At this year's Wuzhen Theatre Festival, a new performance of "Actors Experimental Classroom" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of The Lanling Opera Troupe in Taiwan was well received. The play premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing from the 16th to the 17th.
Directed and starring Jin Shijie, starring Wang Renli, Yang Liyin, Deng Anning and others, "Actors Experimental Classroom" recreates the collective creation of the legendary Taiwanese theater troupe Lanling Opera Workshop with living fragments and the most simple and natural stage, in order to pay tribute to the theater and theater people, the play was premiered in 1983, and only 8 performances were performed that year.
"Actor Experimental Classroom" photo / Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing
Lanling Opera Workshop is regarded as the most important troupe in the history of Taiwan's modern theater, which not only opened the Taiwan Small Theater Movement, but also sowed the seeds for the mainstream theater in Taiwan today, and also influenced Taiwan's cultural circle and film circle. The Beijing News reporter interviewed Jin Shijie to tell the past and present lives of this legendary troupe.
Du Kefeng Liu Ruoyu is a member of the founding group
If you want to talk about the origin of Lanling Opera, you have to go back to 1978, when Jin Shijie took over the position of head of the troupe after Zhou Yu, the head of the Cincin Experimental Theater Troupe, the predecessor of Lanling Opera Workshop, stepped down and began to recruit and buy horses, including Zhuo Ming, Du Kefeng, Huang Chenghuang, Liu Ruoyu and a number of literary and artistic young people who had a certain name in Taiwan at that time. Subsequently, he personally invited Dr. Wu Jingji, who had just returned from the United States to Taiwan, as a guide for the troupe, to train actors with the training methods he learned at the LaMaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, USA.
Founding member Liu Ruoyu. Courtesy of respondents
In 1980, the Company of Cultivated Xin Experimental Theatre was renamed Lanling Opera Workshop for participating in the first "Experimental Drama Exhibition". In that year, Lanling Opera Workshop successively launched works such as "Baggage", "Lotus Pearl New Match", "Cat's Paradise" and other works, which skillfully integrated Western theater performance techniques, and used innovative ideas and concepts to set off theater reforms, which brought great shock to the Taiwan theater at that time.
The troupe's first play was called "Baggage", and the actors were arranged in a circle of 360 degrees, which was a body drama without any dialogue. At that time, there were no lights on the stage, and some actors moved mahjong lamps from their homes. There are no costumes, all the actors wear their own practice clothes, and even the girls can only rely on the makeup box they carry to make a makeup for themselves. Without any funds or publicity, the actors simply drew simple posters on large papers and posted them on the bulletin boards and corridors of various universities.
Jin Shijie roughly counted the first performance with less than 40 people, but they were all important people in Taiwan's literary and art circles at that time, such as Jiang Xun and others. After "Baggage", they continued to move their chairs to perform the troupe's second play, "The Rooster and the Apartment". Jin Shijie recalled: "After the performance, many experts and friends refused to leave, continued to sit around the theater and chat with all of us, and everyone encouraged us to continue to persevere, Taiwan has been waiting for you people for a long time, you have finally come." These words and affirmations gave great confidence to the young people in these troupes who were still in a period of agitation.
When Lanling Theatre commemorates the 40th anniversary of the founding of the troupe this year, new and old members are reunited. The picture shows the stills of "Actors Experimental Classroom". Photo/ Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing
Start the Taiwan Small Theater Movement
In 1980, the Company officially changed its name to Lanling Theatre in order to start from a new perspective, just like the story of Lanling King, a rebellion against the current situation of Taiwanese theater at that time, and to challenge the traditional system with a spirit of change.
On July 15 of the same year, it was an extremely crucial day for the development of modern theater in Taiwan, and Yao Yiwei, who was the chairman of the "Drama Appreciation and Performance Committee" at that time, launched the first "Experimental Drama Exhibition" on that day. At this experimental drama exhibition, the collective creation performance "Baggage" of Lanling Opera Workshop, written and directed by Jin Shijie, combined with modern and traditional works "Lotus Pearl New Match", was displayed in the public eye together with the works of other 3 other teams.
The main source of inspiration for "Lotus Pearl New Match" is the classic Peking Opera traditional play "Lotus Pearl Match", but in terms of performance content and form, Jin Shijie completely jumped out of the stage vocabulary of traditional drama, and also rewrote modern drama lines with traditional flavor. The work was a huge success at the first "Experimental Drama Exhibition", recalling the scene at that time, Jin Shijie said: "Many professionals in the industry believe that such a picture has not appeared in Taiwan for too long, and the media at that time was very helpful, many newspapers and magazines used us as the cover, and everyone felt that they had become stars overnight." ”
Later, many critics said that the success of Lanling Opera Workshop and "Lotus Pearl New Match" opened the small theater movement in Taiwan. In Jin Shijie's view, at that time, the Taipei Theater was still a desert era, and there were no good plays, but looking at the novel, art, and photography circles, there were many new concepts and new techniques of a new generation of artists, but there was no theater industry. He believes that "the time point in which "Lotus Pearl New Match" appeared is considered lucky, in a period of great drought and Ganlin. If we look at this report card alone, then the high score is the welcome and encouragement of the media and public opinion for us, in fact, it exceeds the actual score. ”
In the ten years since the establishment of the troupe, in addition to "Lotus Pearl New Match" and "Baggage", Lanling Opera Workshop has successively staged many works such as "Cat's Paradise", "Homework", "Hanging Silk Man", "Social Edition", "Family Wine", "Dawn", and "Actors' Experimental Classroom" re-performed on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the troupe.
Stills from "Actors' Experimental Classroom". Photo / Beijing News Guo Yanbing
Most of the popular theater troupes are created by "Lanling people"
Lanling Theatre was officially dissolved in 1991, but even after its dissolution, its influence on Taiwan's modern theater and the influence of new theater workers into the theater industry has continued. The dissolution of Lanling Opera House and its withdrawal from the historical stage in that year was not strictly the end, but opened a new era of Taiwanese theater.
In the past ten years, while cultivating Taiwanese theater workers, most of the members have also founded their own troupes after leaving Lanling Opera House, including Li Guoxiu's screen performance class, Liu Ruoyu's Youren Shengu, Li Yongfeng's paper windmill troupe, Zhao Zhiqiang's Ruo Children's Troupe, and other performance groups that have a pivotal position in Taiwan and even the whole of Asia. It can be seen that the influence of Lanling Opera Workshop on Taiwan's modern theater is so far-reaching.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of lanling opera troupe, in addition to the performance of the actors Jin Shijie, Martini, Yang Liyin, Deng Anning, Wang Renli reunited, but also joined the lanling people of the former and late period, including Liu Ruoyu, Zhao Ziqiang, You Anshun, Chen Qianxu, Ke Qingxin, Wang Gengyu, He Siying, Qiu Junlong and other people, the legendary actors reunited and also joined the second generation of the troupe members: Liu Ruoyu's daughter Chen Zilun and son Huang Hongyun and Deng Anning's daughter Deng Yuchen. Although in the short period of more than ten years from the founding of the Lanling Opera Troupe to the official dissolution in 1991, the members of the troupe have been lost for various reasons, but everyone is proud of being a member of the Lanling Opera Workshop.
Beijing News reporter Liu Zhen Editor Tian Kaini Proofreader Zhang Yanjun