On December 13, the streets of Beijing were covered with heavy snow. That night, the 2022 class of Chinese opera performance department drama film and television performance class Chinese classic script fragment report performance in the black box theater of the Changping campus of Chinese opera started, the audience can sit on the seat, sit on the ground or stand at will** performance, the atmosphere is warm and warm, full of youthful vitality. The students took turns to perform 6 classic clips of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring", "Home", "Sunrise", "Thunderstorm", "Wilderness" and "Temperament Men and Women".
Ma Jiaqi played Chang Wu in "The Wilderness".
Among them, the one that attracted the audience's attention the most was, of course, Ma Jiaqi, the leader of the youth team of the era who starred in "The Wilderness", who played the sleek and sophisticated Chang Wu in the play, and the subversion of the shape surprised the audience.
In the subsequent performance, Ma Jiaqi appeared in "Thunderstorm" again, playing the eldest young master Zhou Ping;Song Yaxuan, another member of the Times Youth League, also appeared in the fragment of the classic drama "Sunrise" with a subversive image.
In 2022, as the new generation of traffic idols, Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan entered the ** Drama Academy in the attention of the outside world and became a member of the drama, film and television performance class of the 2022 performance department. Now that more than a year has passed, what changes have they made as college students, how has the actor training of Chinese opera made them grow, and how far are they from a truly qualified actor?
With such a question, we went to the scene to watch their performances, and also chatted with the two teenagers backstage, as well as their instructor, Wang Xin, a professor of the Department of Chinese Opera Performance.
On the day of the performance on the 13th, a performance poster was posted outside the theater, and a flower basket sent by fans of Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan was placed. Since it is a final report performance, it does not sell tickets to the public, and most of the audience is from teachers and students in the Chinese opera school.
The backstage before the performance was very busy, although after many rehearsals, the instructor Wang Xin was still not at ease, he came to the backstage an hour before the performance, at this time Ma Jiaqi had changed into a costume, Wang Xin said to Ma Jiaqi, "The shape can be a little rougher." ”
This time, Ma Jiaqi played the role of a broken landlord in his 60s, who is usually greedy for wine and rap, and he will not leave his hand as soon as he appears in the wine jug, wine glass and peanuts. When counting the props, Wang Xin thought that if Ma Jiaqi was asked to carry peanuts directly in his pocket, it would be easy to spill them during the performance, so he trotted all the way back to the office, found a brown paper bag, and put the peanuts in the paper bag, so there was a vivid scene of Ma Jiaqi slowly pulling peanuts from his pocket during the performance.
Ma Jiaqi prepares backstage before the performance.
Big star daughter-in-law, open the door quickly!During the official performance, Ma Jiaqi's "voice" outside the door appeared first, followed by a white hair, wearing a small black hat, and holding a birdcage in his hand.
Stills from Ma Jiaqi's "Wilderness".
Chang Wuye, played by Ma Jiaqi, is not the protagonist in the tragic story of revenge in "The Wilderness", but he also has a rich inner world and a distinct character. On the one hand, although it is now broken, as a former landlord young master, he still retains some of the living Xi of the past, likes to walk birds, drink, and start boasting after drinking a little more than two glasses, which seems to be a funny old man on the surface;On the other hand, he is now living in the Jiao family, and in order to live, he must rely on Jiao's mother, the de facto master of the family, and act as her "eyes" to monitor everything, so he is actually a cunning, snobbish, obscene, and even a bit of an insidious scoundrel in his bones.
Such a character is obviously far away from Ma Jiaqi himself, and it is obviously difficult to act. In the view of teacher Wang Xin, in order to complete the shaping of the character, we must first start with the external image characteristics of the character. For example, how he carried the birdcage, what the posture he walked like, and what his state should be after drinking alcohol all need to be carefully figured out. In this regard, Ma Jiaqi also said, "We have been rehearsing and looking for the feeling of the image", "To portray this character, I think the first thing is to look for his very old (feeling), including the purpose of Chang Wuye himself coming here, you have to conceive the character biography of this person, his previous behavior Xi, how you want to bring it to this scene." ”
Compared with Chang Wuye, the eldest young master Zhou Ping in "Thunderstorm" is closer to Ma Jiaqi's image. In the second performance on the 15th, he appeared in a white shirt and returned to the handsome appearance that everyone is Xi to.
The classic clips of the showdown between Zhou Ping and Fanyi were selected that day, and the large sections of dialogue and tangled character relationships tested the actors' lines and performances. In the process of playing against Zhou Fanyi's actor Wang Yimeng, Ma Jiaqi sometimes tightened his brows, sometimes became emotional, trying to show the complex and tangled side of the character's heart.
Wang Xin said that although Ma Jiaqi and the character Zhou Ping in the play are both young people, because of the distance of the times, including Zhou Ping's complex life experience and the impermanence of fate, it is very difficult for students to create, "We also find the context from the relationship between the characters, sort it out little by little, and show the complex emotional entanglement between Zhou Ping and Fanyi in the clip." ”
Ma Jiaqi played Zhou Ping in "Thunderstorm".
Song Yaxuan, who was in the ** scene of "Sunrise", faced no small difficulties. He plays Huang Xingsan, a bank clerk with no background, honesty, cowardice and incompetence, who was laid off by the boss in the play, forced to lose his job, and a family of five has nothing to live on, and is a poor man struggling on the edge of life and death.
In Mr. Cao Yu's original work, Huang Xingsan is also a small character, with few appearances, but it is portrayed very realistically, vividly, plump and profound. He has obvious character flaws, but more importantly, it was the dark society of the time that made him a downright tragic figure.
Song Yaxuan played Huang Xingsan in "Sunrise".
During the performance, Song Yaxuan wore a gray hat, a khaki scarf, and a gray gown. The image of Huang Xingsan has a significant feature, that is, he has tuberculosis and often coughs. In terms of performance, Song Yaxuan tried his best to grasp this feature. So we saw him on the stage, hunched over, staggering slowly, speaking weakly, as if he had to muster all his strength for every word he said. There is a small detail, while talking, Song Yaxuan also held the wine rack next to him with his hand, it seems that he can no longer support himself to continue to stand, and he must find someone to rely on.
Song Yaxuan and Wang Xin also talked about that during the rehearsal, they repeatedly designed and Xi practiced Huang Xingsan's "cough": at first, Song Yaxuan did not notice this detail that reflected the physical state of the character, and only after being reminded by the teacher did he realize that "cough" should be added to the performance process. But during the rehearsal, he was too deliberate and kept "coughing", which interfered with the rhythm of the play. In the end, the teacher and Song Yaxuan determined together, and in the whole dialogue, three to four "coughing" actions were designed, including the normal coughing of tuberculosis patients while talking, and the big cough of bending over and turning over when emotional, through these details, the difficult survival situation of the characters is shown.
Song Yaxuan and Zuo Linjie (right) performance stills.
In this clip, it is Zuo Linjie who partners with Song Yaxuan and plays the boss's secretary Li Shiqing. Zuo Linjie, who once participated in the variety show "The Name of the Youth", said that the cooperation with Song Yaxuan is a process of believing, "We pretend to be people in our forties and fifties, and I think the biggest difficulty is that (how) to go from not believing to believing." ”
During the performance, there was a "small episode", Song Yaxuan had a scene where he fell to the ground, and the hood suddenly fell off, which attracted laughter from the audience, but Song Yaxuan was not affected, he put the hood on, slowly stood up, and calmly completed the rest of the performance.
On the 13th, when he took a group photo after the curtain call after the performance, Ma Jiaqi was very excited, he took the initiative to chat with teachers and classmates, and it could be seen that he was a lot more relaxed.
The day before the show (12th), Ma Jiaqi had just celebrated his 21st birthday. Referring to the harvest of this performance, Ma Jiaqi said that because he wants to look for Chang Wu's old feelings, such as how he likes to drink and how he laughs, there are many details that need to be pondered. "As a sophomore in Chinese opera, being able to play the script of Mr. Cao Yu's classic "Wilderness" is actually very workout for us. ”
Song Yaxuan also said that he had not experienced the kind of life of Huang Xingsan in real life, and this performance brought him a new challenge in the role, and he also learned a lot from the teacher, including performance methods, scheduling on stage, etc.
After the show on the 13th, everyone took a group photo together.
In the past two years, as many "star students" have entered Nortel Chinese opera, their learning and Xi during school have also attracted much attention. Take the final performance as an example, Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan's brothers and sisters, such as Guan Xiaotong's interpretation of the Russian masterpiece "Resurrection" in the wandering girl Maslova, Luo Yizhou and Li Landi starred in "The Wilderness", these clips have been circulated on the Internet and have been evaluated by all parties. In fact, for students who study drama performance, the annual final report performance is equivalent to their final exam, which tests their academic Xi achievements during this period.
For example, in the freshman year, the professional courses are mainly animal simulation and character simulation training. Ma Jiaqi once played the role of a delivery man, and in order to play a good role, he once went to the street to observe the delivery man's every move. In the final performance of the second semester of their freshman year, Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan worked together to adapt and create the novella "Shenmu" by writer Liu Qingbang, in which they played two middle-aged coal miners living at the bottom, and they also wanted to find characters with different identities and occupations.
The delivery man played by Ma Jiaqi.
In the first semester of the sophomore year, according to Wang Xin, the 2022 Chinese Opera Drama, Film and Television Performance Class has entered the teaching stage of Chinese script fragments, mainly selecting Chinese classic drama scripts as teaching materials, allowing students to choose and rehearse, and this report has a total of 13 drama fragments, which are selected from more than 40 assignments. The reason why I chose the classic scripts is because these are the plays that have passed the selection and test of time, and they are widely recognized by the audience after the performances and creations of a generation of representative performing artists, and they have artistic precipitation and high artistic aesthetic value. For young students like Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan, through the understanding of classic plays and the interpretation of classic roles, they can effectively train their acting ability and improve their acting skills.
Wang Xin rehearsed for Ma Jiaqi and other students.
Wang Xin bluntly said that compared with the freshman year, Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan's biggest change is that they no longer rely only on intuition to act when acting, they have learned to analyze and understand from the life experience of the characters and the prescribed situation, find the logic of the characters' behaviors, organize the stage actions of the characters, and use props reasonably, for example, at the beginning of the "Thunderstorm" segment, Ma Jiaqi asked whether he could add a "reading the newspaper" action to Zhou Ping, Wang Xin believes that this design is very reasonable, and it can also reflect the behavioral characteristics of the character of the eldest young master; In addition, Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan's costumes were designed by themselves on the basis of the script and under the prompting of the teacher.
Judging by the results, both men have improved a lot. For example, there is a big gap between the two characters of Chang Wu and Zhou Ping shown by Ma Jiaqi, he can put himself in the shoes of the role, has control, is relatively relaxed, and has a steady typhoon, and has initially shown the ability to control different roles. Song Yaxuan's eagerness to try roles that are far away from him shows that he has the spirit of exploration and challenge for more difficult roles, and he shows that his performance has a strong sense of faith, good rhythm and comprehension through the rehearsal of the role of Huang Xingsan. "In short, both students were able to let go of the so-called idol baggage and actively devote themselves to the role without distractions, and I think this is their progress and what they have gained in their performance. ”
Song Yaxuan's "Sunrise" stills.
Many people are curious about Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan's college life, and some students have met Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan in the cafeteria before, and they will also do morning work and skip rope with their classmates.
Wang Xin said that Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan, like other students, are conscientiously in accordance with the teaching plan and teaching progress in the Xi, and the drama performance Xi emphasizes collectivism, "Therefore, we see that after the report, the students are moving props, and everyone cooperates with each other to complete it, which is also one of the professional ethics that we especially want to cultivate in teaching: learning to cooperate with others." ”
In addition to serving as a professor of the Department of Chinese Opera Performance, Wang Xin is also an actor, he has participated in the movie "Wuwen Xidong", "National Emblem", TV series "Kite", "Da Song Gong Ci", "Dajiang Dahe", and he plays the role of Principal Lou in the hit TV series "Minglong Boy".
In "Minglong Boy", Principal Lou is dedicated to working hard for students with backward grades to have the opportunity to take the college entrance examination, and he is a righteous, hard-mouthed and soft-hearted person. In real life, Wang Xin pays attention to teaching students according to their aptitude in performance teaching, whether it is Yi Yang Qianxi, Luo Yizhou, Li Landi, or the current students Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan, each student has different characteristics, and in performance teaching, Wang Xin will give guidance in different directions. "The training of actors can not be the same, it is in the teaching commonality, to find the differentiation of students' personalities, these years of teaching have also shown these characteristics, each class rehearsal of the teaching materials are different, this is also according to the student's situation, the teacher reasonable arrangement and adjustment. ”
Wang Xin played Principal Lou in the TV series "Minglong Boy".
In Wang Xin's view, if young actors can put aside the impetuousness of the hustle and bustle of society, calm down, and devote themselves to the Xi of acting, this is a valuable trait, and it is also a kind Xi of learning ability. In addition, he believes that young actors need to be able to endure hardships, be able to take the initiative to put their ideas into practice, and continue to maintain curiosity and concentration in character creation, which are all very important characteristics.
In recent years, Wang Xin has brought many star students. Wang Xin has expectations for the future development of young actors such as Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan, "As they grow older and their acting Xi deepens, I hope they can create more and better dramas, film and television works for the audience, and I also hope that they can show their edge and creativity in the future Chinese drama, film and television performance creation, let us look forward to it together." ”
Group photo of the 2022 drama film and television performance class of the 2022 performance department of Chinese opera.
In addition to Ma Jiaqi and Song Yaxuan, in this show, Zhao Zezhou, Liu Yan, and Zhou Yiru's "Family with Nine Phoenixes" "Three Women in One Play" has a lot of emotional scenes. Wang Yimeng, Zhou Yiru, Li Jiaqi, Wang Xiaolu, Fang Jun, Zhao Zezhou, Li Yimeng, Li Zixuan, etc. I also hope that everyone will pay attention to the performance of all students, and they may become excellent performing arts creators in the future.
Red Star News reporter Zhang Shihao Photography Ren Jieling Xi Li Tianxing Editor Ren Hongwei (partly **provided by Wang Xin).
*Red Star News, Prizes for Reporting!）