Stills from the drama "The Star on the Plains" Courtesy of the interviewee
Beijing, September 22 (China News Network) -- On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xifuxiang Drama Club's original drama "The Star on the Plains" ended its first round of performances in Xi'an with another touching curtain, and in the past few days, this realistic theme work focusing on orphaned children has attracted countless audiences to tears and become another hot topic on the drama stage here.
"This play is the kind of work that seems to be able to see yourself when you look back, and every tear contains your own emotions", following the success of the college version of "White Deer Plain", the famous actor Wu Jingan returned to Xi'an to create an original drama "The Star on the Plain", which is derived from real people and real events, which made many audiences cry on the scene, Wu Jingan said: "We wholeheartedly built a 'home' on the stage." ”
"The Star on the Plains" is a drama written by Pan Zhiwen and Wu Jing'an, directed and starring Wu Jing'an, which is based on real people and real events, and sets its sights on the children's village where the adopted children are adopted, which is an original drama work with great humanistic care. The play began rehearsals in Xi'an in July 2021 and after more than two months of polishing, it premiered on September 17 at the Opera Hall of the Shaanxi Grand Theatre.
According to reports, there are only three professional actors including Wu Jing'an in "The Original Star", all the children in the play are played by small actors with no acting experience, and in terms of drama production, "The Original Star" brings together the drama elites of Beijing and Shaanxi, in addition to Pan Zhiwen and Wu Jing'an, executive director Liu Xiaocui, stage design Zhang Wu, lighting design Xing Xin, composer Zhang Dawei, body design Wang Yichen, and sound design Cao Yang are also leaders in the industry.
In the performance for several days, changan (Wu Jing'an), the old village chief of the children's village who is kind and has a great human temperature on the stage, and his children who are born with misfortune but also have pure and beautiful dreams have touched countless audiences.
Orphaned children have their own sufferings, there are parents for drug trafficking and drug use both imprisoned, there are born soon abandoned in the sheep pen, and even parents hurt each other, "The Original Star" did not show these misfortunes for the so-called dramatic tension, but with a warm perspective on the innocence that children maintained at the beginning of life, the old village chief in many worldly hardships to protect this innocence, but also let those who were dyed by fate gray childhood to regain color.
Wu Jing'an chose to tell this story that was originally full of heavy topics in a simple and romantic way.
It turns out that this humane, sincere and compassionate perspective makes "The Star on the Plains" present a natural and strong empathetic temperament. Here, the synchronized tears on and off the stage at each performance are enough to say it all.
This reporter recently interviewed Wu Jing'an on the creation of this telephone, a famous actor with more than forty years of acting career bluntly said, ""The Original Star" is a very different existence in my professional process, I did not think about what kind of performance purpose I wanted to achieve, but I just wanted to present this matter to these people, and to experience with you the kind of temperature that human nature can maintain in some misfortunes. ”
Talking about this different creative opportunity, Wu Jing'an said, "I never wanted to direct a play for myself, to act in a play specifically to find stories and themes, this theme was two years ago, occasionally heard a few young friends mentioned, at that time I felt very shaken, it naturally made me ignite the desire to create." ”
"The real place where the story took place is the Eastern Zhou Village of Sanyuan, Shaanxi Province, after deciding to create it, we went to interview many times, and after deep understanding, we felt the touching feeling of their people and things, those children, they and their peers live under the same sky, but they have experienced their own pain, we can feel the unusual childhood experience in their hearts through their eyes, which impressed me." Wu Jing'an said.
In "The Star on the Plain", the children in the children's village are basically played by ordinary children, and their sincere and natural stage performance has left a deep impression on the audience. Wu Jing'an said bluntly that he initially wanted to invite adult actors with experience in playing children to play some major roles in professional groups such as the Children's Art Theater, but this idea was quickly rejected, "because the requirements of this play on 'true' are too high, and everything in the children's growth needs the most authentic emotional communication, so we decided that we must be the same age." ”
"It turns out that the sincerity of these children's performances adds points to the whole play, they have no skills, all of them are in the heart to experience, in the presentation." I have rehearsed a lot of scenes in my acting career, but this time it is really different, not simply rehearsal, I spent two months in the rehearsal hall to build a home. Wu Jing'an said.
Wu Jing'an laughed and said that he was a "child leader" in the rehearsal hall, "We are a family-like working style of a rehearsal ground established with emotions." ”
Wu Jing'an frankly said that the name of "The Star on the Plain" was called "Home Yuan" in the first draft, "but it felt heavy on the name, and the name felt that there was a lack of children's shadows, and later our little teacher Pan (Pan Zhiwen) was inspired to say the name "The Star on the Plain", I think it is really good, the sky and the moon and the night sky twinkle, like the eyes of children." This name must be under I think it can be said that it laid the expression style of this play, we want romance, we want to have innocence, we want to have innocence, we have love, and the most important thing is that children still have a vision and dream of life. ”
He said that after the title of the play was finalized, the general style and stage presentation of the whole prose poem of the play had a tone.
"'The Star on the Plains' is not the 'White Deer Plain' that I have rehearsed before, nor is it Shakespeare, not Eugene O'Neill, not Ibsen, not Cao Yu, it is not the kind of dramatic literature that can be purely appreciated, this play is directly connected to our lives, and does not even need to transition, although it seems to focus on a group of children who are usually easily overlooked, but they live under the exact same sky as us." 」 Wu Jing'an said.
"We need some works that are really about the pain and itch of reality," Wu Jing'an said, "this play, that is, you can see yourself as soon as you look back, and the tears of your first tears have their own emotions, we are all the children of our parents, and whose children are not children." ”
For his own different creative experience, Wu Jingan concluded, "In fact, I came to be a director myself, partly because I hope that it can show my own feelings after getting close to this story and this group of children, not to 'teach' the audience anything, nor to 'let' the audience how." I was basically satisfied with its final presentation, and I gave it an 85. (End)
Source: China News Network