Affected by the epidemic, xuannan bookstore, which has been suspended for more than 500 days, officially entered the Lao She Tea House on July 10, and Lian Liru, a nearly eighty-year-old book critic artist, and his disciple Wang Yuebo have been "picking up books" here since this Saturday.
The Xuannan Bookstore premiered in October 2007 and has been performed in the former Xuanwu District Cultural Center and Tianqiao Art Building, which has been performed for 663 consecutive performances, and then suspended due to the epidemic, leaving great regrets for the actors and the audience. Although the call for the resumption of performances is very high, the original performance venues are not yet able to meet the performance needs. This situation attracted the attention of the Xicheng District Cultural and Tourism Bureau, so the Cultural and Tourism Bureau "did the matchmaking", which promoted the cooperation between the two in a very short period of time.
Storytelling and teahouses have been inextricably linked since their birth. In the history of Chinese literature, most of the excellent long ancient novels are disseminated to the public by folk artists in the form of "scripts", and the tea house is an important carrier and medium. There are many books and teahouses in old Beijing, and in this kind of teahouse, drinking tea is the medium, and listening to commentaries is the main content. Here, the commentaries directly associate tea with literature, the content is appreciated by the elegant and customary, the historical knowledge is taught, and the audience immerses themselves in the ocean of novel literature while drinking tea, so as to achieve the purpose of entertainment.
When talking about settling in Lao She Tea House, Storyteller Lian Liru said: "Although we have adopted the live broadcast of Storytelling during the epidemic period, the sense of scene during storytelling performances still has a strong charm, and this charm cannot be replaced by any high-tech means. The important reason why we have insisted on library performances for more than a decade is that live performances not only exercise actors, but also cultivate audiences, and the latter is more important for cultural inheritance than the former. Commentary is different from other forms of art, the actor on the stage with a table, a chair, a fan, a eye-catching, no other props, can not attract the audience to see the actor's language expression ability, coupled with the audience to communicate with the random response, this is the best exercise for the actor. Through the library, many young actors have grown and matured; many young audiences have also been cultivated. Therefore, having an ideal performance venue is crucial to the inheritance of storytelling. ”
The performing arts hall of Lao She Tea House, which can accommodate more than 300 people, has become the largest bookstore at present. "The bigger the performance venue, the higher the requirements for the actors, and the more difficult the performance, we are willing to accept this challenge and bring a new experience to the audience." Lian Liru said.
Yin Zhijun, general manager of Lao She Tea House, said: "In fact, as early as the beginning of the establishment of Lao She Tea House in 1988, Mr. Lian Liru had performed at Lao She Tea House. For more than 30 years, Lao She Tea House has always taken "revitalizing the ancient tea culture and supporting the national art flower" as its purpose, insisting on staging excellent traditional programs such as acrobatics, cross-talk, drum music and so on every day, and striving to create a traditional music art display platform and dissemination window. Today, Lao She Tea House and Mr. Lian have continued the frontier, working together to inherit and promote the art of Beijing storytelling, while also adding new cultural elements to the lao She Tea House art platform. We must also work together to play this 'cultural economy' card, and 'listening to famous critics on weekends' can present a more authentic Beijing book and tea house performance to the audience.