From February 19th to 20th, the drama "The Ballad of Yanshui" will make its debut in Beijing as part of the "2024 NCPA New Year Performance Season", and will be staged at the NCPA for two consecutive days.
The Ballad of Yanshui takes the growth of intellectual youths who went to Yan'an during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression as a clue, writes their transformation from literary artists to literary and artistic soldiers, and outlines the formation of the party's literary and artistic thoughts, such as "why it was proposed", "how to establish", and "repercussions". In the vivid character building, the ups and downs of the storyline, and the touching battle scenes, the drama has created a magnificent group portrait of the audience fighting for the family and country and fighting for the ideals, revealing the profound meaning of "taking root in life and serving the people" and "literature and art serving the workers, peasants and soldiers".
The Ballad of Yanshui adopts the structure of prose poetry, replaces "individual" with "category" in the character setting, and pays attention to individual expression in group portrait shaping. On the premise of retaining the spirit of real characters in history, he made an artistic fiction, so that the plot echoed with historical facts, and the spirit was connected with the times. For example, the love between Lu Yi student Wen Huixin and Fan Tiefeng, the commander of the Eighth Route Army, is humorous and touching. The process of the two not understanding each other at the beginning, and gradually accepting each other later, and coming together is just like the romantic combination of Chinese literature and art and the Chinese revolution. For another example, the cannonball shell pen given to Wen Huixin by Fan Tiefeng, which embodies the spiritual core of the Yan'an Literature and Art Symposium "Let the bullet become a pen and let the pen become a bullet". The literary and artistic works created by Yan'an "Lu Yi" are also embedded in the play as much as possible, which not only strengthens the rhythm of the drama and sets off the historical atmosphere, but also satisfies the nostalgic emotions of the audience and forms a touching artistic effect.
The creator integrates the process of speculation and spiritual concepts into the storyline of life, and in the exchange and collision of different artistic concepts, "what is art" and "what kind of art do we need". Among them, there are not only discussions among literary and artistic workers, but also debates about the role of literature and art between literary and artistic workers and ordinary people, and between soldiers.
The play is jointly produced by the Propaganda Department of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, Xinhuanet, the Propaganda Department of the Xi'an Municipal Party Committee, the Propaganda Department of the Yan'an Municipal Party Committee, the Xi'an Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and the Management Committee of Xi'an Qujiang New Area. The repertoire has participated in the 18th China Theatre Festival and was staged at the Wenzhou Grand Theatre as the "opening play" of the exhibition repertoire; Selected as a major cultural boutique support project in Shaanxi Province in 2021; Selected as the 2023 Stage Art Creation Funding Project of Shaanxi Provincial Art; It was selected as a subsidy project for the special fund for the development of cultural industries in Xi'an to support the promotion of cultural undertakings.