Ma Sanli's Self-Narration - Yihai Drifting Pinglu (3)

Third, some brief views on the performing arts of cross-talk

　　Cross-talk enthusiasts, music experts and my peers have made many comments about my father Ma Delu, brother Ma Guiyuan and my Ma Sanli's cross-talk, such as some people; Ma family cross-talk magnetic reality; and some people say: Ma family cross-talk is unique. I understand that the "magnetic reality" Eryu mainly refers to the basic skills of speaking, learning, teasing and singing, while the so-called "unique style" mostly refers to the technique of performance. How to deal with basic skills? What kind of performance is used? I don't know much about my father and brother's situation, and I haven't summarized it very well, so I can only talk about superficial experience.

　　As a kind of folk art, cross-talk also has its own origins. As the saying goes, "a master will be a general", different teachers inherit, naturally have different performance techniques and styles, coupled with the different conditions, qualities and different artistic experiences of the actors themselves, will affect the performance, forming a variety of traditions and styles of the same. In this sense, crosstalk does have the same genre. For example, before the liberation of Tianjin, there were several pairs of famous partners, in the jargon of the cross-talk industry, called several "files", such as Zhang Shouchen one file, Chang Baokun one file, Dai Shaofu one file, Hou Baolin one file, Ma Sanli is also considered to be a file. Whether it is only these five files, I have not examined. Taking these five files as an example alone, it can be shown that each has a teacher and a set. To put it simply, Zhang Shouchen is the apprentice of Jiao Dehai, jiao Dehai is one of the former Qing Jingjin "Xiangsheng Eight Virtues", and he inherited my maternal grandfather Enxu, so Zhang Shouchen's cross-talk and our Ma family cross-talk can be said to be a way. Hou Baolin's family was poor since childhood, he broke into the rivers and lakes in the Beijing Tianqiao and Gulou areas, he could sing opera, had a talented voice, and had good conditions for speaking, learning what to look like, what to sing, and what to sing, and later officially worshipped my brother Zhu Kuoquan (nicknamed "Big Bread") as a teacher. He is known for his speaking and singing, and he has his own way. Dai Shaofu literati went to the sea to say cross-talk, because there is culture, saying that cross-talk is not only a broad way to live, but also relatively gentle and elegant, but also a school of its own, and more innovative. The little mushroom Chang Baokun has followed his father Chang Lian'an since childhood, and with the "father and son" passage "fire", he can be funny on the field, characterized by hot, fast speaking speed, and has the style of acting farce.

　　The concept of portal and the rules of teacher inheritance in the cross-talk industry are relatively strict, and artists must have a teacher to pass on the teacher in order to officially perform on the stage. The cross-talk actors in the Beijing-Tianjin area are passed from generation to generation to Yu Delong of the Dezi generation, which is the earliest generation, according to the rules of the cross-talk industry, the master brother of each generation is called "Door Chief". Yu Delong was the protégé of my previous generation, and those who belonged to this generation were my fathers Ma Delu and Li Dezhao, my master Zhou Deshan and Zhang Dequan, Li Dexiang, Jiao Dehai, Liu Dezhi and so on. The next generation of door leaders is Zhang Shouchen, and I also belong to this generation. My contemporaries were Guo Qiru, Zhu Kuoquan, Li Shouzeng, Tao Xiangru, and so on, and Chang Lian'an also belonged to this generation. The next generation of disciples is Zhao Peiru, and the same generation includes Chang Baokun (although Baokun has been performing with his father since childhood, according to the rules of crosstalk, father and son cannot recognize the master and apprentice, so he worships Zhang Shouchen), as well as Bai Quanfu, Liu Kuizhen, Liu Baorui, Luo Rongshou, Wu Kuihai, Yu Shide, Ban Degui, Wang Changyou, Zhao Shizhong, Yan Xiaoru, and Chang brothers Baohua and Baoting. In terms of numbers, this generation has the most artists. Further down from this generation are Liu Wenheng, Su Wenmao, Wei Wenliang, who are currently active in the cross-talk stage. The protégé of this generation is Zhao Xinmin. Su Wenmao was Chang Baokun's tall foot, and Wei Wenliang's master was Wu Kuihai. These different generations, portals and teachers have a great influence on the formation and development of the cross-talk genre. Of course, everyone has their own conditions, and there are also great changes in the art road. Under the guidance of the party's literary and artistic policy of "a hundred flowers blooming" and "pushing out the old and bringing out the new", many new generations of "blue out of blue are better than blue" will inevitably emerge in the cross-talk circles and form new genres. For example, Ma Ji, Tang Jiezhong, and Jiang Kun, who are currently on the stage of the xiangsheng sub-sheng, and Hou Yuewen and Shi Fukuan, the descendants of Hou's cross-talk, all have great hope. There are also many new cross-talk talents in the Tianjin qu art circle.

　　From my own point of view, I have been making art for nearly sixty years, and I am very ashamed that for the folk art of cross-talk, there is neither real inheritance nor gratifying development, nor have I seriously summarized the practice of art, let alone left a little "Taoism" for future generations. The party attaches great importance to me, and my peers and the broad audience also love me very much, classify me into the ranks of famous actors, and respect me as a "cross-talkist" and "artist". This year, the Tianjin CPPCC Literature and History Materials Research Committee asked me to write some memoirs of my artistic life, prompting me to recall my experience of saying cross-talk, and to describe some of my personal experiences in artistic practice, and ask experts to correct them.

　　Some people think that crosstalk is "playing poor", which is certainly not true. However, when it comes to cross-talk, gags, and poor mouths, there are also actors who like to play poor mouths, which reduces the style of cross-talk. Cross-talk is a humorous language, a kind of folk art with "laughter" as the core, which combines form, writing and miscellaneous studies. Cross-talk actors are not linguists, but to master the art of using language, not performers, but physical movements are very important, too hot is customary, then "poor", even indecent. Cross-talk actors must have a little knowledge and a little cultivation for literature, especially classical literature. Our Father and Brother Ma are good at saying the passage "Kwa Residence", which is a cross-talk program with a bit of literary color. This cross-talk has successively quoted eight classical texts with scenic descriptions, such as "The Record of drunken Pavilion", "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion", and "Tongque Taifu", forming a gentle and witty teasing. To perform such a cross-talk, the actor must not only read these articles and roughly understand their contents, but also use the "through-mouth" of cross-talk to express the content of the text. To say that such a cross-talk is a good one, it is necessary to make a lot of efforts. If it is said well, it can not only enable the audience to get the enjoyment of "laughter" from irony, but also enable the audience to appreciate several classical literary masterpieces in different styles and increase their interest in classical literature.

　　Speaking of crosstalk, as soon as you play, you will open your mouth to point out the problem, which we call "hard into the life". My fathers and brothers and teachers generally do not use this technique, pay attention to the first few sentences of work, longer or shorter, "bridge" for the main topic, pave the way, and then introduce the main topic. I think it works better this way. First of all, with the "pad talk", the theme you want to say is not sudden; secondly, with the "pad talk", you can first attract the audience to the actor's side, so that the listener unconsciously enters the cross-talk realm. In the Song and Yuan dialects, there are many forms of "entering the conversation", such as "Nian Yu Guanyin" and "Wrong Chopping Cui Ning" included in the "Jingben Popular Novel", which begin with a love story and a public case story with similarities, as "entering the conversation", and then introducing the main storyline. We in the Ma family say that cross-talk is very much about the "into the conversation" part, and attaches importance to this tradition in folk rap art.

　　From the content of crosstalk, how ironic, ironic what? It is also tendentious. People who brag and talk big, people who don't learn nothing but pretend to be pretentious, people who talk nonsense and are irresponsible are all objects of cross-talk humor and satire. There are many such people in the old society, and today it seems that they have not yet disappeared, and it is still meaningful to be humorous and sarcastic. I prefer to perform such satirical passages. The traditional cross-talk "Open Porridge Factory" is a more representative passage in this genre. My father and brother and I personally put a lot of effort into this cross-talk, and after continuous processing and sorting, we formed the later appearance. The object of ridicule, Ma Shanren, belongs to the category of bragging and talking big. He boasted that from Beijing to the north, as long as he saw that it was the yellow land, it was his family, so he had been called "Loess MaJia" for many lifetimes; he said that he was "kind-hearted", he had never seen slaughtering cattle, slaughtering sheep, slaughtering chickens, slaughtering fish, not stepping on spiders, not twisting bed bugs, and having lice on his body could not bear to squeeze to death, in order to "do good" to put on others; he boasted that his garden was spacious and exquisite, there were four flowers that were not thankful, eight evergreen trees, more than sixty pagodas, one higher than one, the shortest was much worse than The Tianjin Department Store, and there were more than seventy flower pavilions. In the crescent river, goldfish, silverfish raced to call donkeys, toads are as big as camels, he nonsense about France going abroad to study, back to the glass fish tank, steamships can swim in the tank... This kind of exaggerated text, through our performance, blows the bragging more and more out of bounds, to the point of oblivion. Ma Shanren must continue to blow, the expression method can not be "a soup", there must be ups and downs, but also to make people believe: although Ma Shan people are blowing nonsense, but there are still a few money, in winter to open a porridge factory, give up a porridge, may still be possible. However, speaking of which, in the end Ma Shanren said:

　　A: You calculate, the cost of opening the door is more than two billion!

　　B: Yes!

　　A: There is no breakfast this morning, isn't this the rice that was sold for the cotton jacket?

　　B: Aren't you giving alms?

　　A: Yes! I plan to give such a handout, but I haven't made a fortune yet!

　　This is to put it bluntly, Ma Shanren is completely nonsense, bragging is not afraid to blow the sky! This method of expression is also borrowed from the note-taking novel. There is a joke in the "Laughing Forest Guangji" that a hospitable person who boasts of being more hospitable than Meng Tianjun has five thousand diners in his family, two thousand more than Meng Tianjun's three thousand diners. When someone came to his house and did not see a single diner and asked questions, this "super" Meng Tianjun replied: "All go home to eat!" "Whenever I read this, I can't help but laugh, which led to the idea that Ma Shanren should open a porridge factory to do good deeds after he has to get rich.

　　I remember that my father and brother loved to read Song and Yuan novels, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin", "Journey to the West", "Liaozhai Zhiyi" and books such as "Zhiwei Novels" and "Laughing Forest" before the Song and Yuan Dynasties. I also have such a hobby, because looking at these things, I can learn the methods of creation, the method of expression, draw nutrition from them, and irrigate the flowers of crosstalk. At present, the younger generation of cross-talk actors almost all have a medium level of education, and they are more qualified than our older generation to read books and enrich themselves. Of course, reading books alone is not enough. Crosstalk should be exaggerated, imaginative, and pay attention to observing all kinds of people and things in life. Take the example of Ma Shanren's bragging in "Open Porridge Factory", he said that his family's Dragon Boat Festival zongzi, fifty per person, how much is each? I don't know, I only know that each rice dumpling puts thirty dates, and thirty dates are wrapped in rice dumplings, how big should it be? The audience wanted to go! The cleverness of the exaggeration is that it does not say the specific weight, is it not more "chewy" than to say that it is three pounds and five pounds? Listen to him blow the August Mid-Autumn Festival moon cake again, the moon cake is "ten changes" stuffing: if you want to eat five kernels, break it open is five kernels; if you want to eat jujube puree, break it open is date paste; even if you want to eat coconuts from Hainan Island, if you break it open, it is coconut. How mysterious you listen to Ma Shanren blowing, his mooncake is almost like Sun Wukong's golden hoop stick, which can change as desired! The quantifiers used to describe objects are generally always used for large, heavy, and long, but here there are variations, subtle, fresh, and intriguing. Although it is a thing in life, it is exaggerated beyond the reality of life, and when it is said well, it will inevitably receive the effect of laughter.

　　However, on the issue of irony, we must also pay attention to a measure, not to grasp what, to satirize what. For example, in our traditional passages, there are some themes about the poor, poor life, and poor days, but I think "poor" is not worthy of irony, nor is it ridiculous, in old China, poverty was forced out. Lü Meng was poor enough to go to the monk's temple to fast and eat the monk's alms, which was not ridiculous, but the ridiculous thing was that his shirt was not enough to withstand the cold, and he was obviously shivering with cold and clearing his nose, but he also said sourly; "Although the gentleman is cold, he is not chestnut!" "It's ridiculous, so it's ironic that it's sour. I like the passage "The Theory of Nest Heads" and always use it as the finale. In our north, Wo Wo Tou is the staple food of the working people, eating Wo Wo Tou, there is nothing ridiculous, the ridiculous thing is "I", biased on the good and wonderful wo wo to make a fuss, afraid that people will say that they can not afford to eat refined rice white noodles, prefer to say that they are "partial" to this wo wo tou, for the wo wo to make a "discussion", this is ridiculous, satirizing this kind of person, has a certain significance. When I say "The Theory of Nest Heads", the audience does not feel "plague", and the reason is that I have grasped the word "acid" to make an article, and there are more ridiculous places.

　　Speaking of performance techniques, in general, I don't like to take a good stand, nor do I like to shout and shout, and use "super-exciting" strange sounds, strange gases, and strange images to find gimmicks. My father and brother taught me that when I appeared, ma Sanli, who spoke cross-talk, used a smooth tone and naturally "entered the conversation", concentrated the spirit of the audience and the audience on me, and quietly listened to me. I want to use language and physical movements to introduce the audience into the specific environment I provide for the audience, so that the audience can see them, hear their voices, and be immersed. When I use "baggage" to amuse the audience, I want to make the audience feel that I am consciously amusing. The audience, the audience is happy, I still don't seem to know why? I don't know if everyone is happy? In this way, people tend to be happier. When I was talking about the new passage "Déjà vu", at the end of the paragraph, after I boasted that I had knowledge, culture, and a high level of art, I made the following arrangements:

　　A: I'm an artist, and some people call me a master of art.

　　B: Yes! Engineer of the human soul.

　　A: No! I am not just the soul engineer of mankind, I am the soul engineer of all plants, animals and all living things.

　　B: Hooray! It's amazing!

　　A: Hmm! Well! (Nodding, triumphant)

　　Speaking of which, I turned the topic around:

　　B: How much of your meals are?

　　A: The amount of food? What is the amount of food? (Amazing)

　　B: How many bowls of dry rice can you eat?

　　A: Dry rice? I don't know how many bowls of dry rice I eat myself.

　　B: Isn't that so!

　　This pun formed a pungent self-irony of stupid and ignorant nonsense, and the audience laughed, while I looked at the laughing audience offstage and wondered why everyone laughed. The combination of language and image deepens the stupidity of this big talker and self-boaster.

　　I remember when I was studying art, my father, brother, and master all said to me like this: Don't think that it is easy to talk about crosstalk, play tricks, and it is easy; you see that crosstalk does not have makeup to help, it all depends on the image and language, and the various characters are vividly expressed, which requires a set of kung fu, and we must pay attention to all kinds of people in life, what images, what language, and what actions, we cannot simply imitate, we cannot only seek to achieve "shape-likeness", but also "god-likeness".

　　When I say crosstalk, I also like to listen to other people's crosstalk, and I am willing to listen to the crosstalk of the old, middle and young people. As the saying goes: "The layman looks at the bustle, and the insider looks at the doorway." "Forgive me for not being humble, I look at the "doorway", listen to the cross-talk of my peers, grasp the advantages and characteristics, and also find shortcomings and deficiencies. For oneself, it is to take the strengths of others and make up for their weaknesses. For the art of cross-talk, I also hope to broaden the skills of each family, learn from the experience of each family, find out a little regularity, and make some contributions to improving the folk art of cross-talk. However, the former is easier to do, and the latter is more difficult and often inadequate.

　　I think every cross-talk actor has strengths, but also flaws and deficiencies. One is the personal condition, and the other is the size of the effort. The mouth is stupid and tries not to make the "mouth" live; the vocal cords are poor, and the "willow live" is less. When I was in my twenties, I often staged "Miscellaneous Singing", "Noisy Court", "Drama Miscellaneous Talk", "Eight Major Changes" and other paragraphs, and later listened to Hou Baolin's such passages, the rap voice is really good, really singing everything tastes, and learn who is like whom. I was ashamed of myself, and later, my skills in learning to sing did not improve much, coupled with the age relationship, simply, do not make "willow live". My hiding is secondary, and the main thing is not to spoil the "Willow Live" program. I have been practicing crosstalk for more than fifty years, I love my profession, I always want to protect it, and I can't bear to waste it. Of course, I am talking about giving full play to my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, and I am not advocating giving up a difficult basic skill. Recalling here, I remember the anecdote that the crowd said about "Willow Jar On Office". Willow jar is a person, bought a county official, will not be, in the court, the county court made a lot of jokes, the appearance of the characters have willow can himself, there is a tolerance, there is a lawsuit of the plaintiff defendant; when the county grandfather must have a wife, willow can temporarily borrowed a southern fireworks woman. Many characters, each with their own identity, position, language, and image, are fascinated by the fact that each character is vivid and vivid and does not speak, and each person has his own dialect, speaking Shanxi dialect, Shandong dialect, Hebei accent, Yanghuai dialect, where he speaks, it is exactly like the natives of that place. And the most rare thing is that he speaks dialects, not Dalu goods, Shandong huo, not the general Jinan dialect, but the accent of Qingzhoufu and Yanzhoufu; the Hebei accent, most of the general cross-talk takes Tangshan dialect or Baoding dialect, and he prefers to speak the local dialect in the Area of Tangerli. That passage was said by thousands of people. It's really hot and wonderful, and just listening to that bit of east-west, south-north dialect is enough to fascinate people. Probably because of this reason, after the people were fascinated, few people said this paragraph, and later changed it to "Confused County Official", which went to the dialect, of course, can not but reduce the color.

　　After listening to what I said about "Buying Hanging Tickets", some people said: Buying hanging tickets is exaggerated, hanging people on the wall to make a sound of "eating and eating", which is very expressive, listening to this "eating and eating", it seems to see the squeeze in the theater, the guilt of watching the drama with a false "hanging ticket"! I think this listener's comment is very clever, a confidant; if there is an elephant word in a crosstalk, I must try to use it well, use it to arouse the imagination of the audience. In recent years, I have said a new passage "Stressing Hygiene", saying that a person who does not pay attention to hygiene, he draws water from the water tank, does not make a water spoon, and extends the iron pot into the tank to fill it, describing this irrigation, using the elephant sound word "bang bang bang bang"; saying that he gargles his mouth without spitting mouthwash, "grunting" and swallowing. I attach great importance to the use of these phonological words, which can arouse the imagination of the audience and make people have an immersive artistic infection for all this. The object voice is not to pay attention to it to master it, use it well, but also work hard to imitate, to have a little ventriloquism effect. Just as opera actors practice exercises, practicing hands, eyes, body, law, and steps, cross-talk actors practice speaking, learning, teasing, singing, and practicing various techniques. My father and brother were both demanding and strict with me in these respects.

　　Comrade Zhou Kejin of the Department of Chinese of Nankai University wrote a short article entitled "A Brief Discussion on ma Sanli's Cross-Talk Art", which has a paragraph that says:

　　...... His (referring to me Ma Sanli) cross-talk grabbed at himself and appeared to speak, making him perform freely and realistically. It is very different from "Fishing" with the same theme. "Fishing" is the actor jumping in and out of the bragging "two his father" image, exposing and interspersing with comments, so that it is convenient for the plot to unfold, and it is easy to shake the baggage, and the actor and the audience laugh at the object of ridicule. Ma Sanli's cross-talk is different, he is the object of ridicule, although the praise sometimes points out his loopholes, but there is no public comment, he tries his best to play the object of the satire, and the work of the commentary is handed over to the audience, and the actor and the audience tacitly cooperate to achieve collective lyricism.

　　I think Comrade Zhou Kejin is a confidant. Play the object of their own satire, do not need direct, public comments, but let the audience think, to think, to comment, so that more subtle, more able to make the audience after laughing, but also taste, there are activities, not a laugh. I like this kind of cross-talk, I like this kind of performance technique. As for whether it is better to act directly as a satirical object? Or is it better to jump in and out of the image? I thought: This also has to be the form to the content, not to generalize. I think: from the perspective of the development of cross-talk, the so-called "jumping in and jumping out" may be heavily influenced by storytelling and commentary, and the stand-up in cross-talk has more such characteristics. And to appear in the image of a character, to act as a person in the satire and a person in the joke, this is likely to be influenced by the drama. My cross-talk, there are some performance techniques, which I learned from drama.

　　As my self-statement, finally, I would like to say one sentence: The implementation of the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the Party Central Committee has rejuvenated my artistic youth. I remember that after the Third Plenary Session of the Party Central Committee, I excitedly took to the stage and performed the cross-talk "Buy Monkeys" that had not been spoken for twenty years, at that time, the words were strange and said very badly, but the audience applauded continuously, I bowed again and again, the audience repeatedly applauded, the leading comrades came on stage to shake hands with me, I was moved to the point of no words to thank, seventy-year-old Ma San stood in the public, tears flowing. The writer Shi Ding gave me four poems on the spot:

　　A song to buy monkey legend fame,

　　Twenty years of bumpy roads.

　　How late and sick three old,

　　Shake the spirit and march again.

　　For the party's literary and artistic cause, I am shaking my spirit and making the final contribution to the four modernizations of the motherland in my lifetime.

　　(Tianjin, September 1982)