Original by Feng Xue of Observer.com.
Text: Observer.com, Feng Xue.
What?"Yue Opera Men's Troupe"?
That's right, on December, the modern drama "Good Eight Links", created and rehearsed by the Shanghai Yue Opera Theater and staged at the Taicang Grand Theater, is such a work.
This play opens up a new perspective, connects the past and present of the Eighth Company, and tells the difficulties, confusion, growth, and understanding encountered by the soldiers of the Eighth Company in the process of standing guard in 1949 and the special operations assessment in 2019.
Shangyue Men's Group", a combination of rigidity and softness.
The biggest feature of this performance is naturally the "debut of the Yue Opera Men's Group", which is different from the previous presentation style.
The original intention that attracted me to rehearse the opera was that there were a group of outstanding young actors in the Shanghai Yue Opera Theater, among which men were a force that could not be ignored, and the 'Yue Opera Male Actors' were very distinctive, but there were few opportunities to show", director Lu Ang said, "This time there is such a theme, I fully support it, I call it the 'Shangyue Men's Troupe', Yue Opera not only has femininity, but also masculinity, so that it is comprehensive." ”
Stills from Yue Opera "Good Eight Companies", provided by Shanghai Yue Opera Theater, the same below.
Lu En introduced that in order to better interpret the image of the soldiers, the "Shangyue Men's Troupe" conducted military training for this purpose, "* Tanned, now majestic on the stage, is the foundation laid by military training at that time." ”
You have to have the courage to reflect contemporary life".
"Good Eighth Company on Nanjing Road" is a glorious team named by the Ministry of National Defense and praised by poetry. Based on this, the "sentinel under the neon light" has rehearsed the drama of the same name, Yue opera, movie and other art styles.
Since the new era, under the background of army reform, the Eighth Company has ceased to serve as a guard on Nanjing Road and has transformed into a special force.
In Rouen's view, time and space have changed, the new era has put forward new requirements, and merely rearranging classic works cannot fully activate modern values, "In the past, this work was able to achieve great success because it dared to speak the truth, and now we also need this courage to reflect contemporary life." ”
Therefore, Rouen and his creative team designed a time travel and dialogue between 1949 and 2019. Among them, the contemporary part is the most tricky part for Luen, "the script alone has been changed more than 20 times". Through continuous scrutiny and speculation, Lu Ang focused his observations and thoughts on contemporary life on the instructor Yan Bin and the special forces Qin Xiaojun.
Stills from the Yue Opera "Good Eight Companies", Xu Jie plays Lu Hua (left), and Xu Biaoxin plays Yan Bin.
When the time came to 2019, although Qin Xiaojun performed well in all aspects during his military service, he still had "selfishness", such as in the assessment stage, in the face of sudden changes on the spot, individualistic tendencies appeared, which seriously deviated from the overall goal of the team. After a painful struggle, the instructor ruthlessly gave him a "fail".
This is the contradictory relationship between the individual and the collective that has been exposed in a long-term peaceful environment, and as a special warfare soldier, once he has such 'selfish desires,' it will be fatal." Lu En hopes that the audience will reflect through the image of Qin Xiaojun.
In the end, under the education and influence of the instructor and the company, Qin Xiaojun realized the narrowness of his own thinking and completed a self-sublimation.
The subverted little life.
As a male student of the Mesozoic generation in Yue Opera, Xu Biaoxin took the initiative to assume the role of instructor. He set a requirement for himself: to subvert the previous image of Xiaosheng and play a good role as an instructor in the current era.
For Xu, the biggest challenge comes from character building. Through communication with the troops, he observed that the soldiers' every move was very standardized, so the presentation on the stage should not be too casual, which was very different from the previous modern dramas.
In order to highlight the voice of the soldiers, Xu Biaoxin is based on Mr. Lu Jinhua's Lu style singing voice in terms of singing, but he adds chest resonance to the singing method, and at the same time draws on Mr. Fan Ruijuan's Fan School, and absorbs the male voice of other dramas, such as Shanghai Opera and Tin Opera, so that his voice is more full and rich, reflecting the instructor's sense of calmness. In terms of performance, he absorbs more drama, which is more natural, life, and real.
Feng Jun, the actor of the special forces Qin Xiaojun, has two years of experience as a firefighter, and when he tried the military theme for the first time, he felt a lot of pressure, "There is not much for reference". He thought about learning the model opera of Peking Opera, but then gave up, because it was neither in line with the times nor in line with Yue Opera, and in the end he started from the heart of the character, looking for a singing voice and program that not only fit the image of the soldier, but also fit the aesthetics of Yue Opera.
Stills from the Yue Opera "Good Eight Companies", Xu Biaoxin plays Yan Bin (left), and Feng Jun plays Qin Xiaojun.
Feng Jun studied traditional opera with Zhao Zhigang. "Mr. Zhao has a mature interpretation of Yin Pai's singing, and I have created a creation that conforms to the image of a soldier on this basis. So when I sing, I definitely don't deal with it like the previous Yin faction, but where there should be frustration, there should be a sense of frustration, and when it should break out, it must sound different from the traditional Yin faction, but it will definitely not deviate from the Yin faction. ”
In order to enrich the image of soldiers, it is obviously not enough to rely on "singing", but also to have "martial arts". Boys naturally like to dance with guns and sticks, and when he was in drama school, Feng Jun took advantage of the situation to learn several Beijing-Kunming excerpts, such as "Blocking Horses" and "Stealing Fairy Grass". The martial arts foundation left behind back then and the skills accumulated in peacetime have been shown in this play.
Both the director and the two leading actors invariably mentioned the doubts of the outside world about the combination and arrangement of the play, but they are confident that they can hand over a satisfactory "assessment".
It's hard to be an opera actor, and it's even more difficult to be a Yue opera actor."
Usually, the Yue Opera boys pay more. "So everyone often says that it is not easy to be an opera actor, and it is even more difficult to be a male actor in Yue Opera", Xu Biaoxin explained, the audience's appreciation of women's Yue Opera is relatively mature, and the founders of each genre are women, and the problem encountered by male and female co-actors is whether they can be natural and harmonious, because the voices of male actors and actresses are different.
After the efforts of generations of male actors, the dedication of ** workers, and the support of partner actresses, the audience gradually accepted the male and female co-actors. Xu Biaoxin said that when men and women sing in duet, the female voice finishes singing, and the male voice is connected, and the voice must be coordinated, relying on the breath to achieve the coordination and naturalness of the singing connection, so that the audience can listen very comfortable.
In 2003, Xu Biaoxin was lucky to be taught by Mr. Lu Jinhua. Teacher Lu told him that male and female students are the same, and art does not distinguish between genders. She also said that boys also have advantages, such as acting in modern dramas;Female students play costume dramas, and their heads and feet can be raised, while modern dramas are more life-oriented, and the pads are too high and will be uncoordinated, so the performance limitations of female students can be made up for by male students.
Stills from the Yue Opera "Good Eight Companies".
Mr. Zhao's artistic attainments are very high, and his voice has been recognized by the audience", Feng Jun, as a new generation of Yue Opera boys, said frankly that the audience must be conquered through his voice, and he is still mainly imitating his predecessors.
The vocal cavity is a big pass for male students, some people have a good voice, but the taste is a little worse, and they have learned the characteristics of the ** school, but the voice is not clear;Putting the vocal methods of actors in other dramas into Yue Opera has lost its charm, but the traditional vocal methods of Yue Opera will rub my vocal cords, and I am still in constant exploration. ”
The way out of the future drama is in **?
Lu En grew up in a repertory troupe, and the feeling of first acquaintance with opera was "weird", but under the influence of his mentor Mr. Xue Mu, he broke into the vast world of opera. He always said to Lu Ang: "If you don't understand opera and national drama as a director in China, you can't do it, and you can't do it well!"”
What made Lu En thoroughly delve into opera were the two spiritual mentors he admired: one was Mr. Jiao Juyin, the chief director of the Beijing People's Art Theater, and the other was the great director Meyerhold.
Mr. Jiao Juyin created a new "Chinese School" of drama art, founded the Chinese Opera College and served as the first principal, cultivated a large number of outstanding actors, and greatly respected the national opera art.
After Meyerhold performed Mr. Mei Lanfang in Moscow, he was very excited and predicted to the world that the future development of drama will be a combination of Western European theater art and Chinese theater art.
This gave impetus to the topic of Rouen's lifelong concern: the comparison and integration of Eastern and Western theatre.
Director Lu Ang spoke for the crew of the Yue Opera "Good Eight Companies".
At present, Rouen has directed more than 80 theatrical productions at home and abroad, most of which are operas. He summed up the methods of rehearsing opera over the years as "three-in-one": the first is Stanley's psychological realism method, which focuses on "experience", the second is the singing, reading, playing and dancing of opera, and the third is the contemporary foreign drama training method, such as collective improvisation.
The art of Chinese opera can be called an explicit form of civilization of the Chinese nation. Rouen defines it this way.
Since 2009, Rouen has been doing international directorial master classes, including a special session of "Ancient Civilizations", with directors from Turkey, India, Greece, Iran and other countries, who are particularly envious: Chinese opera is still being staged, while their traditional drama has "fallen apart".
It is undeniable that the development of Chinese opera art is also facing great challenges, and Rouen's analysis is mainly manifested in the impact of the media age on the art of opera, the challenge of modern people's way of living to the art of opera, and the influence of Western culture on the audience. Therefore, he believes that it is inevitable for Chinese opera to carry out modernization and transformation, and it should be the development path of Chinese opera to recognize the situation, face the crisis, keep pace with the times, and be brave in innovation.
In my eyes, opera is a priceless treasure. We want to continue to polish it and put it in a very beautiful box, so that the contemporary people can see the brilliance of the opera itself. ”
*|Observer.com.
Original title: "This time, they want to"Male voice"Justify!》