In the late 1940s, southern dramas were prevalent. For several years, the Suzhou Enlightened Grand Theater performed two performances every day and night, which were easy to understand, singing and playing, coherent plots, suspenseful, hot and lively, and also had institutional sets. This was a great attraction for me, who was still a primary school student at the time. However, usually there are classes, and parents do not trust their children to go out alone at night, so they can only go to see one on Sundays and at the same age as a few children of the same age next door. At that time, the stage plays sometimes had to be changed every three or four days, and we couldn't watch them one after another, so we were in a hurry. Fortunately, there are always two large color "advertising paintings" hanging high on both sides of the gate of the theater.
One is the one that is being performed, and the other is the one that is about to be staged. The screens are drawn by selecting the most and wonderful scenes in each book. Below is also written a synopsis of four or six sentences. So we often go to the door of the Enlightened Theater to see "advertising paintings" after school, and we have also been addicted to small drama fans.
One day, we left school early and hurried to "enlightened". The performance of the matinee had not yet ended, and I saw that the iron gate that was usually closed tightly was slowly opening. The old men who used to sit on high stools on either side of the iron gate of the theater to collect tickets were also gone. Many people who were waiting at the entrance of the theater rushed in. Curious, a few of our children hurried in with the flow of people. I saw that some people were anxious to find an empty seat in the back seat of the audience and sat down; some people were crowded in the aisles against the wall on both sides of the front seat; some people quickly ran up to the seats to pick out the place they thought was suitable for the theater... In short, all the empty spaces that do not affect the existing audience's line of sight are all crowded with people. We were small and short, and we rushed to the front of the stage to stand and watch the play. The stage was in full swing, and we were so interested that we saw the dispersal and walked home contentedly.
Later, I learned that this is the "rule" for the theater to open the iron door about half an hour before the end of each play (at that time, a play will be performed for four or five hours), so that the audience who cannot buy tickets or have no money to buy tickets can enter for free. Suzhou people call this "soup play". Now that I think about it, this is not a kind of "advertising behavior" that attracts the audience and expands the influence, and it is also the "business economy" of the shrewd theater owner's "head active network".
Since then, every few days, as long as the stage plays are changed, a few of our small theater fans will immediately run to "enlightened" to see the "soup play" that does not cost money as soon as school is over. In those years, there were many plays in Suzhou, including "Strange Hero Ouyang De" starring Meng Hongmao (Meng Xiaodong's uncle, the famous ugly), "Wild River Girl" starring Bai Yuyan, "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" and "Shuipo Liangshan" starring Zhao Songqiao, Yuan Xiaolou, Wang Xiaofang, Zhang Erpeng, Tian Ziwen, Qin Lifang, Ma Xiurong (Zhao Yanxia's aunt), "Journey to the West" starring Zhang Yipeng, Zhang Mingsheng, Dong Mingyan, Yu Yanxia, Xiao Zhao Songqiao, and so on. Most of us have seen all of these plays, some of which are more than a dozen, some of which are twenty or thirty, but in addition to buying tickets for Sundays or winter and summer vacations, many plays cannot see the whole drama, and what they watch are "soup plays".
When the theater opens the "soup play" every day, it is the most tense, climactic and suspenseful time in even the stage play, just like Zhang Hui's novel "want to know what happens next, and listen to the next decomposition". And most of them are fierce fights or scenes of flying knives and guns full of "shots", such as Ouyang De and Shengying fighting bandits, Ouyang covered the bandits with extra-large smoke bags; Lü Xuanliang released the condor to rescue the Qing official Bu Wenzheng; Fang Yuqin's "trapeze artist" heroine fell from the sky; Sun Wukong's great battle of the heavenly soldiers will be bitten down by the sky dogs... Sometimes the matinee also performs traditional dramas, "put soup", it is the big axis drama debut, "Walking Maicheng", "Iron Rooster", "Eight Wax Temple", "Xihuangzhuang", "Zhou Yu Return to Heaven" and other martial arts dramas, are the favorite of young opera fans.
It is this "soup play" that does not cost money to buy tickets every half an hour or so every day, which cultivates the interest of our small opera fans in Peking Opera, so that we have become familiar with and fall in love with Peking Opera since childhood, and have feelings for Peking Opera. Our hobby hasn't changed for decades. Nowadays, everyone has passed the age of Flower Armor, although they live in Suzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai and other places, but sometimes they get together and talk about festivals, and often talk about the "soup play" here, and those unforgettable scenes in the early years have been deeply left in their respective memories.