Teacher Mei Lanfang taught me to act
Chen Bohua
Mei Lanfang, Chen Bohua
The first National Opera Observation Conference was held in Beijing in October 1952, and it was in this performance that I played "Cosmic Front" and Mei Lanfang met.
Although this play was processed and sorted out by the Central and Southern District Opera Delegation, and was rehearsed by the head of the delegation, Comrade Cui Wei, as the director, after all, it was a representative work of far-reaching influence of the "Mei Pai" repertoire, and let me perform in front of Comrade Mei Lanfang and many seniors in the opera circle, which was really considered to be "Banmen Axe", but after the performance that night, the first person to go backstage to congratulate me was Teacher Mei. I was both excited and encouraged, and I realized that the teacher was humble and courteous, and was good at encouraging backwards, and in his enthusiastic encouragement, he was often very earnestly induced, and I often received great lessons from his praise when I later studied the performance problem of "Cosmic Blade".
Cosmic Blade
The teacher told me: This is a singing play in Green Clothes, but it needs to use a lot of figures to express Zhao Yanrong's complex mood, and it is impossible to bear without the exercise of basic work. I didn't understand this very deeply until 1956, when I was studying at the actors' workshop, when I was organized to summarize the performance experience of several plays, I specifically analyzed the waist skills, leg skills, water sleeves, eyes and vocal methods... It made me realize how important the basic training of the Cobain era should be for stage performance! This is just a literary drama, no waist and legs can not pass, if "Guifei Drunk" or "Second Degree Mei", it is more important to practice the basic skills, if you encounter roles such as Mu Guiying and Fan Lihua, there is no solid foundation, and you can only be deterred.
Would we rather be an actor with a half-bottle of vinegar, or would we be a performing artist who can do it all? Teacher Mei's speech was thought-provoking enough, and I often stressed this point when I talked about the performing arts with young comrades in the future.
Mei Lanfang and Chen Bohua discuss fingering
The teacher also jokingly said to me: You can learn my Cosmic Blade, but don't change your nipples into mute slaves. I don't think it's a joke, it's a discussion of the laws of artistic creation, and it also breaks a truth about artistic creation. Any creation should have the artist's own creation, showing different styles. Even the exact same subject matter as "Cosmic Front" can produce different artistic ideas and obtain different artistic effects through creative labor. Whether it is a young Zhao Yanrong, or a slightly older Zhao girl, whether it is a nursing lady or a mute slave, they can all appear in the same subject matter, but they should create their own personality characteristics and show their respective mental states, so that not only will they not be mutually exclusive, but they can learn from each other's strengths, communicate with each other, and make their creations more perfect under mutual inspiration. The most unproductive approach to artistic creation is the removal of raw and stripped and the simulation of a thousand people.
A good teacher can often give a little guidance in the most important places, so that the recipient can get a sudden and enlightened guidance. When I asked my teacher for advice, I often got this unexpected gain, which was enough to make me happily grasp his deep meaning. As mentioned earlier, when Zhao Gao asked" "Do I dare to be crazy", I used the figure of a ghost, and the teacher also praised this action, and he said to me in an encouraging tone: You are doing a good job here, because when the nursing mother taught Zhao Yanrong to disfigure her hair, she could not have a complete bottom in her heart about what she should do next, Zhao Gao said a "crazy" word, which inspired her, and also strengthened her courage to pretend to be crazy, so you did this particularly exaggerated action in the hammer of "CrashIng Cang". It shows Zhao Yanrong's wit to pretend to be crazy, which is a very good creation. In fact, although I used this figure, I did not completely design the subtext as the teacher understood, and after his explanation, not only did the people in the play "have a bottom in their hearts", but even I, the actor, felt "bottom in my heart", and when I performed according to this design in the future, I felt very fluent. This is really a subtle, a clever instruction.
(Transferred from Shanghai Drama 1961-09)