In 2020, the suspense theater fire, various masterpieces were staged in turn. Produced by Shanghai Guanyi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. and adapted from the Danish secret room suspense film, the stage play "Sinner" will land in the D6 space of Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center from November 27 to December 6. Just a policeman and a phone call brought the audience into the scene of a complex and brain-burning kidnapping, which is also a rare genre of drama stage.
Sinners shows the technical power of the story. In the whole film, there is only a scene where the protagonist answers the phone, but the audience relies on sound performance to use their imagination to reconstruct the process of the case. The one-man show can also create a great sense of suspense, which is thrilling to watch, and it still feels cold after watching it. Filmed in just 13 days, the film has been nominated for best actor, best screenplay, The Fabisi Discovery Award and the Top Five Foreign Language Films of the United States National Critics Association Awards at the European Film Awards, and was included in the Douban 2018 List of Unpopular Films.
This time in the Chinese version of the drama "Sinner", director Ruisha did not limit herself to the one-man show mode of the film version, but instead displayed the important plots that existed in the film on the phone and imagined, so that the audience could enter the plot faster. "Stage plays do not have the blessing of the art of photography, there is no filling of close-up shots, and if the one-man show in the film is rigidly put on the stage, it will be a kind of torment for the audience and the actors." She said.
The drama "Sinner" invited Xu Shengnan, an actor from shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, to play the role of police officer Astor in the play. Xu Shengnan believes that Astor is a person who believes in intuition and is very subjective, and he did not prematurely limit this role to a stylistic framework during the rehearsal process, but hoped to naturally form a unique performance style belonging to Astor during the rehearsal process.
Xu Shengnan also said bluntly, "Calling on the stage is the most difficult thing", but the phone call is the most important part of the plot of "Sinner", and how to deal with this long phone call has become the focus of rehearsal. "The actors are on stage, the audience is offstage, and the presence of distance prevents the audience from grasping the subtle expressions or eye changes of the actors as they did when watching a movie. I hope that the processed performance can make up for the lack of emotions caused by distance. Xu Shengnan said.
In the film, Astor is in the office of the receiving center throughout the film, and this "secret room" performance method allows the audience to get key information from Astor's phone calls one after another, and piece together a complete picture of the case. However, in the adaptation of the stage version, the fragmented information that originally existed only in the call should be cleverly and reasonably displayed in front of the audience to help the audience and the police officer Astor keep the information received in sync. Therefore, the stage and lighting design Tan Hua divides the stage into "real space" and "psychological space" from a visual point of view, cleverly uses the one-way mirror as a barrier of physical space, and divides the stage into two areas, so that the audience can accurately distinguish between reality and imagining the information of the two "worlds".
With the deepening of the plot, the lighting will gradually disrupt the boundaries of "reality" and "imagination" through a one-way mirror, representing that Astor gradually and completely enters the "psychological space" of his imagination with the development of the case, taking his subjective thoughts as reality, with the arrival of the climax of the plot, the "mental space" gradually occupies the stage, and reality and imagination will become chaotic and even inseparable. Until the truth is revealed, everything returns to its original position, the "imaginary space" disappears, and Astor is still in the office of the police center.
Rehearsal photos are provided by the producer
Author: Tong Weijing
Editor: Xu Luming