From March 25 to April 1, 2021, "Fragrant Hill Night" will be staged in the first round of the Capital Theatre. The picture comes from Beijing Renyi
The drama "Fragrant Mountain Night" is written by Li Baoqun, artistic director and first-class screenwriter of the General Political Repertory Theatre, directed by Ren Ming, and played by Beijing actor Wang Ban and specially invited actor Fang Xu as Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Focusing on april 23, 1949, when the People's Liberation Army occupied Nanjing, a major historical moment that was crucial to China's future direction, the whole drama took Mao Zedong's inner activities in the Shuangqing Villa in Xiangshan as the main line, brought into the inner activities of Chiang Kai-shek's residence in Xikou, Zhejiang at the same time, and placed characters from different time and space in the same dramatic scene, launching a "time-space inner dialogue" with great artistic imagination.
Director Ren Ming:
Read more than 30 books on Mao Zedong
Director Ren Ming debuted to introduce the new play. Photo by Li Chunguang
Among the many tribute plays for the centenary of the founding of the Party this year, "Fragrant Mountain Night" can be described as a stage work that breaks the conventional theatrical creation methods and has a novel and unique perspective. In the process of script creation, screenwriter Li Baoqun collected a large number of historical materials, went to the field to collect style, experience life, and used vivid and vivid historical materials combined with bold artistic imagination to create a plump historical figure image, and at the same time, by "small" to see "big", with a time node, two characters dialogue in the form of radiation of the entire historical development context.
Director Ren Ming introduced that since the decision to create the rehearsal in April 2019, in the past two years, screenwriter Li Baoqun has made eight revisions to the script, on this basis, Ren Ming led the main creative team to consult a large number of party history materials, repeatedly demonstrated the historical facts in the play, and the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee has invited party history experts to propose revision suggestions for the script in four batches. In order to rehearse this major work of revolutionary history, Ren Ming frankly said that in the past two years, in addition to reading a large number of documents, he himself has only read more than 30 books and works related to Mao Zedong, and there are currently as many as 15 books involving Chiang Kai-shek.
Ren Ming gave full play to the hypothetical nature of drama in "Night on Fragrant Hills" and designed a "set of layered structures" that are not commonly used in other dramatic works, in this work, the two actors can play Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek in the play at the same time, but also jump out of the play, as actors to analyze the characters' hearts and expressions on the stage, in the face of specific situations, they can also incarnate as narrators of Chinese revolutionary history, shuttling between three different character settings.
Ren Ming believes that "Fragrant Mountain Night" is about the defeat of the Kuomintang and the final victory of the Chinese Communist Party, so it is necessary for the two of them to constantly summarize the history of their respective political parties on the stage, analyze the successes and failures and gains and losses, and set up two actors to switch in different time and space and roles, which can play a very good dramatic role. From the perspective of the play itself, this is not only a theatrical work worth studying, but also requires the actors to have a strong stage expression.
Starring Wang Ban:
Gain 12 pounds and break through the "Xiangtan" language barrier
Wang Ban will play Mao Zedong in "Fragrant Mountain Night". Photo by Li Chunguang
As a Beijing actor who played Mao Zedong in the TV series "The Three Brothers of Mao Zedong", Wang Ban, a Beijing artist, has felt a heavy responsibility on his shoulders since he received this task. In Wang Ban's eyes, "Fragrant Mountain Night" is not so much a stage work as a vivid lesson in party history. "Through this work, party members and cadres should study the excellent traditions of our party well, so that the party can develop healthier and sustainable, and this is also the significance of the launch of the work "Fragrant Mountain Night" in the centenary of the founding of the party."
In order to make the audience in the theater believe that he is like Mao Zedong, Wang Ban's first step is to start from the external image, not only communicating and experimenting with the makeup artist of the theater many times, but also personally visiting the well-known hair stylist to make a head covering, in order to get closer to the image state of Mao Zedong in the Xiangshan period to the greatest extent. In 1949, Mao Zedong was 56 years old, his figure was slightly fatter than during the War of Resistance, and Wang Ban, who had just lost weight to 154 pounds for other roles, gained weight to 166 pounds to complete the image of Mao Zedong's Xiangshan period. "In fact, the actor's weight loss and fat gain are very hard, but only this time the weight gain makes me feel particularly happy, because I have goals and directions."
Before rehearsal every day, opening the "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" as a textbook to read aloud has become a compulsory course before Wang Ban rehearsed. He believes that only after Mao Zedong's works are well read and familiar with the context, actors on stage dare to have the courage to open their mouths and say their lines. In Wang Ban's view, the two special characters in "Fragrant Mountain Night" are not only fighting on the stage, but also the confrontation of life patterns, original intentions and missions. "As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, 'History has fully proved that jiangshan is the people, the people are the jiangshan, and the people's hearts and minds are related to the life and death of the party.'" This is how the original intention of the Communist Party has been passed down, and "Fragrant Mountain Night" has both its political persuasion and great innovation and intention in art. ”
As the actor who appeared in Beijing Renyi for the first time in the "mao zedong stage art image", Wang Ban has been thinking about what should be relied on to support this nearly 100-minute performance? Wang Ban firmly believes that it is still Mao Zedong's thought and the expressiveness of theatrical language. In order to learn Xiangtan dialect well, in addition to reading a large number of video materials, Wang Ban also specially found Xiangtan people and recorded all the lines of Mao Zedong in the script in Xiangtan dialect. "In fact, it is not difficult to learn The Xiangtan dialect, but "Fragrant Mountain Night" mainly relies on the transmission of language to show great ideas, from the perspective of artistic creation, the lines must be understood by the audience, but also have the intimacy of Mao Zedong's rural voice, which is the fundamental point of language creation."
Special guest starring Fang Xu:
Performance avoids "facebooking"
Starring in "Chiang Kai-shek" in "Fragrant Mountain Night", special actor Fang Xu said that when he first accepted the invitation of Dean Ren Ming, he was a little frightened, and he thought that he was a person with a great sense of region and belonging. "Over the years, I have been creating works related to Lao She and old Beijing, and Chiang Kai-shek is an authentic Ningbo Fenghua Xikou person, although the role is his favorite, but at first he did not act as well as he imagined."
In Fang Xu's view, the most "stupid" way to shape the role of Chiang Kai-shek is to understand through various ways. In addition to looking through a large number of biographies, history, and video materials, before the outbreak of the epidemic, Fang Xu had also been to Japan, although he did not re-enter the path of Study of Chiang Kai-shek, but Fang Xu felt that at least from the beginning of the starting point and the role had a little connection. Compared with Wang Ban, who has put a lot of hard work into appearance, Fang Xu has heard from the mouths of many makeup artists that he is suitable for playing the role of "Chiang Kai-shek" when shooting film and television dramas in his early years. In 1999, when Fang Xu collaborated with Sun Feihu, a famous special actor who played Chiang Kai-shek, he was also designated by the other party as his "best successor" after retirement.
As with the problems encountered by Wang Ban, in the process of playing the role of "Chiang Kai-shek", language is still a difficult point. As a native of Beijing, Chiang Kai-shek, played by Fang Xu, was finally determined to use "Zhejiang Mandarin" in "Fragrant Mountain Night", so Fang Xu also found a friend from Ningbo to record some of chiang kai-shek's lines in the script in Ningbo dialect. Through months of practice, Fang Xu, a Native of Beijing, has mastered the pronunciation skills of "Zhepu".
Compared with the "face" of similar roles in previous film and television works, Fang Xu does not want characters with strong political tendencies to appear on the stage. "Compared with Mao Zedong, although Chiang Kai-shek cannot be called a 'great man', he is also a very important figure in China's modern history. From the perspective of character shaping, it should still be handled according to a living character with flesh and blood. Fang Xu believes that the key to this work lies in how to act in their respective minds. In order to play this role well, Fang Xu also watched the 100-episode documentary "General History of China" produced by CCTV. "On the surface, this may be the most indirect lesson in this creation, but if the actor wants to play a very important figure in Chinese history, he still has to find out the context of our entire country and nation from the perspective of the whole history, and these preparations are problems that cannot be solved by looking at the biography of the characters alone."
Beijing News reporter Liu Zhen
Edited by Tian Kaini Proofreader Zhai Yongjun