The spectacular drama "Mother Mountain" tells the touching story of Mai Qiongfang, a retired laundry worker in a hospital in Guangxi, who insisted on helping poor children in mountainous areas for 45 years, reflecting the high spirit of the people in remote and impoverished areas, border ethnic areas, and old revolutionary base areas in the new era. Relying on the traditional theme of "Painting the Godson", the play skillfully integrates the theme of local drama and rural revitalization, composes an ode to society in the new era, and also provides useful inspiration for exploring how to break through the existing style of grand opera and build an aesthetic paradigm that leads the trend of the times.
The beauty of singing and creation: the emotional sublimation of the Chinese family
Zhuang and Guiliu dialects are the languages used in Zhuang opera, and they are also an important attachment to its aesthetic qualities. In the play, "Mother" Mai Qiongfang speaks an authentic dialect, which makes the local audience feel both the greatness of her image and the familiarity. The folk proverb "see people uphill and push a hand, see people fall into difficulty and pull a hand" appears twice in the songbook, which is not only a concentrated embodiment of the distinctive artistic characteristics of the drama, but also a true portrayal of the moral sentiment of the "mother" of children in poor mountainous areas, and it is also the grand spiritual direction of the Chinese family. In addition, the lyrics in the play use a large number of rhetorical techniques such as adhesion, leveling, battle, and rhyme, and at the same time incorporate the classic children's song "Little White Boat", which symbolizes the vitality of the "mother" in her youth, and also makes the audience willing to accept and easily understand the children's deep yearning for a better life.
The horse bone beard, which is spread in the area inhabited by the Zhuang people, is the "protagonist" of the accompanying musical instrument in the play, and it is also the core element of creating a big Chinese family atmosphere. The play uses the traditional accompaniment instruments of the drama, and selects the corresponding instrument combinations according to different plots to set off the emotional changes and ups and downs of the characters' fates. When "Mom" encountered family changes in her childhood, the ensemble of erhu, tuhu, and horse bone hu rendered a deep and sad atmosphere; When "Mom" picks clothes and goes to the countryside to send warmth, the resonance of the bee drum and the high-sided gong highlights the enthusiasm in the character's heart; When the "mother" educates the children who have nothing to do, the synergy of the Yueqin and the wooden fish seems to tell the philosophy of life. The highly identifiable traditional musical instrument has created an emotional experience space with great tension, so that the theme of the play "thorny heart, mother's hard work" has been gradually sublimated in the depths of the audience's heart, so as to promote the grand opera to complete the mission of aesthetic education imperceptibly.
Character Shaping Beauty: The Emotional Transmission of the Chinese Family
The "person" in the drama covers three levels: the individual, the social, and the spiritual. The greatest feature of the play is to interpret the great spiritual imagery with the characters familiar to the audience. According to Hegel, the characters to be portrayed by art have a unique character and unique movements. The "mother" in the play is not only a hard-working woman, but also a mother who cherishes the feelings of family and country. She is not a heroic mother who sends her children to kill the enemy, nor is she a teacher mother who "turns the wax torch into ashes and tears begin to dry", but a kind and charitable "flat sister" mother, and is the spiritual bond of the big family. In reality, the 86 children adopted by "mother" Mai Qiongfang include mountain babies from Yao villages, students born in Zhuang townships, and orphans from old revolutionary areas. The play only chose to take the growth experience of 5 children as a creative case, and used dramatic techniques to reflect the perseverance of the "mother", which further improved the level of shaping the characters of the drama.
The performance of a theatrical character is like a boat on water – the more factors that cause the conflict between the characters, the more vivid the character's personality becomes. The success of the play is that it portrays a mountain version of the popular "mother" with a low level of education. She not only contributed to the realization of common material prosperity for the people, but also created inexhaustible spiritual wealth for the younger generation. In the face of a strong child who is addicted to drugs and does not want to give birth, the "mother" vows that "no one shall be left behind", and she will do her best to save it with the perseverance of a rope sawing wood; In the face of the child "chef" who is ashamed of luxury but has an improper way of dealing with the world, "mother" is kind and inducing, moving with affection and understanding with reason; In the face of the "bird language" of children who are keen to communicate with international friends, "Mom" especially emphasizes the need to keep the bottom line of personality and maintain the dignity of the country; In the face of the red leaves who are obsessed with chemistry but have repeatedly caused trouble, "mother" education is funny but philosophical; In the face of Huang Yijian, a child who "sees unevenness on the road and draws a knife to help", the "mother" painstakingly lays out the facts, reasons, and educates the child to "understand the general situation and have great love".
In this, it not only highlights the great compassion of "mother" everywhere, so that the drama achieves the fusion effect of human beauty and kindness, but also reflects the role division characteristics of the grand drama "Two Dan and Three Lives". In a word, there is not only a special social relationship between "mothers" and children, but also an emotional relationship that permeates the blood.
The beauty of the textual conception: the emotional advancement of the Chinese family
Since ancient times, the drama works on the theme of mothers have been shining like stars, and there are countless types of structures. Drama works such as the ancient miscellaneous drama "Zhuangyuantang Chen's Mother and Godson", the modern Peking opera "Shilang Visits the Mother", the modern drama "My Mother", and the contemporary Lu opera "Great Love Mother" use different text structures to create the image of the mother with the characteristics of the times in different historical stages. On the basis of the development of dramas with the same theme in previous dynasties, the text of "Mother of the Mountain" strives to be close to the public, reality and human nature in creation, and uses romantic expressions to narrow the psychological distance between the audience and the drama, which lays a solid foundation for the construction of a new paradigm of drama aesthetics.
In terms of text conception, it breaks the traditional mode of the beginning and end of the drama, and uses the structural form of multi-paragraph, multi-scatter, and multi-time and space intersection, through the growth of the three stages of "mother" youth, middle age, and old age, to construct the bright and dark lines of plot evolution, which is the formal innovation of "beauty" based on uprightness. The bright line is that the "mother" has changed from an informal girl to an organizer who collects "100 family rice", and the dark line is that the country has changed from poverty and backwardness in the past to prosperity and strength today. Placing the realization of personal value in the struggle for the happiness of the people, the play has created a high realm of artistic beauty - the beauty of the soul", which is the cleverness of the text conception of the play, and it is also the main line of the whole play.
Through the success or failure of each child's growth in the play, the audience deeply felt the deep love of the "mother" and the emotional cohesion of the big family. Among them, the child is strong and addicted to drugs, and although the "mother" has repeatedly advised him to no avail, he still does not give up and finally succeeds, which is the emotional highlight of the theme of the play to build a Chinese family. At the same time, the play uses flashbacks and peaceful narratives to restore the growth experience of "mothers" in recruiting clothes and helping widows and children in their youth. This kind of textual conception highlights the geography and epochality of the play, paves the way for the full expression of the theme, and has also become the core essence of dramatic beauty.
The beauty of stage design: the emotional support of the Chinese family
Li Yu, a literary theorist in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, wrote in "The Story of Idle Love": "The loveliest bird sound is not when people are sitting, but when they are sleeping." It can be seen that the expression of the theme of the play is inseparable from the powerful support of the environment in the play. The children adopted by the "mother" are all from poor mountainous areas, and the "big mountain" has become a key image for the audience to understand the creative achievements of the play. In line with this, the three-dimensional presentation of the "mountains" with different shapes and eternal meanings on the stage is presented in a three-dimensional way, and the picturesque artistic conception brings the audience into a warm "home" with it as the background. According to the 19th-century German aesthete Fischal's view of "empathy", the play is created in the depths of the inky green mountains, and it is also a home backed by the motherland.
The stage is not only the main carrier for the development of dramatic conflicts, but also an important means to promote the relationship between characters, and it is also the core field for the audience to participate in aesthetic activities, which has irreplaceable functions in the play. In the early days, the performance venue of the grand opera was the field, but with the progress of social civilization, it expanded to the stage. How to give full play to the auxiliary function of the stage has become a realistic proposition in front of the creators of the drama. The concretization of the "home" with "mother" as the core is the positioning of the stage space design of the play, which sets off the ups and downs of the plot of the drama and the joys and sorrows of the characters' feelings, and creates a simple artistic effect of "love is born by the family, and the family is warm because of the feelings".
The play pays special attention to "blank space" in the stage design concept, which is intended to create an imaginary space of "home" for the audience, and also symbolizes the grandeur of the Chinese family. In the background of the majestic stage, the shape of the mountains and the hardships of "mother" to raise children form a very harmonious intertextuality. And all of this is deeply embedded in the image of "home", giving the stage space a profound meaning, and becoming a new narrative mode of the grand opera.
The spectacular drama "Mother of the Mountain" has created a new typical character of Chinese women, and has become a "weather vane" in the new era of the spirit of "falling red is not a ruthless thing, turning into spring mud to protect flowers", which is worthy of reference for other types of drama creation: local dramas should give full play to the advantages of helping to promote the spirit of patriotism, collectivism and socialism, and cultivate and disseminate the core values of socialism. In the protagonist Mai Qiongfang, the audience not only sees a lovely, amiable and respectable Chinese "mother", but also finds an artistic aesthetic paradigm with the connotation of several generations of dedication to a happy family. Looking at the tide, aren't the "mothers" represented by Mai Qiongfang the inexhaustible driving force for China's road to a broad road? However, we must rationally realize that in the context of countries around the world thinking about how to build a new form of civilization, Zhuang Opera should also accelerate the exploration of how to more effectively stimulate the unique artistic charm and constantly broaden the ways and methods of interpreting beauty, so that the spirit of the characters carried by the work can be recognized and advocated by the whole society, so as to spread for thousands of years and burn the prairie for thousands of years.
This paper is a phased achievement of the "Guangxi Bagui Young Scholars Innovation Team Project".