Sun Weishi (1921-1968)
South of Dong'anmen Avenue near Wangfujing, Beijing, there is a theater that still retains the European Baroque architectural style, which has long been the exclusive theater of the China Children's Art Theater, but in 1950, the China Children's Art Theater was not yet established, and it was once the performance venue of the Beijing People's Art Theater. The Beijing Renyi mentioned here is the predecessor of the Beijing Renyi that later became a special drama; the Beijing People's Art Theater, which belongs to Beijing Municipality, was established in 1952, and the Capital Theater, the exclusive theater of Beijing Renyi, which is now familiar to people, was built in 1954. As far as I know, the earliest performance group called Beijing People's Art Theater belonged to the North China Bureau, which was performed by opera and drama, and later divided and integrated, and only then did the title of Beijing Renyi be given to Beijing Municipality, specializing in drama.
In the summer of 1950, when I was eight years old, I arrived with my parents from Chongqing waterway to Wuhan by train and then to Beijing by train, and since then I have settled in Beijing until today. In the nearly 70 years in Beijing, watching opera has been an important spiritual activity in my life, which can be described as the twelve railings of the Beijing Theater, and the vicissitudes of the stage can be seen. The first play I saw in Beijing was performed in the Baroque theater on Dong'anmen Avenue, and at the end of 1950, my parents took me there to watch the national opera "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang."
I remember that day when I arrived at the door of the theater, the door was not allowed to enter, and my parents told them that I was in the third grade of primary school, sensible, able to watch dramas, and would not cry; first of all, people did not believe that I was more than eight years old, I was lagging behind in physical development at that time, small head, and then, people thought that the third grade was also a child, and children were not allowed to enter; what can I do? My father was in a hurry, so he told them that we were giving tickets, which were given by director Sun Weishi, and showed the envelope that was loaded with tickets, the envelope was a special envelope for the China Youth Art Theater, and there was my father's name on the envelope, and the lower right corner was signed with "Wei Shi". This trick really worked, people let me follow my parents in, my little heart, from tight to loose, happy. The opera "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang" is based on Li Ji's long poems, the director is not Sun Weishi, nor is it the repertoire of the China Youth Art Theater, it is performed in the name of the Beijing People's Art Theater, perhaps Sun Weishi and the screenwriter Yu Village are familiar with the village, so with more tickets, they will give some to relatives and friends, and my family will also get it. I still remember the chorus that appeared many times in the opera: "A red flag, half a day's price fluttering..."
From that time on, I knew that our family had the opportunity to get a free ticket to go to the show. My parents called me Aunt Lan. I have never seen Aunt Lan, but her own sister, whose parents let me call Aunt Yue, came to my house many times, and of course I knew later that Aunt Lan was Sun Weishi and Aunt Yue was Sun Xinshi.
I was born late, the older generation of things, just heard about. My grandfather, Liu Yunmen, died in 1932. I was born ten years after my grandfather died. A few years ago, When Aunt Yue returned from the United States, she met at the Red Wall Café in the VIP Building, and when she saw me, she said loudly: "Xinwu, our two families are family friends!" "Frankly, I can't get warm in my heart, because my grandfather's interactions with their parents, although there are some photos, are things that preceded my life history, and they are like smoke. In a nutshell, Aunt Lan and Aunt Yue, of course, they also have three brothers, their father Sun Bingwen's mother Ren Rui married in Beijing in 1913, my grandfather Liu Yunmen was a witness, and the group photo in front of the Huixian Hall Restaurant on the north shore of the Shichahai Sea after the wedding banquet has survived to this day. In 1922, before Sun Bingwen and Zhu De went to Germany, they lived in my grandfather's house, in 1924 my grandfather went to Guangzhou as a professor at Sun Yat-sen University, and in 1925 my mother encountered difficulties and was taken to live in his home by Sun Bingwen and Ren Rui, but they soon went to Guangzhou to participate in the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen, and they arranged for my mother to live temporarily in the home of Ren Rui's sister Ren Zaikun, who was Mrs. Feng Youlan, so later after I entered the literary circle, I called Zong Pu the eldest sister, and my mother reprimanded her, saying that she should be called Aunt Pu, Aunt Lan, Aunt Yue is all Cousins of Zong Pu, and they are of the same generation. This article, to say, aunt Lan gave a drama ticket, so that I got the moon first near the water tower, and I was influenced by a very good drama since I was a child. Regarding the Sun family, about Aunt Lan herself's fall in less than half a hundred, and so on, I have no special right to narrate, but I would like to appeal that for Sun Weishi, as one of the outstanding drama directors in China in the last century, her achievements in this regard are still lacking the necessary understanding of the achievements of the average person, and although professionals have some commemorative texts and discussions involving her directing art, they are actually still very insufficient. I would like to talk about it from my own personal experience of watching the plays he directed.
Sun Bingwen and Ren Rui's wedding photos, the last row of the second from the left is the witness, the grandfather of the author of this article, Liu Yunmen
After the establishment of the China Youth Art Theater, Sun Weishi's first play was "Paul Kochakin", and the ticket for this play was also sent to my family, but my brother and sister went to see it, and I didn't watch it. At that time, my father worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade after the General Administration of Customs, and Aunt Lan sent tickets, as if they were mailed to my father's unit, and my father took it home and went to see it when the time came. Once I saw my father come home from work and take an envelope out of his pocket, I jumped on my feet and shouted, "I want Aunt Lan's ticket", but my father waved at me and said to my mother: "This time it is not a ticket, it is a letter, please go to her house for a light meal." "Aunt Lan and Aunt Yue both called my father Tianyan brother, and called my mother Liu Sanjie, or simply third sister, because my mother was the third in her mother's family. Later, I learned that it was Aunt Lan and the famous actor, that is, Jinshan who played Paul, who got married, the wedding had been held earlier, and then invited my father individually, which should be a kind of emphasis on worldly friendship. That day, her father brought back a bottle of wine and said that Lan Mei (as he always called Sun Weishi) told him that premier Zhou had given it to her, and that a few days later, when the family came to visit, my father triumphantly opened the bottle of wine to drink together. Once again, my father came home, brought back the ticket given by Aunt Lan, smiled and said to me, "All for you!" "I took a look at it, it was three movie theater tickets, what's going on?" It turned out that Aunt Lan put her children's drama "Little White Rabbit" arranged on the stage, which was made into a stage art film by the China News Documentary Film Studio, and I went to the Xinjiekou Cinema with two classmates, which turned out to be a reception before the official release, and we were so happy! Although the film was shot by the new film, it was not a stereotypical record of the drama stage, but a three-dimensional panorama was built in the studio, and the film language was fully used, pushing and pulling, subjective and objective shots and empty shots were used skillfully and fluently; large panoramas, panoramas, medium and close-ups, close-ups, close-ups, close-ups, and large close-ups were just right; montage editing, natural blending. "Little White Rabbit" is based on the original work of Soviet writer Mikhalkov, the first children's drama in New China, the plot is vivid and humorous, full of educational significance, the scene is beautiful, pleasing to the eye. At that time, the children's drama group was still a branch of the China Youth Art Theater, which was separated in 1956 to form the China Children's Art Theater, and the later rehearsals of "Qiao Daughter-in-law" and "Ma Lanhua" were actually carried forward in the style of "Little White Rabbit". When I came home from watching the movie "Little White Rabbit", I wrapped my father in pajamas, and then used two towels to make two long ears for myself, jumping around the house, and heard my father say to my mother: "Lan Mei has been acting in movies in Shanghai since she was fifteen years old. "It's a pity that Aunt Lan didn't direct the film again.
Aunt Lan once again gave a ticket, which was her famous play "Minister Chincha" directed by Gogol, and I happily went with my mother to the special theater of the China Youth Arts Theater on the corner of Dongdan to watch. What is particularly impressive is that at the end of the whole play, the stage and the stage are laughing, and suddenly a character says loudly: "What are you laughing at?" Laugh at yourself! All the characters on the stage froze there in different postures, and the audience on the stage was also stunned, and the audience applauded warmly. Coincidentally, my little brother Liu Xinhua was admitted to the Department of Russian Language and Literature of Peking University cao Jinghua as the head of the department at that time, and Aunt Yue returned from studying in the Soviet Union and was assigned to the Russian Department of Peking University as a lecturer, just to teach my little brother, so under the influence of my little brother, I was fascinated by Russian and Soviet literature and art. My brother told me that the great Russian dramatist Stanislavsky created a dramatic genre that has a profound impact on modern theater in the world, that is, the experiential school, which requires the director to guide the actors, find the seeds related to the role from the self-heart, sprout and blossom, experience the inner activities of the characters, and then externalize them into the body language to create an artistic image of flesh and blood. Aunt Lan, she went to the Soviet Union in 1939 to study drama, Stanislavsky just died in 1938, and her disciple Leslie Fanggang, Aunt Lan became a student of Lesli, so it can be said that the desperiential drama system is the true transmission.
What deeply influenced me was aunt Lan's Chekhov famous play "Uncle Vanya", which was also watched with my mother at the Qingyi Theater with a free ticket. When you watch it, you have feelings, after watching the regurgitation of several days in a row, you have a feeling, as the years go by, and then recall the spiritual nourishment and aesthetic enlightenment given by that performance, you feel that it is a sweet spring that you have rarely encountered in your life, and you can sip it to this day. The stage picture has a full sense of oil painting, not the mood of the European Renaissance, and does not contain the modernist elements that later swept Europe and the United States, but is the civilian realistic style of the Russian touring exhibition painters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is divorced from religion and nobility, and is in line with the cognition of "life is beauty" of the aesthetician Chernyshevsky, who was the most influential in that period. The provincial farm where Uncle Vanya and his niece Sonia live, shown in the play, is a quiet and simple pastoral life, which was originally full of interest and poetry, but because of the arrival of her sister's ex-husband and her wife Yelena, it has formed a vulgar invasion, life is beautiful, but vulgarity corrodes life and makes it unbeautiful. Uncle Vanya, who had admired his brother-in-law who lived in Petersburg, looked at him from a distance and thought he was a genius, but when he got close to him, he saw through not only a mediocre talent, but also a vulgar and despicable little man who was content with getting something for nothing. The whole play does not create a sharp dramatic conflict, the conflict between the characters is only at the psychological level, it is difficult to fully interpret the psychological conflict, which all depends on Aunt Lan's guidance to the actors. At that time, the actors, especially Uncle Vanya played by Jin shan, got the true biography of Aunt Lan's Steini drama system, and the process of inner collapse was carried out in a meticulous way, which convinced the audience, and then Uncle Vanya suddenly took the pistol that was originally used as a decoration from the wall and slammed it at the hypocrite professor, and the audience would feel that "if it was I could not bear it." But Chekhov did not let the vile villain die, but returned to Petersburg with his new wife. In the last scene, Uncle Vanya finally endured the fate and returned to normalcy, and the life of the manor worked hard to mend the broken cracks to continue the inherent simplicity of beauty. I remember the last show was that Vanya sat at her desk to settle the account, and her niece Sonia crouched next to him, leaned her head on her uncle's lap, and said the last line of longing for a better future, the curtain slowly closed, and the rhythm of the Russian trichord outside the set window still penetrated the curtain faintly, is this a drama? It's poetry! The performance of "Uncle Vanya" directed by Aunt Lan is the original presentation of the Stanley performance system in China, which plays a very important demonstration role in the later development of new Chinese drama art, And jinshan later put him in the direction of the director's inspiration to go deep into the heart of the character, find the process of running through the action and the highest task, show it in front of the audience in different levels, record it in detail, and form a work "The Creation of a Role", which not only has a great influence in China, but also attracted attention in Eastern Europe at that time. Polish translations have been produced.
In the summer of 1956, Aunt Lan left Qingyi and went to the newly established Central Experimental Drama Theater, the director of which was the old dramatist Ouyang Yuqian, and Aunt Lan was the general director. At the new theater, she still sends tickets to my father from time to time. According to the playwright Yue Ye's script, she directed "With Happiness and Suffering", although she left Qingyi, "Tonggan and Bitterness" performed many times in qingyi theater, at that time, whenever I passed the qingyi theater near the intersection of Dongdan road, I would see a large poster erected outside the theater, with the red plum blooming on the old plum branch as the background, and the title of the play was very eye-catching. I'd love to see this play because it's a localized, multi-act play directed by Aunt Lan on the principles of the Stanley system. But my father didn't let me see it, he went to see it with my mother, and from the conversation after watching the play, I somewhat understood the reason why my father didn't let me see it. Later, I looked up Yue Ye's script. The content of this play did have a certain sensitivity at that time, writing about a cadre who had been promoted to a fairly high position after the founding of the People's Republic of China, before he joined the revolution, his parents arranged an arranged marriage, married a girl with no culture in the countryside, he later divorced, and formed a good relationship with a red-faced confidant who had knowledge in the revolutionary ranks. Such a character experience is actually nothing, but the playwright has concluded the following plot: the cadre went to the countryside to guide the work, and met the ex-wife of a rural women cadre who had grown into a conscious and capable cadre, which surprised him and admired him. In order to promote the sharp and complex development of the plot, the script also writes that the cadre's mother has been taken care of and supported by his ex-wife, and the ex-wife has been hiding the fact that she has been divorced in order not to let her mother-in-law's emotions be destroyed, so that the cadre went to the countryside to return to her hometown to guide the work, and his mother also thought that she had come to reunite with her daughter-in-law. Moreover, under the premise of this misunderstanding, the cadre's ex-wife and mother, because of the reason that the playwright had to set up, came to the cadre's home in the city, and the mother-in-law felt that the new wife married by the cadre was the second room, and you think how embarrassed the cadre's red face confidant was! Although organizing theatrical conflict in this way can spark sparks on the stage, it will inevitably lead to controversy among the audience. Of course, the whole drama conveys the positive theme that revolutionary couples should share weal and woe with the love and preaching of the old cadres who are rooted in the countryside first and marry first and fall in love later, and can also be regarded as a complete comedy. It is said that after watching the performance, Ms. Zhang Ying, who also worked next to Premier Zhou and could enter and leave the residence of Premier Zhou Zhongnanhai Xihua Hall, choked on Aunt Lan in front of Premier Zhou in front of Premier Zhou. She is about the same age as Aunt Lan, and she also performed on stage when she was young, and later worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and she has been a leader of the Chinese Dramatists Association for a long time. Zhang Ying believes that this script should not be put on the stage, the content is not healthy, Aunt Lan scolded her: how is it unhealthy to show the complexity of life and destiny? You're right! Premier Zhou advised both of them to calm down and have something to say.
Aunt Lan and Zhang Ying were both more than twenty years older than me, and I was their junior, but in 1986, I was appointed executive deputy editor-in-chief of the "People's Literature" magazine, and Zhang Ying was then the secretary of the Secretariat of the Drama Association to lead the "Drama Newspaper", which was actually a magazine, and the editorial offices of the two magazines were in an old building in Beijing's Dongsibatiao, and one day the staff of the magazine called me home and said that the "Drama Newspaper" had made a new signboard and was being installed on the sign board of the "People's Literature" magazine outside the building. They think it is very inappropriate, "People's Literature" is a high-standard magazine founded in 1949, "Drama Newspaper" was only founded in 1954 with a low administrative level, they should let them install the "Drama Newspaper" sign board under "People's Literature", and told me Zhang Ying's office phone, urging me to call her immediately, I also called, Zhang Ying listened and laughed: "Just for such a thing!" "We only had a relationship at that time, and then this matter was properly resolved. Thirty years ago, Zhang Ying invited me to her home, that is, the home of Zhang Wenjin, former vice foreign minister and former Chinese ambassador to the United States, and they set up a family banquet to entertain the British female writer Han Suyin, so that I could go to accompany her, but unfortunately the conversation that day could not lead to the drama "Sharing Happiness and Suffering", I really wanted to hear Zhang Ying's high opinion of the play, but she had gone away a few years ago, which became a permanent regret. Recalling the conversation after my parents returned home from watching "Sharing Happiness and Suffering", their general opinion is that they have seen more marriage restructuring caused by revolutionary turmoil, but it seems that there will be side effects when this kind of thing is put on the stage, especially the younger generation watches it, there is no benefit, and their views are similar to Zhang Ying. But in any case, the play "Sharing Happiness and Suffering" is a valuable attempt by Aunt Lan to use the Stanley system to direct local dramas, suggesting that people in the theater industry can now fully collect relevant information and rationally conduct academic discussions on its gains, losses and reference significance.
Later, my father was transferred to teach at the People's Liberation Army Foreign Language Institute in other places, but every time he returned to Beijing during the winter and summer vacations, he could still get a free ticket from Aunt Lan, and I could still enjoy some of her directing works, such as "One Servant and Two Lords" by Goldoni in Italy, in which I saw that she was already trying to break through from the framework of the Stanley system. We all know that there are three major theatrical performance systems in the world, Steiner's experiential school is of course extremely influential, so far on the theatrical stage still has a strong vitality, but there is also the German dramatist Brecht created the performance school, Steiney's experiential school allows actors and audiences to integrate into the stage, it seems to experience a selfless aesthetic journey together, Brinell's performance school emphasizes the "separation effect", the actor on the stage to consciously separate from the role, not to integrate into the role but to control the role, the audience, remember, You are watching the play, do not forget yourself, it is best to watch on the wall, in the current network vocabulary, that is, you are stable "playing soy sauce" and "eating melon masses", watching is a hilarity, from the onlookers to get insight. Another major performance system is represented by Mei Lanfang, a master of Chinese Peking Opera performing arts, that is, a series of stylized dramatic elements, such as the infinite existence of the world, the actors crouching with each other, expressing the boat bumping in the waves, four groups of dragons holding flags or holding knives and guns running on the stage, representing thousands of horses, a horse whip with many spikes, waving means riding a horse, colorful faces, not only symbolizing the good and evil of the characters, but also some have become the unique symbols of specific characters... In 1935, Mei Lanfang visited the Soviet Union, when Stanley and Bushi, who happened to be in Moscow, saw Mei Lanfang's performance, including Meyerhold, another strange talent in the Soviet theater industry at that time, who can be called a pioneer in the Soviet theater industry, as well as Eisenstein and Pudovkin, who were famous in the world at that time, also watched Mei Lanfang's performance, and were greatly amazed, especially seeing Mei Lanfang's rich inner activity with only the orchid fingers of his hands, and the external beauty and inner show were intoxicating. In addition to the breathtaking, the name of the world's third largest performance system, the freehand school, is what they arose.
By the end of the fifties and the beginning of the 1960s, when the Sino-Soviet divide was gradually becoming clearer and sharper, and a certain degree of severance with Soviet culture was inevitable, at first, it was felt that some Soviet writers insisted on the right direction, such as Kochetov, especially his 1958 novel "The Brothers of Yersov", exposed the social shortcomings of the post-Stalin era, attacked revisionist tendencies, so the novel was adapted into a drama, and Aunt Lan naturally became the most suitable director. She also participated in the adaptation of the script, but since then she has not performed in public, only performed internally, and my family has not received a ticket to see it. The materials on this drama should be collected extensively, sorted out and analyzed while some of the old people involved in the compilation and directing of this drama are still there, so as to explore how Chinese drama (which also covers other aspects of Chinese literature and art) has gone from advocating, copying, tangling, cutting, and finally parting ways with Soviet culture in the process of development.
The play "Black Slave Hate" premiered in 1961
The last time I got a ticket for Aunt Lan was in 1962, and I watched her directed "Black Slave Hate". In 1852, the American female writer Mrs. Stowe wrote the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", which described the tragic fate of black people under slavery. In 1901, Lin Qinnan collaborated with people who were familiar with the Western language to translate the novel in Mandarin, named "Black Slave Wu Tianlu". In June 1907, the Chunliu Society, organized by Ouyang Yuqian, Zeng Xiaogu and Uncle Li, premiered a five-act new play adapted from it in Japan, and at the end of the same year, Wang Zhongsheng of the Shanghai Chunyang Society performed this play in Shanghai. Although Li Shutong, Zeng Xiaogu and others have previously performed "La Traviata", the script is directly translated from French, and only one scene has been performed, while "Black Slave Wu Tianlu" is Ouyang Yuqian's original script adapted from the original work, presented in five acts with beginning and end, so theater historians have taken 1907 as the year of the official birth of Chinese drama, and regard "Black Slave Wu Tianlu" as the originator of modern Chinese drama, and today, it has been 112 years. In fact, the main tone of Mrs. Stowe's novel is mournful and sentimental, and when Ouyang Yuqian wrote the screenplay and the Chunliu Society and the Chunyang Society performed, they all integrated the anger of the darkness of reality in that historical period, so they emphasized "Wu Tian", and in 1961, Ouyang Yuqian rewrote the script again, and then changed from hoping for a fair tone given by The Heavens to emphasizing the "hatred" of the oppressors by the black slaves, which was inevitable and necessary in the context of the time.
In 1961, Ouyang Yuqian was still alive, and was the director of the Experimental Drama Theater, when he was seventy-two years old, Aunt Lan was born more than thirty years later than him, when he was only forty years old, directing the plays of such a Chinese drama founder and the elder predecessor, and under the situation of that era, the pressure felt must not be small. The ideological direction of the repertoire is clear, and there is no difficulty in interpretation, the difficulty is how to grasp the art, and then deal with this play with the number of ways to direct "Uncle Vanya", obviously it is not done, we must boldly break through, create a new road, and make it shine new brilliance in art. Before the curtain, my expectations for the stage were still stuck in the mentality of watching "Uncle Vanya" and "One Servant and Two Lords", but after the opening, I felt that the style was new, and it was a new typhoon that was no longer stuck to the Stanley system. In 2018, I saw an interview with Tian Chengren, an old actor of the National Drama Theatre of China (formed by the merger of the Central Experimental Drama Theater and the China Youth Art Theater) on TV, talking about an experience of performing "Black Slave Hate" fifty-seven years ago, the original rehearsal of this play, the protagonist chose another actor who is also quite senior, fat and strong in line with the description of the original novel, but the director how to feel wrong, let it stop, at that time in the theater, Aunt Lan rehearsed the play, people in the theater can go to a glance, Tian Chengren is no exception, Hiding in a corner to watch, did not expect to be seen by Aunt Lan at a glance, he pointed out that he was asked to enter the rehearsal space, play a paragraph for other actors to see, Tian Chengren said that he shyly escaped that day, "Black Slave Hate" also stopped, after about half a month, only to open the rehearsal again, the theater announced the role assignment, male no. 1 black slave Tom - Tian Chengren! It can be seen that in those days of suspension, Aunt Lan has been seeking novelty on the stage, it is said that the thin and tall Tian Chengren does not conform to the appearance of Tom in the original work, but this time she does not seek to resemble, and even does not require pure experience to find "seeds" and "motivations", she has absorbed a large number of the characteristics of the Brinell system expressionism, in the character standing posture, dynamics, and interlacing, matching, interaction with other characters, the pursuit of an exciting sense of sculpture, stage art design is no longer the pursuit of oil painting, but more with the lighting outline, Moving, changing to create an atmosphere, the stage surface is often "blank", there is a big freehand fun, so that the audience uses their imagination to enrich the eyes to see. In general, I think that "Black Slave Hate" directed by Aunt Lan, between "table" (external) and "acting" (inner), between realism and virtuality, between poetry and political theory, after repeated and meticulous carving - another actor Shi Weijian recalled that in the rehearsal, she asked the actors to be fuller than the last time in each row - hard and brave to achieve a balance. In order to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese drama and the 46th anniversary of the performance of "Black Slave Hate", Beijing staged "Wu Tian", written by Yu Rongjun and directed by Chen Yiyi, which is a very meaningful historical echo.
In 1964, Aunt Lan went deep into Daqing, the oil base at that time, ate and lived with the workers and families there, and in 1965 wrote the drama "The Rising Sun", directed by Jinshan, and performed in Beijing in the first half of 1966, which was sensational and well received, which should be her masterpiece of striving to open a new chapter in Chinese drama. But since 1963 she has not been in contact with my parents, and I have not received a ticket to Aunt Lan's play. I regret that I did not buy a ticket to see "The Rising Sun" in the first half of 1966, and now it has become a desperate sound, leaving my imagination in vain.
I hope that people will stop consuming aunt Lan, that is, Sun Weishi, and the tragedy of her unnatural death, but will treat her as an outstanding drama director in China, face up to her value in the history of Chinese theater, and get the mirror and motivation to promote the continued development of Chinese drama art from the collection and discussion of the repertoire she directed (it is said that there are sixteen in total).
May 11, 2019 Beijing Green Leaf Residence