In 1998, Lin Zhaohua, the chief director on the sickbed, had a sudden whim in the torment of waiting for his illness to recover, and made a postmodern collage of the masterpieces of Chekhov and Beckett, "Three Sisters" and "Waiting for Godot". As a result, this epoch-making experimental drama was born on the stage and is also considered to be the pinnacle of Lin Zhaohua's dramatic experiment.
But that year, after the play was staged, it immediately suffered a box office "Waterloo". The Capitol Theatre, which can seat thousands of people, sold only a few dozen tickets for the least one, and the original 30 performances were reduced to 12. That year, Fukang had just come out, a car of 180,000. Lin Zhaohua has been chanting since then, for this play, he and the dancer Yi Liming, one person lost a Fukang.
Lin Zhaohua
In the dramatic environment of 20 years ago, collages such as "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" undoubtedly faced various controversies. In addition to the dismal box office, the reputation of the industry is also mixed, and the voices of incomprehension abound. The commentary on "Chinese Drama" described the play as "unable to evoke a warm theatrical effect."
But there are also many supporters. Yu Hua is one of them. After watching the play, he wrote a long article praising Lin Zhaohua, "Placing Chekhov's melancholy beauty and Beckett's sad vulgarity on the same stage and at the same time, which is surprising and gratifying."
Wang Hui, the editor-in-chief of "Reading" at that time, also specially planned a special topic for this play, and held a symposium for this play for the first time in the world. In the editor's afterword, he wrote: "Lin Zhaohua seems to be telling us: those who are willing to wait to stay, and those who do not want to wait, please leave."
After 20 years, Lin Zhaohua once again rearranged "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot". The main actors of that year were Pu Cunxin and Chen Jianbin. Today, it has been replaced by Zhang Ruoyun, a popular student, and Cui Yongping, who is known to the public for winning the "Super Speaker" championship.
On December 14th and 15th, the rehearsal of "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" will be premiered nationwide at the Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre, followed by performances in Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Beijing and other cities.
The Connection of Two Classics: A Kind of "Hopelessness"
How exactly will Chekhov's "Three Sisters" and Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" be connected in one work?
Lin Zhaohua's "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" is a theme about "waiting". "Three Sisters" is "waiting for a better tomorrow", and "Waiting for Godot" is waiting for the "tomorrow will come" Godot.
Chekhov's three sisters were famous and lived a life of life in a small provincial town far from Moscow. Every day, the three sisters looked at their hometown of Moscow with sorrow, dreaming of going to Moscow one day.
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the culmination of absurdist drama, is about two tramps who wait for the arrival of a man named Godot for years, passing the time in boredom. No one knows why they are waiting, and no one knows when they will wait.
On stage, the "home" of the three sisters is an island in the middle of the water. Outside the isolated island, under a tree, two tramps were there waiting for Godot.
The protagonists of the two plays, living in their own plots, are separated by water, and the lines are interlaced: when the little sister Irina in "Three Sisters" shouts loudly, "Go to Moscow!" Go to Moscow! Go to Moscow! Vladimir in Waiting for Godot immediately picked up the stubble: "Stop wasting time with empty words!" Take this opportunity to do something! ”
It's easy for people on the island to get out and easy for people outside the island to get in. They look at each other from a distance, and they mirror each other, illuminating the doom that modern people are most likely to fall into. They are all dreamers, waiting and waiting with hope, but without any action.
Lin Zhaohua said that what "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" expresses is exactly such a "hopeless hope".
Stills from the old version of "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot"
The handover of two generations of actors: Zhang Ruoyun took over two roles of Pu Cunxin
The old version of "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" brought together a group of powerful actors. The eldest sister Olga in "Three Sisters" is played by Gong Lijun, the "big green coat" of Beijing Renyi, who is also Pu Cunxin's partner for many years; the second sister Martha is played by Chen Jin, who played Chen Daoming's wife in the movie "Tangshan Earthquake"; Lin Cong, who plays the younger sister Irina, is Lin Zhaohua's daughter, and she is better known as the director of the "Family with Children" series of TV series. The "Three Sisters" in the new version are all young actors from Lin Zhaohua's studio, played by Liu Yang, Zhou Qingyun and Chen Yadi respectively.
The most concerned among the actors is undoubtedly Zhang Ruoyun, who took over the role of Pu Cunxin that year. Pu Cunxin had previously had two roles in the play: Vladimir was a light-hearted, sometimes deep tramp; and Versinin was a depressed middle-aged man caught in the quagmire of life. Not only is the amount of lines the largest among the actors in the whole play, but the contrast between the two roles is extremely large, which is extremely challenging for the actors.
Pu Cunxin once said that "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot" is "a bold and adventurous stage creation by Lin Zhaohua, who wants to test himself, test our actors, and of course test the audience."
It is said that Lin Zhaohua selected Zhang Ruoyun in a bunch of actor photos. After meeting, the two sides hit it off. The director's initial evaluation of Zhang Ruoyun was "quite handsome and sound ok".
During the rehearsal process, the director was quite satisfied with Zhang Ruoyun: "This child is very good, he is a star, and he has no shelf, and his image and voice can be." The acting is particularly natural and simple, and it is very suitable for this role."
Zhang Ruoyun
The following is an interview Zhang Ruoyun gave at the rehearsal hall:
Reporter: How did you come to perform a drama?
Zhang Ruoyun: When the people in my team inadvertently talked about this, they didn't think I would be particularly interested. Because two TV series have been set up before, there are more than two months in between. You can pick up commercial movies, TV series, and also have good books and teams. The team will feel that I will be more interested in those.
I remember that the day was the end of the work everyone went to eat hot pot, when it came to the drama, my meal has been asking, when to rehearse, when to act, true or false, reliable, flickering. I've been chasing them for a week since. It's just a huge excitement!
Reporter: Why are you so excited?
Zhang Ruoyun: When I heard the director looking for me, or "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot", I felt that this was the place where the actor really expanded himself.
In the drama, this play is also the most unprofessional one, and I can completely unload all the baggage and focus only on the performance itself. The form of drama is also one of the reasons.
The schedule after the drama is a relatively heavy TV series, which is more difficult. I don't want to arrange a difficult TV series in the middle, two difficult jobs together. In particular, I think that making TV dramas is a process that consumes more than accumulation, and there are fewer and fewer new things. We rehearse here every day, and every day we have a new harvest. This process will not wear out and consume me, but will make me stronger.
Tiredness is bearable, mainly because I am afraid of emptiness, afraid of being hollowed out. Filming film and television, at my age, can not be too slow, too idle. But if it's always full, what do I do to act? Where is my life, my understanding?
In fact, I thought about this arrangement last year. I took over "Qing Yu Nian" at that time, and I had to shoot three seasons in five years, and I calculated that one and a half of the five years were shooting this. I joked with my friends that I didn't expect an actor to get a five-year fixed meal ticket. But that's half the meal ticket. At that time, I thought that if I could often go to the drama in the rest of the time, and then spend the rest of the time to see what kind of script I was interested in, I would start purely by interest. I can think of such a plan! But think about it, and don't plan that much. As I was talking, this thing came.
Reporter: Have you seen the drama of the director before?
Zhang Ruoyun: When I was in school, I watched the video of "Absolute Signal", which the teacher showed. I am from film school, and the faculty members in our class seem to prefer avant-garde dramas, but there are very few realistic plays.
At that time, after reading it, to be honest, I knew half of it. Including this re-watching of the video of "Three Sisters Waiting for Godot", it is also half-understood. When I came to rehearse, I understood more every day and felt it in the process of acting. I felt that if I didn't play this play, I probably would never understand it.
For example, my first day was to think that the two people in "Waiting for Godot" were a "no brain" and a "unhappy". Estragon (Cui Yongping) is stupid, and Vladimir (Zhang Ruoyun) has been intimidating him. Now I feel that these two people are inseparable, and they can't live without each other. Because people are too lonely living in the world, they are each other's pastime, but also rely on each other. That's what I'm thinking about now. Maybe not too accurate, but every day I feel something new.
Reporter: What is the difference between acting in a TV series?
Zhang Ruoyun: It's completely different! Now that I'm here every day, I feel very happy. But I was particularly mournful a few days ago, and my mood changed very quickly, probably because I had been thinking about "Three Sisters" the other day, and these two days I was thinking about "Godot". As an actor, it's all bliss. Although I haven't been on stage for many years, a little rusty, and the difficulty of my lines, I get a confirmation that I myself am not detached from the most essential thing of acting.
Yesterday, the big director praised me, and he said that my performance was particularly simple. I think it's just a listen! But I think that if you act in TELEVISION, it is easy to form a shell, thinking that you can act, thinking that you are acting, a stereotyped thing. Because there are so many places where the camera can help you, there are too many people helping you carry the palanquin, which can deceive the audience. But deceiving the audience doesn't mean you can fool yourself, if you once you've formed yourself.
The joy of rehearsing here is also from the essence. On my first day, we made games first, first in physical contact, so that the actors could quickly get acquainted. Everything started in a particularly rustic way, and I found something new in the process of being rustic, rather than saying that everyone came to teach me some skills on stage. The skills of the stage and the skills of film and television are the same, they are all shells, and the actors always have to start from the actors themselves, from the performance itself.