The latest issue of "Thirteen Invitations" allows us to see that behind "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden", a particularly real and vivid drama master Lai Shengchuan.
At the age of 67, he is still very busy: not only participating in the reality show "Drama New Life", but also taking care of the daily rehearsal work of his exclusive theater "Theater".
Xu Zhiyuan asked him: Why do you want to do so many things?
He replied: I don't know, I'm sick.
"Creation is a disease."
Recognized as one of the "top Chinese playwrights" and "asia's leading theater directors", the artist has the gentle elegance of Ang Lee and Hou Hsiao-hsien among his Taiwanese contemporaries.
Whether it is a work or a person, there is less radicalism and anger, and more peace and compassion.
But this kindness makes it easy for people to ignore his spiritual rebellion.
Fortunately, in the conversation with Xu Zhiyuan, we saw lai Shengchuan's "angry" side.
He spoke sharply about the vibrato culture:
After reading it in one minute, I have to find the next more boring minute to live.
So how did you live this day?
When you are faced with some real formal things, can you still watch?
It is even more unabashedly said: Yes, I am out of touch with the times, but I am not worried about it.
"Sometimes it's hard for me to face the fact that things are not as good as before."
In recent years, as Lai Shengchuan has performed more and more stage plays on the mainland, more people have begun to enter his "dream-making space".
Deeply engaged in drama for many years, he attracted a group of young audiences into the theater with the charm of his works, attracting popular stars to participate in his plays at all costs.
As early as thirty years ago, Lin Qingxia resolutely said before acting in "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden": "To act in a stage play, the director must be Lai Shengchuan."
Hu Ge recalled the stage of "Like a Dream", and he sighed infinitely: "I really want to act for another 20 years!"
Hu Ge played Patient 5 in "Like a Dream"
Today, Ni Ni has also made her stage play debut to Lai Shengchuan's "幺幺洞捌".
Perhaps, it is precisely because he has seen the "golden age" of the literary and art circles that Lai Shengchuan will say so frankly:
I'm sorry, but my ears can't listen to the music now.
Lai Shengchuan was born in Washington, D.C., in 1954, the son of a diplomat.
Since childhood, he jumped all the way to the second grade, and at the age of 11, he read the second year of junior high school.
As a young man, he would not have imagined that he would soon have to face the darkest moments of his life.
In junior high school, the family followed their father's transfer and returned to Taiwan. Just three years later, his father died suddenly due to illness, and the family's financial and mental conditions fell to the bottom.
Because it is difficult to adapt to Chinese education, Lai Shengchuan has also changed from a gifted student in the United States to a repeat student in a middle school in Taiwan.
During that most frustrating and lonely teenage years, he was accompanied by more than two thousand Marvel comics, and pirated pirates and Bob Dylan in video stores.
Whether it is anti-war sentiment, the desire to return to simplicity, or the reflection on capital society, these serious topics all appear in popular music.
From their music, he understood that art can be popularized, and the things of the masses can have high ideals.
In the immersion of music, Lai Shengchuan felt his preference for art more and more. But until he graduated from college, he didn't know exactly what he was going to do.
Because his interests were so widespread, music, fiction, poetry, photography, film, there was nothing he hadn't tried.
It was not until he and his lover Ding Naizhu entered Berkeley to formally study theater together, and realized that "theater is a melting pot that integrates all my interests", and firmly entered the world of theater.
In 1983, at the age of 29, Lai Shengchuan was about to graduate from Berkeley with a Doctorate.
One day, he was reading in the library when he heard a man and a woman outside the window mention their names in Chinese, so he reached out and looked at them.
It turned out that the Taiwanese girl was also studying for a doctorate in drama, and the three of them went out to have a meal together.
A month later, Lai received a letter inviting him to return to Taiwan after graduation to teach performance and the history of Western theater at the upcoming National Academy of Arts.
Mr. Yao Yiwei, who sent this letter, was the father of the girl lai Shengchuan met in the library that day.
Years later, recalling this wonderful fate, Lai Shengchuan couldn't help but sigh:
God often gives you signals, but you have to be able to see or hear.
If you don't go, then I'm sorry, what would have happened next is gone.
Lai Shengchuan did not choose to stay in the United States to study like most intellectuals at that time, but returned to Taiwan, which can be called a "theatrical desert".
"Nothing means anything is possible."
He personally translated plays, wrote textbooks, and experimented with students on various theatrical experiments.
Through his college friend Du Kefeng (yes, Wong Kar-wai's royal photographer, Du Kefeng, who was a sailor at the time), he also met many members of Taiwan's first experimental small theater troupe, Lanling Theatre.
Group photo of Lanling Troupe. From right in the middle row: Liu Ruoyu, Wu Jingji, Li Guoxiu, Li Tianzhu, Jin Shihui;
Back row right one: Zhuo Ming; second right: Jin Shijie; back row left one: Du Kefeng
A group of talented young people work in the office building during the day and soak together at night to create art.
In 1984, their first work, "We All Grew Up Like This", was performed in a very simple classroom, and among the more than 200 people in the audience, Yang Dechang, Hou Xiaoxian, Wu Nianzhen sat...
The first time they tried, Lai Shengchuan and his party gained the support and love of many people in the industry.
Soon, they set up a performance workshop in Taipei and launched the famous "That Night We Say Crosstalk".
This work not only set a record for the performance of Taiwanese stage plays, but even released more than 12 million volumes of videos, accounting for 60% of the population of Taiwan at that time.
Because there are no restrictions and experience, Lai Shengchuan has dared to try and act, creating one masterpiece after another.
The following year, "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" came out.
Lin Qingxia and Jin Shijie's version of "Jiangbin Liu and Yun Zhifan"
Originally, only 12 performances were planned, but the result was increased to 23.
Until today, 30 years later, this play has long become the most influential stage play in the Chinese world, and has been selected as a "Century-old Chinese Drama Classic" together with "Tea House" and "Thunderstorm".
She was so special.
She is a ruyi treasure.
Speaking of his wife Ding Naizhu, Lai Shengchuan is always full of praise.
Ding Naizhu, who appeared in the footage of "Thirteen Invitations", is elegant and gentle, and his speed of speech is not urgent or slow, which makes people feel like a spring breeze.
Even if she has reached the age of flower armor, you can still see the beauty of her youth. A few strands of pink colored hair in her white hair reveal her liveliness and innocence.
After 43 years of marriage, the eyes of the two still surge with love and appreciation.
Their love, in itself, is a wonderful drama.
One day in 1974, the two men, who were still in college, met.
At that time, Lai Shengchuan and his friends formed a band and played music at a restaurant called "Aditya" in Taipei.
He was accompanied by Hu Yinmeng and Hu Defu, and the audience was Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng and Cai Qin, who were only about 20 years old at the time.
It can be said that Aditya is the utopia of literary youth.
Ding Naizhu was also a well-known goddess-level figure in that year, with both talents and appearances, and his grandfather Ding Huaijin was one of the earliest members of the League, and his family was prominent.
Ding Naizhu in his senior year in 1976. Photo by Lai Shengchuan
Although the two were the first to see each other, they did not have half a point of life, as if they had known each other for a long time.
In their senior year, they naturally came together, and there were endless conversations every day.
After graduation, Ding Naizhu worked in a law firm. After two years of military service, Lai Shengchuan worked as a band and English announcer, and finally decided to marry Naizhu and go to the United States to study together.
The two remain inseparable and insist on attending a school.
So they came to Berkeley, one to study drama and the other to study administration.
There is no scholarship to go to Berkeley for a Ph.D., and the tuition fee is as high as a few thousand dollars a year. Although the two were from good backgrounds, their economic situation was not as good as the outside world imagined.
They took out all their savings and their families' financial support to barely make up for tuition and miscellaneous expenses.
Just as the young couple started their new life as they wished, a big event occurred - their money was swept away.
The two mistakenly believe in a friend and give the money to the other person to take care of, so that they can earn some interest every month. As a result, two months later, the friend, along with all their savings, evaporated.
When fear and confusion swept through Lai Shengchuan, Naizhu only calmly said, "Now we have to find a way to make money ourselves."
In the decades that followed, no matter what kind of accidents occurred, Naizhu was always able to bring relief and encouragement to Lai Shengchuan like a needle of the sea god.
As some netizens said, "Miss Ding's calm hides the most desired personality."
Her tenacity and cool heroism have made Lai Shengchuan feel again and again that "in my life, she is happy."
The two destitute people came to work at the Fulu Shou Restaurant under the introduction of their families, and its founder was Jiang Sunyun, who died a while ago and was the first to introduce authentic Chinese cuisine to the Western world (Maizi has been introduced before, and is also a strange woman, you can click here to read).
Ding Naizhu worked as a front desk leader, and Lai Shengchuan gradually changed from a handyman who collected meals to a formal waiter.
Recalling this period of time, Lai Chuansheng felt that perhaps he should thank the friend who had rolled up money and ran away.
"It makes me go further in life."
It was the changes in their lives that forced them to this restaurant, from the elegant art world to the wonderful human fireworks. In the hustle and bustle, they saw the vicissitudes of life, absorbed a lot of creative material, and even very lucky to meet John Lennon the year before his assassination.
Some people say that it was Ding Naizhu who fulfilled Lai Shengchuan's innocence.
When she graduated with her master's degree, Ding Naizhu, who was already pregnant, refused the school's invitation to continue her doctoral studies, taking on the dual responsibilities of childbirth and work, just so that Lai Chuansheng could read the next three years of doctoral programs with peace of mind.
In the coming decades, she will vigorously promote the development of many Lai Shengchuan's undertakings and projects behind the scenes.
From the day they first met, she knew his talent.
In order to protect this talent, she was willing to hide her light.
Ding Naizhu recalled the first time he met Lai Shengchuan
Lai Shengchuan never took his wife's efforts for granted, but cherished them doubly, saying more than once: "In my heart, my wife will always be the first."
The secret of love to keep alive lies in cherishing and dedicating to each other.
As Lai Shengchuan said:
Love, in fact, is to dedicate the most energetic part of your life to the other party, and let the other party receive and then feedback to you, this is love.
In fact, in Lai Shengchuan's view, he and Ding Naizhu have many incompatibilities.
One loves spicy, one doesn't like spicy; one prefers cleanliness and cleanliness, and one prefers comfort and casualness.
Interests, diets, lifestyles, all different.
But that doesn't stop them from walking through this life hand in hand.
Because their most important similarity is that they have never given up the search and practice of life.
To experience and understand every growth and meeting together, in the long years again and again fall in love with each other, love life.
Once upon a time, art was the most important thing in Life, in Lai Shengchuan's view.
But now he feels that the most important thing is actually life itself.
"Drama is not a hypothetical presentation, but the possibility of making people contemplate themselves and re-chew life."
Each of us should learn to open ourselves up in life and feel love and beauty.
We are always tired of feeling and ignoring, so that many subtle beautiful moments quickly disappear unconsciously.
Opening means that you are still curious about life.
You still watch passionately every day, especially how all the people around you are doing in your life, what you can do for them, what you can learn from them...
Lai Shengchuan, who is 67 years old this year, still maintains the "pure heart" that Ding Naizhu first saw, and has been looking for how to express himself, see the changes of life through subtle observation, bring the artistic perception to the stage, and have a dialogue with the audience's heart.
This pure heart for the creation of drama is precisely the lack of faith and temperature in this era when everything is fast, new, and profit first.
Fortunately, we still have such a tireless master of art.
Let's put down sixpence for a moment and look up at the moon in the night sky.
Even in the long years, we are still just mortals who are in a hurry, but know a little love and beauty.
The images in this article are from the Web
Author: Weird
Edit: Daqin
Producer: Sleep away
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