Technology is an important driving force for artistic innovation. Looking back on the development process of China's stage art, the use of machinery, electricity and other technologies not only changed the stage style concretely and intuitively from the aspects of lighting, sound, scenes, etc., but also promoted the transformation of performance technology, creative concepts and dramatic spirit, and promoted stage art to keep up with the pace of the times, and constantly opened up a new aesthetic space for creation and appreciation. At present, the Internet, as the most important achievement of scientific and technological innovation, is developing rapidly and has an increasingly extensive and profound impact on literature and art. The trend of Internet + drama is in the ascendant, excellent works have repeatedly "gone out of the circle", and new forms such as immersion and digitalization have emerged one after another, making people feel the huge creativity contained in this new field.
The new online theater provides a spread dividend.
The advent of the Internet has changed the way of communication and expression of stage art. If it is said that during the new crown pneumonia epidemic, many theatrical performances have been turned into "expedient measures", and now online platforms and dramas have consciously started to integrate with each other. Taking Douyin as an example, the platform covers more than 300 of the 348 existing dramas in China, of which 231 have been opened for live broadcast to achieve "cloud performance". In the first half of 2022, 360,000 dance anchors performed 5.05 million online, with a total of 90.42 million hours of live broadcasts, attracting 19900 million users**. In 2023, more than 2.27 million live broadcasts of performing arts in Henan, including opera, opera, musical instruments, dance and other artistic categories, will be broadcast, with an average audience of more than 3,400 per game. The number of live broadcasts of performing arts in Guangdong reached 2.39 million, a year-on-year increase of 78%. With the further maturity of the technical mechanism and operation mode of online performing arts, the new online theater will become an indispensable part of the contemporary Chinese drama performance system.
The same rapid development as the "** drama live broadcast" is that the old dramas of the major theater troupes "pressing the bottom of the box" have logged in to the cloud. Due to the lack of video technology support and limited communication media, for thousands of years, we can only appreciate the literary charm of many drama classics in the sense of texts, and "brain" the stage brilliance of the predecessors of famous actors. Now, the new online theater continues to break through the time and space limitations of theatrical performances, the channels and space for the dissemination of works have become broader, the technology of live broadcast recording and broadcasting is becoming more and more sophisticated, and the stage art can finally be completely passed on to future generations in the form of performances. For example, the drama "Thunderstorm", Cantonese opera "Green Snake" and other excellent works have been launched as high as hundreds of thousands or even millions, which is a huge communication dividend.
McLuhan, a Canadian communication scientist, proposed that the medium is the message. The network communication of drama contains different aesthetic methods, and the communication dividend given by the network to drama is not only manifested in the expansion of stage capacity and the extension of performance time, but also means a new way of appreciation. Regulars of new online theaters tend to be natives of the virtual world, and they are familiar with and love the effects of virtual and real interactions. The new online theater breaks the boundaries of performance and brings people an immersive experience. In recent years, immersive performing arts have flourished in various places, and people have stepped into the theater to watch the big drama to meet the new aesthetic expectations of the theater. As a logical extension and reality mirror image of online performing arts, the immersive performing arts that have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain reflect the effectiveness of Internet communication dividends from another aspect. It is also in this sense that only by deeply exploring and making full use of the communication dividends given to drama in the Internet era can we comprehensively improve the quality of drama performances and let the audience gain more cultural satisfaction.
Netizen new drama fans bring audience dividends.
The foundation of the new online theater is a large audience of netizens. In the Internet era, the convenient way of watching online plays meets the needs of the online generation, providing a rich soil for the growth of new opera fans.
Among the 158 performances of the 13th China Arts Festival held in September 2022, nearly 200,000 offline audiences walked into the venue, and more than 3500 million people "watched the show" in the cloud. During the 70th anniversary celebration of the Beijing People's Art Theater, online activities such as script reading, classic repertoire broadcasting and guided tours were launched for 9 consecutive days, and more than 1400 million clicks**, and the live broadcast of the drama "Teahouse" aroused the audience's enthusiasm. Sichuan Grand Theatre launched the dance drama "Awakening Lion" in the form of "Cloud Theater", which reached 3.4 million people online, received 1.4 million likes from netizens, and received 5More than 380,000 ** and comments. From the barrage and comments, it can be found that the "first intimate contact" between many netizens' new drama fans and the drama occurred on the Internet, and many viewers knew and liked the dance drama "Only This Green" from the short ** "green waist", and became fans of the Yue opera "New Dragon Gate Inn" from "holding the circle with one hand". The wonderful moments of the drama are like the brilliant facets of diamonds, attracting countless eyes and accumulating audience dividends for the development of drama among netizens.
The direct and frequent interaction between netizens and fans of the new drama has reshaped the relationship between the audience, the actors, and the theater troupe. Whether it is sending barrages, liking and commenting when watching a play online, or "building an audience group" when watching a play offline, the Internet has become an effective way to form a community of performances. For the audience, the feeling of watching the performance can be expressed in real time, and the sense of participation and pleasure is greatly improved. For actors and troupes, the best communication transcends the barriers between the stage and the stage, breaks through the limitations of the repertoire itself, and has the potential to "shake" more audiences for new performances. As a result, in addition to the performance itself, a performance also carries a variety of functions such as work guidance, knowledge popularization, and repertoire promotion.
The experience of watching drama online, the fragmentation of drama, and the topical online communication of drama further highlight the inherent social attributes of drama, smooth the entrance for the younger generation to enter theater art, and strengthen the audience stickiness. According to the 52nd "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network", as of June 2023, the scale of China's Internet users has reached 107.9 billion people, an increase of 11.09 million from December 2022, and the internet penetration rate reached 764%。Among them, the scale of online live broadcast users in China reached 76.5 billion people, an increase of 14.74 million from December 2022, accounting for 71 percent of the total number of Internet users0%。The new changes in the scale and structure of netizens have provided new opportunities for the development of stage arts, and also required the creators and providers of stage arts to dynamically and accurately grasp the changes in the appreciation and gathering methods of netizens' new drama fans, not only to "perform" the drama to their hands, but also to perform in their aesthetics.
The new aesthetics of the Internet give birth to creative dividends.
Excellent theatrical works always reflect the style of the times in which they live, and the progress of science and technology and the changes it brings to life and people's concepts and spirits provide a steady stream of new ideas, new inspiration and new materials for stage art.
As early as 2001, the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center launched the online drama "www.".com》。Over the past 20 years, online dating, online shopping and other materials have been put on the stage by creators, and online cultural symbols such as emojis, dialog boxes, and new "memes" have frequently appeared in theatrical works, and have advanced from scene embellishment to narrative elements. Especially in recent years, new achievements in online culture such as online literature and online games have been frequently adapted and used by drama creators, successfully attracting game users and online "original parties" from the front of the screen to the theater.
The development of online literature and art in China for more than 30 years has not only given birth to a new way of appreciating literature and art, but also cultivated an appreciation interest that focuses on "network sense", such as fast-paced plots, strong exciting conflicts, jumping rhythms, fragmented scenes, interactive expressions, and so on. For example, at the Bilibili*** New Year's Eve party at the end of 2020, Qiu Jirong's "Shocking Hong" connected the Kunqu opera "Peony Pavilion", Qin Yan's "The Legend of the White Snake", Pingju "Heavenly Maiden Scattered Flowers", Sichuan Opera "Rolling Lantern", Hebei Bangzi's "Zhong Kui Marrying Sister" and Peking Opera "Quanmei Case" with a nine-minute performance. The creative mode of fragment interweaving and secondary creation is different from the previous simple "skewering", which fits the aesthetic appeal of "network sense". Some up masters edited the same clip performed by different drama actors into a ** collection, which received quite a high number of clicks, largely because it fitted the aesthetic taste of netizens' new drama fans. For another example, the first work of the National Theatre of China's "CNT Live" "Heroic Era" tells the story of the public security police and robbers and resolving the crisis, and the creators use digital film and television technology to build a multi-dimensional and real-time changing stage, creating a sci-fi atmosphere in the future city.
The Internet has brought about a holistic change related to the future of performing arts. From this point of view, the Internet does not mean the erasure of the liveness and ritual, but the reconstruction of "scene" and "ritual" after absorbing and integrating new technical and aesthetic factors. Of course, improving quality is still the key. Only high-quality works can truly match the new stage with large traffic, and can they really "retain" large-scale new theater fans.
While enthusiastically embracing the Internet, we should also recognize that new technologies are only means and tools to promote the development of the performing arts. If the Internet and its accompanying elements are used as a simple label or box office gimmick for dramas, the impetuous mentality is covered up under the guise of "digital technology", the accumulation of audience word-of-mouth is replaced by the increase in the number of fans, the narrative logic of the drama is not hesitated to destroy the narrative logic of the drama in order to create a rigid and abusive Internet celebrity "famous scene", and the philosophical inquiry of the drama is replaced by frivolous and vulgar Internet jokes, the so-called "immersive" experience ignores the literary connotation of the play, and relies too much on technology to create strong sensory stimulation but gives up the artistic pursuit and value guidance that the drama should haveFor the sake of the so-called "net sense" and "pleasure" to expel "beauty", then it will inevitably cause harm to the high-quality development of stage arts. This requires giving full play to the role of drama theory criticism, more deeply grasping the laws of Internet + drama creation, deepening the construction of the aesthetic system and evaluation system of stage art in the Internet era, accelerating the construction of a more effective use of the "triple dividend" drama creation and performance system and environmental atmosphere, and launching more new works with profound thoughts, exquisite art and excellent production.
*:Light**.