска. Because it is no longer possible (Andrei lost his sisters' real estate in gambling), they can only be trapped here, allowing their youth and energy to flow out bit by bit.
The embrace of a "good new life" in Chekhov's play belongs only to young people, but it does not mean that it is Chekhov's own idea. On the contrary, these youthful stirring words show the speaker not thinking carefully and not knowing the complexity of life. In "Three Sisters", the dialogue between Irina and Tursenbach, which begins with the young couple, is extremely intriguing: the meaning and purpose of human life, human happiness, all lie in labor...... In another 25 to 30 years, everybody will have to work. Everyone! This is a moral ideal that belongs to youth, that is, to live with conscience and without shame in a sense. But think about the ending that Chekhov arranged for them.
Chekhov's "тоска" seems to say that ideals can only be desired, at least until then, to achieve human perfection ("everything should be beautiful" is actually the main meaning), and the first task is to fight against the "servility" and "vulgarity" in oneself. Because the process of perfecting the ideal is destined to be long, people are too easily alienated by "vulgarity", become philistine, become lazy, become drifting, become self-deceptive. André actually understands that he knows that his wife Natasha "has something about her that makes her degenerate into a vulgar, blind and rough beast, and she is not alone in any case", and sometimes "thinks she is surprisingly vulgar". Of course, he hated himself just as much. But the main problem is not Natasha or Andrei, where the audience feels "crit", in fact, is the struggle between "vulgarity" and "ideals", and ideals are always thwarted by vulgarity. It seems "hopeless", but Chekhov tells us at the end to have a тоска of ideals, as Masha said, "must live, live". Only by keeping the thirst can we "live" in patience and waiting.
Photo courtesy / New site