On November 7th, the Shanghai Pingtan Troupe will hold a performance for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the troupe in the Cultural Square, where several generations of pingbaper actors will gather together.
Pingtan has been loved by the audience, and has also experienced the low point of loneliness. In the view of Gao Bowen, head of the Shanghai Bomb Evaluation Regiment, the bomb evaluation should be "loud", it should be "just young", and the "style" of Jiangnan culture should be achieved to the extreme.
The "Newsroom" in the Bookstore
In the summer of 1959, the "bomb fever" set off by Shanghai Cultural Square was no less than today's pop singer concert. The Shanghai Bomb Critics Troupe performed two consecutive performances in the Cultural Square, and one ticket was difficult to find, and more than 10,000 people watched the performance.
The pingtan from jiangnan water town is a combination of Suzhou commentary and Suzhou bullet words. Since the late Qing Dynasty was introduced to Shanghai, book farms and tea houses based on performances and bombs have spread throughout the city, and more than a dozen book farms have been opened on Nanjing Road alone. Many famous critics' singing sections have been recorded, radio stations have competed to open aerial bookstores, and the radios in the streets and alleys have day and night strings clanging. By the 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai had become a performance center for pingtan, with a variety of genres.
On November 21, 1951, the well-known Eighteen Artists of Pingtan- Liu Tianyun, Jiang Yuequan, Tang Gengliang, Zhang Hongsheng, Zhang Jianting, Yao Yinmei, Zhou Yunrui, Zhu Huizhen, Xu Xueyue, Chen Xi'an, Zhang Jianguo, Wang Baiyin, Yao Shengjiang, Wu Jianqiu, Han Shiliang, Xie Yujing, Cheng Hongye, and Chen Hongxia broke the portal and formed the first national group in the bomb evaluation industry, the Shanghai Municipal People's Bomb Evaluation Working Group.
Group photo of eighteen artists of the Shanghai Bomb Critics Troupe
On the third day of the establishment of the troupe, eighteen artists rushed to the Zhihuai construction site in Anhui. They ate and lived with the workers and brought back a novella commentary, "We Must Repair the Huai River." This is a record-breaking novella, at that time, with 500 seats in the Cangzhou Book Field, more than a dozen files co-starred, three months a performance, the field was full. They no longer sing the emperor and the general Xiangcaizi, but the stories around them and the melody of the times.
Since then, a batch of famous commentators and well-known actors have successively joined the Shanghai Bomb Critics Troupe, and they have gone deep into factories, rural areas, and troops, or immersed themselves in creating, or adapting novels, or transplanting operas, and produced nearly forty novellas and more than 80 short commentaries such as "Luo Han Qian", "Wang Xiaohe", "Liu Hulan", "Jiangnan Spring Tide", "People Are Strong and Strong", and hundreds of opening songs.
Pingtan was born in Jiangnan, where waterways run rampant and there are many ancient towns. Mr. Storyteller is both a storyteller and a communicator of information. By the 1950s and 1960s, the popular ping-bombs played a role similar to today's "newsrooms." Critics always capture news hotspots with a keen eye, but new policies and news figures on radio and newspapers are quickly cleverly integrated into their programs and spread in communities and rural areas.
In the winter of 1951, Liu Tianyun and Zhang Jianguo sang on the construction site of Zhihuai
How to "Ring"
One day in 1982, Gao Bowen pushed open the door of the Red Star Bookstore on North Sichuan Road for the first time, and the actors on the stage were performing "Pearl Tower". At the end of the scene, the enthusiastic old audience explained to the teenager - listening to the commentary bomb pays attention to five words: reason, detail, fun, strange, and taste. The actors on stage "jump in and out", one moment representing the storyteller, the other representing the audience, and the other representing the third-party judge. Listening to the commentary is like observing a small society... From this day on, Gao Bowen stepped into the world of this square inch of bookshelf.
In 1987, Gao Bowen was admitted to the Shanghai Opera School's evaluation class, which consisted of ten students. He studied under Rao Yichen, Chen Xi'an, Zhao Kaisheng and other famous artists, and became the sixth generation of the traditional bibliography "Pearl Tower".
When I graduated and entered the Shanghai Jury, I was already in a predicament where the listeners were getting older and the bookstore was getting smaller and smaller. Students either went abroad or went to the sea to do business. At that time, Gao Bowen became the "only seedling" left by that bomb evaluation class.
In his memory, in the late 1990s, the commentary gradually came out of the trough, the performances increased, and the creation gradually became active. "Magnolia Blossoms", which carries forward the spirit of self-improvement and self-reliance, "Three Generations of Grandchildren", which shows the fashion of respecting the elderly and respecting the elderly, "Midnight Action", which depicts the struggle against corruption, "Hedong Chincha", "Tanuki Cat for Prince", etc., have been published one after another.
In 2016, Gao Bowen and others adapted Jin Yucheng's novel "Blossoms" into a long commentary, "Gao Bowen Says Flowers". The rumors of the lanes and intersection stalls in the life of the wells in Shanghai have been vividly restored, and the changes of the times have gradually emerged in the flow of years from briquette stove to gas, telephone to bp machine. In the traditional judging performance, the actors go on and off the stage according to the order of each book, and there is basically no stage scheduling. "Gao Bowen Says Flowers" boldly breaks this tradition, and the actor scheduling depends on the needs of the plot, which should be up and down.
"We are no longer sitting on the stage from the beginning to the end, but according to the needs of the characters and the plot, we walk around the stage. Avoid the embarrassment of having to sit in front of the face and stare at nothing when there is no drama. Gao Bowen said.
There is a high-frequency word in "Gao Bowen Says Flowers": "Don't ring". Gao Bowen and the actors of the judging group are thinking about how to make the appraisal "ring" in the moment.
"Ringing" depends on the brilliant repertoire, and on the works of the times. In 2016, the newly created novella "Lin Huiyin" has been well received in recent years on national tours. In 2021, the novella "Battle Without Gun Smoke" once again broke through the traditional formula of the bomb, from listening to the balance of hearing and vision, drawing on the nutrients of movies, music, drama, music and other arts, realizing the free transformation of "one person with multiple corners" and "many people in one corner", and enhancing the audiovisual appeal of the stage. The commentary drama "Medical Saint" has further entered the coliseum.
Gao Bowen believes that no matter how innovative the performance form is, the most important feature of the evaluation bomb cannot be lost: First, it is flexible, and the actor can tell the story and play the role, and "jump in and jump out" in the transformation of time and space. The second is to fully excavate the inner world of the characters. There are "six whites" in the commentary: confession, private white, gollum white, official white, lining white and white, and the three-dimensional and vivid sense of artistic image is highlighted in these different expressions.
Novella "War Without Smoke"
The rhythm is "messy", and that's right
When the bullet "rings", it depends on the audience. What kind of performance can retain the old audience and attract new audiences?
The answer is sometimes unexpected. In May this year, the Shanghai Critics Troupe and its specially invited Jiangsu Pingtan famous artists performed at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, and the first concert of the famous critics called "If Life Is Only like the First Sight" was scheduled for 10:30 p.m. In the past, the jury troupe performed in Beijing, and the audience was mainly middle-aged and elderly, can it be performed so late? Gao Bowen hesitated, but his concerns were quickly dispelled by the full attendance.
At 10:30 p.m. on the night of the performance, more than 1,000 spectators walked into the Concert Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. It was raining heavily outside the theater, the strings inside the theater were clanging, singing in a low voice, and the audience had a dialogue with Bai Suzhen, Jia Baoyu, Cui Yingying, and Yang Yuhuan that traveled through time and space.
When Gao Bowen and the famous commentator Sheng Xiaoyun came to the stage, it was 11:45 p.m., and before the official singing, the two got up like a cross-talk, and integrated the knowledge points of the bomb into the "baggage". "Today, when we come to Beijing, we will give you an extra performance of "The Cause of Laughter." Sheng Xiaoyun said, "'Laughter Karma' is known for its single file. Gao Bowen asked, "What is a single file?" "A single file is a man playing a man and a woman." "Alone? Then I went down. A few words dispelled the fatigue of the audience.
After the two finished their performances, it was already 12:30 midnight. Backstage, Sheng Xiaoyun sighed: "Today's rhythm is a bit chaotic. "That's right!" Gao Bowen laughed. Traditional opera has a routine, and singing to the old audience is naturally very enjoyable, because the actors know where the audience will applaud, where they will hold their breath and listen. And that night, when facing the young audience, the two shook a "big baggage", but there was not much reaction from the stage. In some places, unexpected applause was received.
"Young audiences don't necessarily understand the characteristics of traditional genres such as Jiang and Yu. They told me that they liked this style of judging bullets. We have made the style of Jiangnan culture to the extreme, and the audience feels that it is very beautiful and moving, and interesting. The communication with the audience inspired Gao Bowen. What is even more unexpected is that this traditional repertoire, traditional costumes, and traditional forms of commentary performances have exceeded 25 million hits after being broadcast on the Internet platform.
Comrade Chen Yun once said: "Don't let young people judge bombs, but let young people judge bombs." This sentence often rolls in Gao Bowen's mind: "'On youth' is not blindly pandering, let alone vulgarization, but to study the preferences of different types of audiences, according to their aesthetic and performance habits to 'move'." ”
Gao Bowen and Sheng Xiaoyun performed at the National Centre for the Performing Arts
Not long ago, the Shanghai Critics Troupe opened its normal performance at the Shanghai Yangtze River Theater. Gao Bowen found that whenever he performed traditional plays, there would be more young audiences. What they value is the taste of pure Jiangnan culture. After watching "Pearl Tower", some viewers left a message on Weibo: "Today is really enough to evaluate bomb addiction" and "the voice of Jiangnan culture is too loud."
Although the old plays with "chewiness" are unexpectedly popular, they cannot be read from the script in the face of new audiences. "You can't 'sing to death' in a commentary. Traditional books are mostly about the contradictions and entanglements between people, human feelings, and we can skillfully integrate the fresh elements of current life into gimmicks. When singing, you must have a straight word, but when you speak, you can combine it with your current life. In Gao Bowen's view, the pace of exploration cannot stop.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Chen Junjun Title Image Source: Provided by Shanghai Bomb Critics
Source: Author: Chen Junjun