Each era has its own unique art form. Whether it is opera or other traditional cultures, with the development of the times, there will inevitably be a metabolism, awakening our love for a better life.
Mi Ke Hong. Outside the gate, there is an invisible, imaginary desert.
Inside the gate, there is a long, sloping ramp with rows of chairs on either side. At the end of the ramp, there is a liftable platform with several tables and chairs, which are used in old-fashioned restaurants. The white gauze curtain behind it can be vaguely seen that it is a room with furniture. There are stairs on both sides of the platform, and there are rows of seats along the ladder to the second floor.
Empty seats fill up quickly. The wind was blowing, carrying the sand, and banging frantically on the gate, as if it was about to be pushed open at any moment.
On the empty platform, a person finally came, waving a knife, groaning, the action was slaughtering sheep, but the content of the groan was more like preparing to kill ......
The atmosphere instantly became up, and the people sitting on and off the stage on both sides of the ramp thought they were outsiders, but at this time they also became people in the play.
This is the performance scene and beginning of the new national style environmental Yue opera "New Dragon Gate Inn". After the play opened at the Hangzhou Butterfly Theater on March 28, 2023, the attendance rate was not high. But in the following more than half a year, it spread and fermented on the Internet, attracting more and more young people to Hangzhou, and the attendance rate soared, and finally it was difficult to find a ticket. In the subsequent online live broadcast, it attracted nearly 9.25 million people**, 70% of whom were young viewers of non-traditional Yue Opera fans, and it became a popular cultural tourism product in Hangzhou in one fell swoop. The Douban score is as high as 84 points, there are 4 "brushes" among netizens, and there are 10 "brushes" who are breathtaking.
Chen Lijun in the most popular CP "Junxiao Group" said in an interview with CCTV, "Opera is the DNA engraved in the bones of Chinese, and after a small stone is thrown, the DNA is awakened." I wish I was that pebble. ”
A middle-aged audience's nostalgia for Yue Opera.
I didn't like Yue opera since I was a child. But growing up in Shengzhou, what you can see and hear is often Yue Opera. After leaving his hometown for many years, he heard less and less about Yue Opera. But when someone asks about his hometown, he will always subconsciously add the words "hometown of Yue Opera" in front of the place name, and slowly seem to engrave it into his bones and become homesickness.
When I mention Yue Opera, I always think of following my grandmother to a neighboring village to watch Yue Opera when I was a child. Look, it's not exact, it's just a reason, getting in and out of the stage, just to find a little friend you know to play, or ask your grandmother for money to buy some snacks to eat, and wait for her to walk a few miles home after watching the play. My grandmother is very addicted to drama, I don't understand, what she is watching when she is illiterate. In the past, there were few plays that the rural troupe could perform, and there were only a few of them, and she "brushed" it over and over again, so she didn't get tired of it!
I don't get tired of my neighbors, when they can't see the Yue Opera performance, they listen to the opera on the radio, and they really never get tired of listening to it, and they have to discuss the genre and singing after listening, as if they are senior ticket holders. And I, like most teenagers at the time, felt that the pace was too slow and the format was too old. Although in the 80s of the 20th century, it was only 70 years old.
Later, the aging trend of Yue Opera audiences became more and more obvious, will it gradually decline?After a few years, I have more intuitive feelings and understandings of this worry.
Seven or eight years ago, I was involved in the planning of a real estate project in Shengzhou, and after several rounds of brainstorming, we decided to position the project as a cultural tourism project with the theme of Yue Opera. Subsequently, the land auction, planning, construction, sales, and investment promotion were smoothly completed, and in order to conform to the theme, Yue Opera elements were injected into every link. For example, the Plum Blossom Theater was planned and builtThe hotel is a Yue Opera themed hotel;Catering is fully dramatized in decoration, dishes, and dining environment;When selling, send the drama to the countryside;The sales office has long held activities for Yue Opera masters to interact with the audience;Performances are held on a regular basis. At the same time, considering the aging of theater fans, we have made several rounds of plans and set up multiple venues, which can allow young people to experience a variety of forms with a sense of networking, such as learning Xi Yue Opera, participating in performances, and filming.
But the results were not satisfactory. Until one day in October this year, I watched the Yue opera "New Dragon Gate Inn".
The audience takes the new rivers and lakes they need.
Sitting in the small theater specially arranged for the performance of the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", I chuckled in my heart. The design of the ambient scene is too subversive, it changes the traditional relationship between the actors and the audience, on and off the stage, and narrows the distance between the two.
The traditional stage is flat, generally through two or three layers of curtains, forming the required spatial relationship. The last layer of the background is always fixed, and behind it is the place where the band plays, and the place where the actors appear and end, it is like a secret place, separated from the audience by thousands of mountains and rivers.
In contrast, in addition to the stage of the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", the main stage opens up the vertical space and extends to the audience through the lifting device, and the overall composition draws on the movie frame, which greatly reflects the performance and the effect of **. The most amazing thing is that after the actors changed the unchanged way of appearance, the audience was more realistic and live, and the lighting, sound, and vibration effects strengthened the psychological effect.
During the performance, the actors interacted with the audience many times, helping thousands of households recognize people, going to the inn to deliver information, and eating the proprietress gold-inlaid jade candy ......The moment I received the candy, I felt like I was back in my childhood, the joy of buying my favorite snacks under the stage, and the real feeling of sitting at the banquet and watching the newlyweds hold the ceremony.
Soon, I got into the plot. I have to say that Mao Weitao, the artistic director of the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn" and the winner of the three-time Plum Blossom Award, chose such a suitable adaptation of the big IP, on the basis of the original play, added the traditional Chinese humanistic spirit, core drama elements, and the essence of Yue Opera culture, and deeply studied the aesthetic and emotional needs of modern young people, creating a new Jianghu, new martial arts, and new emotional relationship that the audience can need.
Of course, all the previous conditions, although necessary, are not decisive, and the most crucial element is the person. The audience of 10 "brushes" chose different positions or angles, and completed the viewing almost without dead ends, and through the performance analysis of each pair of "CP" actors, it can be seen that they are good at each other. It is their unparalleled performance power that makes each character stand. An unintentional action in the return - Jia Ting, a righteous and evil eunuch played by Chen Lijun, picked up the amorous innkeeper Jin inlaid jade played by Li Yunxiao with one hand, and after the spread of major ** platforms, he became a "CP" who was knocked to death.
After watching the whole performance, my heart was shocked, excited, joyful, and all kinds of emotions spread, and before I walked out of the theater, I wrote in the circle of friends: I pay tribute to the pioneers and am willing to become a companion. Although I am not qualified and capable of walking.
Thinking back to Diao Buyu's Yin Oh tune walking on the way home, when the mood gradually returned from excitement to calm, I suddenly found that the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn" was undoubtedly a success, but is it still a Yue Opera?Is it still the Yue Opera we imagined?
The opera DNA in the blood is endless.
I'm thinking about a question, my grandmother, or those grandmother-level senior Yue Opera audiences, will they like the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn"?Although they are no longer mainstream audiences, once upon a time, it was this huge audience group that accompanied and supported Yue Opera to move forward.
I think the answer is no.
But the cruel reality is that Yue Opera, as well as other traditional art forms, must be changed, otherwise it is very likely that it will gradually wither with the death of the older generation of fans, or even become a "declining aristocracy" that needs to be protected and inherited by only a few people.
Looking back at the atypical case of Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", its success is inseparable from the success of communication in addition to the possibility of adaptation of the above-mentioned script and drama itself in line with the aesthetic direction of young people. For example, the fission-style spread of platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, as well as the impact of the topicality formed, eventually formed a huge traffic. The iconic judgment is based on the ** volume of 9.25 million people during the live broadcast, which is the traffic of the sky. This kind of traffic has not been reached by a traditional Yue Opera stage performance, festival, variety show, or competition.
What is similar is that in recent years, various other forms or places that have come out of the circle, such as Hanfu, Datang Never Sleeps City, museums, Forbidden City cultural creativity, etc., all have changed their forms to form a strong communication effect, and the "two-way running" of online out of the circle feeds back offline traffic.
When we talk about the Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", we can think that it is still a Yue Opera, but it must be admitted that it is a brand new Yue Opera. Tang poems, Song songs, and Yuan songs, each era has its own unique art form. Since the birth of opera, hundreds of operas, miscellaneous operas, southern operas, etc., have gone all the way, and the development of Peking opera, Yue opera and other integrated development, whether at the macro or micro level, it can be seen that with the development of the times, new changes have emerged, in this process, there must be metabolism, the old eliminated, the new appeared, and the new was replaced by the new.
Egyptian actress Samiha Ayub said in her message on this year's World Theatre Day: "Theatre in its original nature is based on a purely human act based on the true nature of human nature, that is, life itself. "Life is endless, the opera DNA in the blood is endless, evoking it must be a new form of expression, awakening the young people in the hearts of everyone regardless of age, awakening the demand for artistic aesthetics, the care for the humanistic spirit, and the yearning and love for a better life.