origin
There is a riddle that goes: "From a distance it looks like a temple, and up close you look at the lights." Inside the people shouted, outside laughed. ”
The riddle is the "shadow play", and these four sentences vividly write the lively scenes during the shadow puppet show.
Legend has it that shadow puppetry began in the Western Han Dynasty. Lady Li fell ill and died, and Emperor Wu of Han was deeply missed. There was a warlock Li Shaoweng who lit a lamp at night, set up a tent, let the emperor sit aside, and then cut the paper man and performed in the tent. Looking at it from a distance, as if it were Lady Li's appearance, Emperor Wu of Han looked at Long Yan and was overjoyed. Thus was born the shadow puppetry.
Tangshan shadow puppetry used to be called Luanzhou shadow puppetry. During the Ming Dynasty, Huang Suzhi, a xiucai of luanzhou city in Bei'an, was discouraged after repeated attempts, so he went to Shenyang to teach in a sitting hall. He missed his hometown, so he carved shadow people, wrote film scrolls (scripts), invited hometown film craftsmen to form a film class, and went to the northeast to sing shadow puppet plays.
At the beginning, the audience called this kind of shadow puppet play "Xuan roll", because the shadow craftsmen all followed the shadow scrolls compiled by Huang Suzhi to teach people to cultivate virtue and abandon evil and turn to good. The "Xuan scroll" shadow puppet play first sang popular in the northeast, and then returned to Guannei, and soon became popular in Jingdong, so it was named Luanzhou Shadow Puppet Play. When the actors perform, they have a unique style in terms of singing style, shadow person modeling, and manipulation skills.
Luanzhou shadow puppetry is a variation of the Central Plains shadow puppetry. In that year, jin soldiers defeated the Northern Song Dynasty and captured the second emperor of Hui Qin, and at the same time, they abducted shadow puppet artists to the north. After the Ming Dynasty moved its capital to Beijing, Gyeonggi's economy and culture flourished, and shadow puppetry developed. Transformed by Huang Suzhi, he absorbed the "cavity rhyme". Luanzhou shadow puppetry, which is very popular with the people, sang into Tangshan in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty with the rise of Tangshan, an important industrial town in the north, so it is also known as Tangshan shadow puppetry. After the founding of New China, Tangshan shadow puppetry reached its peak.
perform
Tangshan shadow puppet performances have three forms: one is to sing the hall, that is, to do special performances for large households; the other is to charter venues, that is, to rent theaters, or perform in tea shops and restaurants, and sell tickets for fees; the third is to set up a photo studio, that is, to sing wild stage shadows. The riddle at the beginning of this article is about the situation of singing the shadow of the wild stage.
To sing Tangshan shadow puppetry, there must be a shadow screen and a light source. Set up a photo platform, set up a rectangular white curtain on the high table in front of the platform, and hang a light above the curtain. The line trick (manipulation) shadow artist plays with the shadow man on the curtain and performs the story. The lighting illuminates the shadow puppet on the curtain, and the audience sees the lifelike shadow puppet play.
In this process, the singer brings emotions into it, and according to the plot, the characters read and sing.
On the left side of the curtain is the "upline", he is the palm of the film class, according to the development of the plot, constantly preparing the shadow people used and the "masonry" (props); the right side is the "downline", with the "upper line" to manipulate the shadow people, perform the story, and be responsible for the shadow scroll page.
Singing, the story is touching, the line is wonderful, and the audience under the stage is obsessed with it, and even follows the fate of the characters in the shadow puppet play. Therefore, there is a folk proverb that says: Donkey skin rebellion, film fans boil their eyes; fake the truth, but it is all illusion.
Singing Tangshan shadow puppets, shadow artists have to "pinch their throats" to sing, which is a sign that Tangshan shadow puppet plays are different from other shadow puppet plays. Pinching his throat instead of the original tone, singing in a false tone, the voice is more melodious. This enables the seven-year-old and eighty-year-old shadowmaker to sing the voice of youth and tenderness, so that they can eat this meal for the rest of their lives.
The shadow puppet play opened the stage with a three-way gong and drum to tell and urge the audience to come to the performance. When the performance ends, the scroll is "poked" on the curtain to tell the audience that "tonight's performance is over". Sometimes the audience is fascinated and does not disperse, and the film class has to take down the film volume and re-perform "a window", which is called "returning to the drum".
role
Like other operas, the tangshan shadow puppetry industry is divided into birth, dan, purity, and ugliness.
The life line is divided into old students and young students. The old student's name is "Hair", and his voice is mellow and calm. The shadow puppet king Zhang Shengwu sang "Hair". Xiaosheng is called "Sheng'er", and his voice is bright and crisp.
Dan Xing is called "Xiao'er", and is divided into Lao Dan, QingYi, Hua Dan, Dao Ma Dan, etc., performing a variety of female roles from young girls to old women. Except for Lao Dan's voice, which is slightly old, the rest of the "children" are all delicate and exciting, and they are pleasant to the ear.
The net line is called "big child" and is divided into "mao net" and "old seat". "Mao Jing" plays a young man with a bold and rough personality or a middle-aged and elderly man who is just and upright, such as Li Kui and Bao Zheng. "Old Seat" plays treacherous and cunning traitors, such as Cao Cao and Dong Zhuo.
Ugly behavior is called "peanut", which refers to the character of funny personality, obedient behavior or bad heart, improper style, men and women, young and old can play. The singing voice is humorous and funny, often making people laugh.
Tangshan shadow puppet performance, in addition to performing the story according to the "shadow scroll", but also gag jokes. At this time, there will be two shadow figures on the curtain, one large and one small, the big one is called "big hand fight", and the small one is called "small ball house", which belongs to the clown. "Big Hand" has an exaggerated fan-sized hand, swinging and swinging, he and "Little Ball House" perform a funny story, and the audience laughs forward and backward.
Filmmaker production
The shadow people of Tangshan shadow puppetry have a facial character, and they know their hearts when they look at their faces.
The shadow puppet is divided into two parts: head stubble (head) and poke (body), which are kept separately when not performing.
The material used to make a shadow puppet is a good donkey skin, and there are roughly six processes: First, process the donkey skin. Put the peeled donkey skin in cool water, soak it for three or four days, and use a spatula to scrape the donkey's hair and residual meat grease to make it as clean as paper. After drying, brush with glutinous rice juice, straighten and flatten, dry on the kang, then position the skin: the skin of the stubble should be thin and transparent, the skin of the upper body should be thin and soft, and the thick and hard skin should be used for the lower body. This treatment is not only beautiful, but also stable. Second, depict the image. Place the leather on top of the base and draw the silhouette of the shadow man. Third, carving. This is the most critical step in the production of filmmakers. You can carve several skins at a time, commonly known as "a knife down". Fourth, coloring. Draw the color with reference to the shadow figure. Fifth, paint. To increase the luster and transparency of the shadow person, so that it is not mothed by insects. Sixth, binding. A shadow figure is composed of stubble, upper body, lower body, arms (upper arm, lower arm, hand, a total of 6 pieces), legs (a total of 2 pieces), fixed with a line, and leaving room for movement. Then add wire to the neck and hands, and add sorghum stalks to the wire, which can be used for performance.
Each film class has a special photo box for shadow people and shadow rolls. A shadow box generally stores about 100 pokes and hundreds of stubbles, as well as realistic carved tables and chairs benches, cars, boats, cars, tigers, dogs, marble mountains, swords, guns and swords.
develop
The Tangshan shadow puppet play that the people like to hear has gone through ups and downs along the way.
From the eighteenth to the nineteenth year of Qing Jiaqing (1813~1814), the White Lotus Sect Revolt occurred in Jiluyu, and the Qing government designated shadow puppet artists as "hanging lantern bandits" and killed them.
In the twentieth year of Qing Jiaqing (1815), the White Lotus Sect was raided, and there were 86 old and young men in the Wang clan of Shifokou Village in Luanzhou, 28 major offenders, 5 people who died in prison, more than doubled, and those over 16 years old were sent to Xinjiang, Yungui, and Liangguang as slaves. The Jiaqing Emperor believed that the shadow people in the shadow puppet play would transform into heavenly soldiers and heavenly generals to help the rebel army eliminate the Qing Dynasty. He reigned for 25 years and issued five edicts prohibiting luanzhou shadow puppetry.
In 1900, when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi issued an edict: "The state is in great trouble, the people have no conscience, if you act again, light a fire and burn the box." ”
But the things that ordinary people like are inexhaustible. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Luanzhou shadow puppetry immediately appeared unprecedented prosperity, the class community rose, the shadow craftsmen came out, and the good shadow drama sang red everywhere. Beijing, Tianjin, the whole of North China, until dark to watch Luanzhou shadow puppetry as a pleasure.
When the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out, in addition to singing traditional film scrolls, the shadow puppet theater class also compiled many new revolutionary film scrolls that publicized "resisting Japan and saving the country, reducing rents and interest rates, fighting local tycoons and dividing up the land, and joining the army to participate in the war."
After the founding of New China, Tangshan shadow puppetry has been greatly developed. In the eastern Hebei region, almost every village has a shadow class, and every district will engage in performances, men, women and children are humming shadow puppet plays, and shadow puppet tones can be heard everywhere. Tangshan shadow puppetry is even more far away, performing abroad.
With the development of science and technology, the shadow artists have improved the lighting and shadow people of shadow puppetry. Now the shadow person can blink beads, can change his face, as if he were a real person. The flames seem to be burning, the running water rolls up the waves, the fish can swing their tails, the dogs can spit out their tongues, and everything seems to be true - "the donkey skin really made the opposite"! In recent years, Tangshan shadow puppetry has been somewhat sluggish, but with the return of traditional culture, I believe this phenomenon will definitely change.
(Liu Zhenguang/Article published in Yanzhao Metropolis Daily, August 9, 2019, 14th edition)