From its debut in 2008 to its first performance in mainland China in 2010, and now, "Treasure Island and a Village" has gone through 16 years. On May 20, the "Love in This Village" 2024 "Treasure Island One Village" tour press conference was held in Beijing, announcing that the Beijing station of the play will be staged at Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center from July 26 to 28, and the actors from the two places will work together to interpret the story of "migration" and "love". At the press conference, Lai Shengchuan, the screenwriter and director of the play, and Qu Zhongheng, Feng Yigang, Na Weixun, Si Wen, and Feng Yugang, the actors, shared touching stories in front of and behind the scenes with the audience.
"Baodao Village is the last military village with lights on, as long as "Baodao Village" is performed once, Taiwan's military villages will live once." "Treasure Island and One Village" tells the story of a rare ethnic migration in modern history: in 1949, a group of people from all over the world migrated to Treasure Island due to the influence of the times and the environment, and lived in the "military village". They thought it was just a short period of sojourn, but gradually realized that the day of their return home was far away. From leaving home, feeling homesick, wanting to go home, to finally accepting that "this is home", they deduce a life story intertwined with laughter and tears. This is where screenwriter Wang Weizhong lived as a child, and these stories are also the real experiences he heard from the previous generation. In 2005, when the military village was about to be demolished, Wang Weizhong found Lai Shengchuan to collect and sort out hundreds of stories from 25 families, and finally condensed them into the three families of "Treasure Island One Village".
After 16 years, "Treasure Island One Village" has traveled all over the world, and there is a group of people in this big family who have always been there, they are Taiwanese theater elites Qu Zhongheng, Feng Yigang and Song Shaoqing. They themselves are "children of the military village", and they took the initiative to sign up to play "Treasure Island Village" back then, and even made an agreement: "The parents of our three families can't say 'no acting'." Therefore, in this year's performance, the audience can still see the original protagonist performing the original "story of the military village".
For these Taiwanese actors, who grew up in military villages, interpreting the stories of their relatives on the stage is extremely profound. Qu Zhongheng, who plays "Lao Zhao" in the play, said: ""Treasure Island Village" is the most important work of my acting career, and there is no one. A lot of times when I was acting on the side stage, I was in tears, and there was no play that made me feel so special. Qu Zhongheng also recalled the first time he came to Beijing to perform "Treasure Island Village", just in time for the snow in Beijing, "Those of us in the south who have never seen snow are very excited, and we ran out to see the snow during the intermission." Although it was cold in winter, the audience gave us a warm feeling. The last leg of the first round of the tour also saw snow, which fulfilled the dream of all of us. ”
"We are playing our previous generation, and we are for the inheritance of the vitality of the previous generation." Feng Yigang, who played "Lao Zhu" in the play, recalled that the director asked him to play the role of a northerner, and he chose the Shandong dialect that he heard the most in the "military village" where he grew up, "More than ten years ago, I was trying to play the role of Uncle Zhu, and now I have become Uncle Zhu in the sixtieth year, which is a very beautiful feeling." Feng Yigang is also very envious of the youth and invincibility of young actors, "I said last year when we can break the establishment and mix and match the group, and sure enough, this year's wish will come true!" ”
As a young generation of Taiwanese actors, Na Weixun also feels that "every time I play "Treasure Island Village" is like returning home", this time the challenge for him is to change from playing more than 300 performances of the second generation of military villages to playing the first generation of Li Zikang, """Treasure Island Village" has been acting for so many years, just like a train of life, some people get on the train, some people get off, but the car keeps running. I used to be a 'standing ticket', but now I am sitting in the 'fraternity seat', and I need to experience another life."
Over the years, more and more young actors have continued to join the big family of "Treasure Island One Village" and have acted in hundreds of stories of military villages. Si Wen, who played Zhao's sister-in-law in the play this time, is one of them, she said: "All the teachers are my idols, and I watched a lot of their works on the Internet when I was a student. Later, I had the opportunity to contact them and see that many details about them are worth learning from our younger generations. The teachers also told us a lot of real stories about the military village, which gave our young actors a lot of life feelings. They are my goal in life, to continue what I love for the rest of my life. What made the young actor Feng Yugang feel particularly strongly was that once at the end of the performance, "an old grandmother called me and said: 'Xiao Mao, you are playing our story. I felt a sense of mission. I look forward to telling this story with my predecessors, so that more people can understand this history. ”
At the end of the press conference, the guests on the scene jointly lit up the "No. 99" door plate of "Treasure Island One Village", officially announcing the start of the 2024 tour of the play, which will meet audiences across the country this summer and share this story full of love and touch.