Hold a personal performance yesterday
Hou Mei: "Beauty rhyme" through hard training
On the morning of June 5, in the rehearsal hall on the 3rd floor of the Beijing Peking Opera Theatre, Hou Mei leaned back and said nothing.
Wu Sheng Li Gen helped her tidy the lean flag, and he was still talking to her.
When she was young, Xue Yaping and Hou Mei’s master came over with a cup of tea and talked to her about the similarities and differences in the actions of Daomadan and Tsing Yi.
Suddenly, when the gongs and drums rang, Hou Mei quickly drank her saliva and hurried to the side curtain in small steps.
The last part of the rehearsal "The Female Generals of the Yang Family: Exploring the Valley" began.
Hou Mei is closer to her first special performance "Mei Yun Hua Zhang" on June 6.
"Zhang Pai" Tsing Yi
Before "The Female Generals of the Yang Family", Hou Mei had already performed two plays "The Poetry Meeting" and "The Hatred of Chu Palace".
"Shi Wenhui" is a new play created by Zhang Junqiu after the founding of New China; "The Hatred of Chu Gong" is an "old play" that has been rarely seen on stage.
Hou Mei first acted as a boudoir girl, a lady of the family; then he acted as a fleeing "prince princess" with a baby in her arms, with a sad face.
The protagonists of the two dramas have very different styles, one happy and the other sad. Hou Mei follows Zhang Junqiu's singing and acting, which is quite satisfactory.
But when Mu Guiying of "The Female General of the Yang Family" came on stage, the fragility of the previous two women disappeared, and the heroic middle-aged heroine appeared on the stage.
Hou Mei sings with dance and moves "side style".
"It's not easy for an actor to come out of Zhang's Tsing Yi (Zha Kao is a kind of drama costume, and martial arts moves can only be called Zha Kao)." Xue Yaping said of her master Mr. Zhang Junqiu There are few martial arts in his masterpieces. At most, the Cheshire Lord has some actions in "The Number One Match".
In fact, the audio and dubbing of Peking Opera still contains information about Zhang Junqiu's singing "Farewell My Concubine", and the performance photos of his playing "Zhaojun Out of the Border" can also be found, but now the "Zhang School" Tsing Yi scholars rarely perform.
Hou Mei said that when she was in school at the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Opera, she had been practicing Huadan and Swordsman, never letting go.
"An actor, I don't want to make my acting approach too monotonous, and I can learn one more skill." Hou Mei said.
Persisting in martial arts is for "training the voice" vigorously
There is another important reason for Hou Mei to keep practicing martial arts, and that is to help her strengthen her voice.
Hou Mei formally came into contact with the "Zhang Pai" Tsing Yi when she was studying "Liu Lanzhi" about 10 years ago.
But it was teacher Xue Yaping who Yang Shaopeng helped her introduce.
For Hou Mei, the biggest problem in learning Zhang Pai is her voice.
At that time, Hou Mei's voice was thin and narrow, suitable for a career like Hua Dan.
If you want to change to the Tsing Yi Opera of Zhang School, you need to change your pronunciation position and practice your voice again.
"Hou Mei is very hard, because it takes a long time to hang her voice to find a new position." Xue Yaping said, "The hardest part is persistence."
Hou Mei uses the new method that Master said every day to hang her throat.
At first, I adjusted it every day at home, but within a few days, I recruited neighbors.
"I forgot about disturbing the people if I was more engaged," said Hou Mei.
At the beginning, the sound was noisy, and the neighbor stomped the floor, but one day she was practicing and heard a knock on the door. When the door was opened, the other party was very polite: "I'm sorry, can you keep your voice down?" "
This made Hou Mei particularly embarrassed, so she changed her voice to shouting in the Beijing Peking Opera Theatre every day.
This time, it won't disturb the people, but the problem is coming again-it is easy to get dizzy after shouting for a long time.
"Hanging the throat is not a matter of lightening the throat. It has to work hard to mobilize the dantian energy." Hou Mei said that this is the reason why she still insists on practicing the sword horse, so that she can have good muscles and energy, and maintain the energy of the throat.
Learning to play is because of a word from grandma
In Xue Yaping's view, her apprentice has grown rapidly in recent years, but she used to be too content to be content, and some did not seek to make progress.
Hou Mei also said that after she graduated from school and came to the Beijing Peking Opera Theatre, she has been playing some second-run actors or small supporting roles, such as Zhao Shouzhen in "Suo Lin Bao".
Most people always talk about singing and singing in the middle of the stage, but Hou Mei didn't think too much about these things that are related to her future. She thought it would be nice to be able to sing.
On the one hand, her personality is like this, and on the other hand, it may also be related to her motivation to engage in this industry.
No one in her family is engaged in this industry, her parents are in business, and she wants to learn opera because of what her grandma said: opera singers can always wear beautiful clothes.
Text/Reporter Guo Jia