On October 16, the famous comedy performance artist Yan Shunkai passed away at the age of 80. Most viewers across the country know Yan Shunkai, probably through the movie "A Q Zheng biography" and the sketch program at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. But for local audiences in Shanghai, Yan Shunkai's most famous identity should first and foremost be that of a good burlesque actor.
Yan Shunkai
"Southern CrossTalk"
For people who grew up in the north, "burlesque" is a relatively unfamiliar concept, and the only explanation that can bring the relationship closer is to reluctantly compare it to "southern crosstalk". Burlesque is a unique drama in Shanghai, loved by audiences in Shanghai and Hangzhou, its characteristics are similar to those of cross-talk in the north, and they all use laughter as a means to satirize unreasonable things in social life.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were folk artists in the rural areas around Jiangnan who specialized in "talking about the tide newspaper", and the content of the singing was mainly based on the news and current affairs of the time, so it was also called "talking news". Because he sang in the countryside, he had to use the local dialect and tunes familiar to the peasants, and at the same time had to intersperse some antics to attract the audience, of which the Hangzhou artist Du Baolin, who called himself "Little Hot Dim" (Jiangnan people called high fever "Hot Dim"), is the most famous.
Du Baolin used the form of "Saying Tide Newspaper" to sell pear paste candy on the street, he was very good at telling jokes, witty, funny, and the business was naturally very good. He often added some folk tales to his singing to satirize those high-ranking officials and dignitaries, attracting many ordinary people to listen. After Du Baolin's death, his disciple Jiang Xiaoxiao combined the passages he had said with current current events, adapted them, and sang them on stage in the Hangzhou Great World, becoming a "one-legged play", and the "one-legged play" was later combined with the "civilized drama" (that is, popular drama) and evolved into a formal stage performance, which became a popular "burlesque play" to this day.
When it comes to one-legged plays, it is inevitable to mention the famous "three big people of funny", namely Wang Wuneng, Jiang Xiaoxiao and Liu Chunshan, and it is impossible not to mention Shanghai, because Shanghai is the birthplace of burlesque. Around 1929, after Jiang Xiaoxiao officially performed a one-legged play in Shanghai Yong'an Company, Wang Wuneng and Liu Chunshan also appeared on stage, and the performances of these three veteran artists laid the foundation for burlesque to appear on the stage as an independent theatrical form.
Poster of Wang's incompetent and Jiang Xiaoxiao's one-legged play
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Japanese army entered and occupied the concession, the Shanghai playground fell into a depression, the business of the church meeting was light, the radio station was also blocked by the enemy and the pseudo, and the survival of the one-legged opera artists was difficult, so they had to unite to perform large-scale burlesque plays, and thus the burlesque theater troupe appeared. By the end of the 1940s, there were more than 40 large and small burlesque troupes in Shanghai alone, and the performance mode of dramatic burlesque gradually took shape.
The most prominent feature that distinguishes burlesque from other types of drama is "miscellaneous", and being good at using local dialects and southern and northern tones to perform exaggerated performances is the core of burlesque art.
In addition to Shanghainese, the main languages are Northern Jiangsu, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changshu, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong and Pudong and Chongming dialects on the outskirts of Shanghai, totaling more than 10 kinds. For example, in Ningbo dialect, "girl" is called "little girl", "dish" is called "next meal", pudong people call "son" "monkey", etc., such words will appear very humorous after the processing of burlesque actors.
Burlesque is essentially a comedy art form that grows up in the soil of civic culture, and therefore eclectic and inclusive. Whether it is Yue opera, Huai opera, Shanghai opera, Peking opera and other local operas, or Chinese and foreign dramas, acrobatics, cross-talk, film, television, dance, art and other art disciplines can be used for reference.
Wang Wuneng, whose real name is Wang Nianzu, is a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, who learned a lot of ventriloquism, local dialects and English while working as a handyman at the Shanghai Fair Foreign Firm.
Yao Mushuang and Zhou Baichun
In 1997, the 40-episode sitcom "New 72 Lodgers", directed by Indah, was filmed and broadcast nationwide and received excellent response. The late famous screenwriter Liang Zuo vividly portrayed the faces of Shanghai's small citizens in the tide of reform and opening up by telling the daily stories of different tenants in an old Shikumen house in Shanghai.
I believe that all viewers who have watched this drama will be deeply impressed by Wang Shuigen, a northern Su people played by Yan Shunkai. However, few audiences outside Shanghai know that the other main actors of this drama are also "famous characters" in the Shanghai burlesque industry, such as Wu Meimei, who plays Wang Shuigen's mother, Tao Drunken Juan, who plays Zhu Manli, Wu Shuangyi, who plays Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Wang Shuangqing, who plays Qian Yifu. Among them, Wu Shuangyi and Wang Shuangqing are the apprentices of Yao Mushuang and Zhou Baichun, who are known as "burlesque titans", and are also the two most famous brothers in the "double character generation" of Shanghai burlesque.
Stills from "The New 72 Lodgers"
When it comes to the brothers Yao Mushuang (formerly known as Yao Yilin) and Zhou Baichun (formerly known as Yao Zhenmin), the authentic Shanghainese are probably unknown to everyone. The two of them have been acting together in burlesque since the 1930s, and were the first to make their mark on radio burlesque shows. Because their performances are quite innovative, they have long been loved and favored by a wide range of listeners. In the 1940s, they participated in the "Laughing Troupe" organized by Jiang Xiaoxiao and Bao Lele, and then joined the Bee Burlesque Troupe and the Shanghai People's Art Theatre Burlesque Troupe.
More importantly, Yao Mushuang and Zhou Baichun made a wide range of disciples while creating laughter, making great contributions to the cultivation and development of talents in Shanghai burlesque. Their disciples were called "double-character generations" and later became the backbone of the contemporary burlesque stage and screen.
Wu Shuangyi and Wang Shuangqing
After Yao Mushuang's death in 2004, some colleagues wrote articles recalling that his artistic achievements were inextricably linked to his life:
Once, Yao Mushuang saw two people arguing on the road, so he squeezed into the middle of the onlookers to see the liveliness. Two quarrelsome, one of whom is from Ningbo. The Ningbo people rode a bicycle, there was no bell on the car, and the car hit a person, so they quarreled. The man first accused the Ningbo people: "How do you hit people indiscriminately?" Later, he found that the Ningbo people's car was not equipped with a bell, so he grabbed the other party and went to the patrol to evaluate. The Ningbo people were anxious and hurriedly explained: "The bell on the car is not, but I am vomiting you loudly." (The Ningbo dialect pronounces "called" as "vomit") At this time, a patrolman came over, and he was from Shandong. The patrol police came forward to mediate, and the Ningbo people shouted loudly: "I obviously vomited him!" The Ningbo people said "vomiting", the Shandong patrol mistakenly thought it was "vomiting", and then decided that the Ningbo people were wrong, so they accused the Ningbo people: "Drunk, vomiting dizzy, no wonder they bumped into people!" This caused the onlookers to laugh on the spot.
Therefore, Yao Mushuang, who was standing on the sidelines, thought that the misunderstanding caused by dialects was very easy to make people laugh, of course, this is also the usual method of many burlesque creation.
The performances of Yao Mushuang and Zhou Baichun are unforgettable classic memories of many Shanghainese.
Passing on the torch
Although Yan Shunkai is not a member of the "two-character generation", because he is in the same troupe, he naturally has the opportunity to be guided by the master. He recalled that after graduating from the Acting Department of the Central Academy of Drama in 1963, he was assigned to the Shanghai Burlesque Troupe, but was faced with a new problem of how to integrate drama and burlesque performance. So the leader arranged for Yao Mushuang to open the field for Yan Shun.
"Once I acted in a small play, Teacher Yao Mushuang took more than twenty scenes for me. Every time I went down, he pointed out to me in all aspects of performance and dialect. The old artists nourished my comedy with their hearts and minds. (Yan Shunkai: "Sending the Old and Welcoming the New with Laughter", Shanghai Drama, No. 05, 1979)
Like traditional arts such as cross-talk, burlesque has also undergone innovation and transformation after the founding of New China. Before liberation, in the use of comedy factors such as "gimmicks", perversions, and self-contradictions, Haipai burlesque dramas were always accompanied by some vulgarity, kitsch, and even the so-called "funny" that flowed in the stream. Premier Zhou Enlai, after watching the burlesque play "Sanmao Student Intentions", proposed: "Burlesque drama should avoid vulgarity, low-level, yellow, and flowing gas. As a result, the actors continue to improve themselves and innovate, so that the vulgar passages that simply pursue jokes in burlesque dramas continue to decrease, and the elegant works have once again won the popularity of the audience after being carefully polished again and again.
Since the new century, Haipai burlesque has gradually moved from the theater to the tv screen, transcending geographical restrictions and targeting the audience of the whole country. The "Haipai Qingkou" represented by Zhou Libo is a typical representative of this. Zhou Libo was a disciple of Yan Shunkai, and he was admitted to the Shanghai Burlesque Troupe at the age of 14, which was decided by Yan Shunkai.
The TV screen made Zhou Libo popular all over the country.
"Haipai Qingkou" was born on February 26, 2009 at the Shanghai Majestic Theatre. Zhou Libo, who combed the "small part of his head" and wore a small suit, held a machine gun and wore a toad mirror in his eyes, and took the stage alone with the background music of 007. "Thirty Years of Laughter and Laughter of Haipai Qingkou" was original from the beginning, and won the love of new audiences today with a very post-modern collage. There were 680 laughs throughout the two-hour show, meaning the audience laughed once in an average of ten seconds. The Stage of Haipai Burlesque, which has been deserted for many years, seems to have been revived overnight.
Mr. Dong Jiejie, a famous theater historian, once commented on burlesque: "In ancient times, our country created a fine tradition of humor and satire. From the Tang Dynasty's 'joining the army drama', the Two Song Dynasty's 'miscellaneous dramas', the Jin Yuan's 'Yuanben', the Ming Dynasty's 'Guojin Opera', the late Qing Dynasty's 'Cross-Talk' and 'One-Legged Drama', the same lineage, generational improvement, and now developed into 'burlesque drama', in terms of content and form are more improved and richer, burlesque artists will not forget this fine tradition, to those things that hinder socialist construction with ridicule, satire, and even to deal a heavy blow, so that burlesque drama emits an unprecedented light, I think it is not a word. ”
At the beginning of this year, the 90-year-old comic artist Wu Shuangyi passed away, and there are only a few old actors in the Shanghai burlesque industry who are still alive in the "double character generation". Now, with yan Shunkai's departure, there is one less predecessor of Shanghai burlesque. However, for the future of Shanghai burlesque, we should also have the same optimistic confidence as Mr. Dong Jie.