Highlighting the red tone and striving to be full of new ideas——Observation on the creation and performance of the drama "Iron Flow Eastward"
Since the National Theatre's original drama "Tie Liu Dong Jin" was staged on April 13, the effect exceeded expectations, and the tickets were sold out immediately.
For a drama themed on revolutionary history, the audience has such high enthusiasm, Tian Qinxin, president of the National Theater of China, is not surprised: "To make the main theme look good is the mission and responsibility of the times that the National Theater must shoulder. As for the National Theater, "" "Tie Liu Dong Jin" has a different meaning. On December 25 last year, the National Theatre celebrated its 80th anniversary and its 20th anniversary. General Secretary Xi Jinping wrote back to the artists of the National Theatre. We were moved and more determined to use our feelings. The determination to tell Chinese stories well. This is the first original play after the general secretary's reply, and it is an answer submitted by the young directors of the National Theatre of China."
The main melody can be beautiful
The director is a post-90s generation.
A lot of people were surprised!
The era in the play is 80 years ago, and it is about the New Fourth Army. It is difficult for a director without certain experience to exclude that kind of suffering and that kind of righteousness.
Young director Cha Wenhao is fully prepared.
Last year, the TV series "The Age of Awakening" was popular on the screen. Cha Wenhao played the revolutionary youth Deng Zhongxia in the play. "He was born in the 1990s a hundred years ago, and he took on the important task of saving the nation. Now we are obliged to tell the story of the revolution to young people. ".
The play is adapted from the novel "The Last Airwave", which tells the story of a signal soldier.
In August 2020, when Cha Wenhao got the novel, he was immediately attracted-
The novel tells about the growth, transformation and awakening of the little man Li Anben. The story is complete and the context is clear; the protagonist is full of fireworks, secular, slick, greedy, and even a bit rogue, and the dramatic tension is full; The pursuit of multi-line narrative.
Since we want to arrange, we must arrange it differently and release new ideas.
Cha Wenhao said: "Our goal is to let more young audiences enter the theater and make them feel that the main theme can be beautiful."
In order to find creative inspiration, Zha Wenhao led the main creator to go to the revolutionary site to collect wind, Anhui Yansi New Fourth Army Military Headquarters Memorial Hall, Jingxian Bee Cave, Yunling New Fourth Army Military Headquarters Memorial Hall, Southern Anhui Incident Martyrs Cemetery...
When he saw the mountains and mountains in southern Anhui, the image of the hero gradually became clear: "Through this story, we should touch the eternal and the most simple things - the desire for peace, the insistence on humanity, and the love for love. Keeping promises, applauding life."
"On the battlefield, every soldier should be respected and seen." Screenwriter Cha Wenbai also wants to use this play to let the audience re-understand the signal soldiers. Like trumpeters, they are easy to be ignored, but they are also heroes .
The play is "knocked" out
It was a year and a half later when I actually started rehearsing.
"Because of the epidemic, we changed three rehearsal venues and rehearsed for 12 days, and finally had to suspend the rehearsal." Cha Wenhao was still watching the scene of that day, "Everyone is a little disappointed, but they promised each other' next spring, when the flowers bloom, Baima Mountain When the three groups broke through'".
The play is "knocked" out.
This time, in order to concentrate on rehearsal, the crew was completely closed for more than a month.
"Everyone's mind is on the play. Every day they are pondering, arguing, revising, improving, and even often breaking each other and torturing each other." Cha Wenhao said.
As far as the stage arrangement is concerned, Zhang Wu, the stage designer, proposed more than a dozen schemes, which were revised and revised.
On the final stage, there are no towering mountains, no jungles, no war scenes, but dozens of white building blocks, forming a mysterious code matrix, showing a simple "modern feeling".
The scrim above the stage is composed of Morse code symbols. With the movement of the turntable, the image moves on the scrim with a ticking rhythm.
Dai Qing, a professor at the School of Drama, Film and Television, Communication University of China, admired it very much. This stage design is not only the battlefield of the signal soldiers, but also the Baima Mountain where the soldiers are hard to station. The stage setting and character performance fully show the fusion of realism and freehand brushwork.
"The content is realistic, and human nature is soft. We use a lot of imagery to infuse the stage with poetry." Cha Wenhao said, for example, the cast is an "all-male class", but the women behind the martyrs: images of wives, daughters, and mothers , integrated into the play in different ways.
When the little firewood was sacrificed, the background music was the tick-tock of the girl humming; when the big sword was sacrificed, the music of women's singing and the girl's calling were also incorporated into the music.
Feminine symbols moisten things silently, and masculine iron flow becomes soft.
Taiping is for martyrs, how can martyrs enjoy peace.
The story of the revolution is, after all, told to young people.
When designing the script, a dual time and space narrative is adopted. In the transformation of the present and history, in the alternate flashbacks of grandfather and Li Anben, the hidden truth is revealed and the spiritual intergenerational continuity is realized.
Dai Qing quite agrees, expressing the revolutionary history of the party history from the perspective of contemporary young people, which has been used in many film and television works. It is not difficult to find that "Iron Flow Eastward" presents the intersection of time and space quite naturally. It is also the strength of stage expression.
Actors pressurize themselves for characters
In order to get rid of the enemy's tracking, the three regiments adopted a mobile report, and Li Anben, who had not recovered from his leg injury, rode up the mountain in a sedan chair.
The sedan chair is two bamboo poles, and Li Anben walks in the middle, reciting the formula for sending a message, his body flickers and squeaks, squeaks, and stops.
Hou Yansong suggested adding this "little car play".
After receiving the role of Li Anben, he was pondering how to act appropriately.
"The roles are very rich, the personalities are very distinct, and the performances should also be flexible."
Hou Yansong was born in opera and has been exploring the nationalization of drama.
He thought, sitting in a sedan chair is very common in traditional opera, why not use it in drama?
Opera is a local art, very down-to-earth, and the audience may like it.
Looks good or not!
Hou Yansong went down and spent a lot of hard work.
"In order to shape the role, the actor has to pressurize himself, which is all worth it." Hou Yansong said.
Tian Zheng is another version of Li Anben.
"In the early days of the rehearsal, Mr. Hou discussed with me that corner A and corner B are not one-to-one copies, but act as mirrors, each with their own advantages and strengths, so that which version has something to watch."
The crew brought the Tiejun spirit into the rehearsal field.
Tian Zheng has a deep feeling, everyone directly asks any questions, and then corrects them immediately, helping each other and supporting each other.
Zhang Zhenyuan is a freshman and has never acted in a drama.
From this performance, he came into contact with the main theme, recognized collectivism, and felt that "creation is the central task of actors".
Actor Wang Ting is also acting in a drama for the first time.
Gu Shaobin, the head of the regiment he played, is the soul of the Tiejun and plays a very important role.
He has appeared in many film and television dramas, but he has always had a complex for acting in dramas.
When he got to the rehearsal area, he was a little "dumbfounded".
The first is the lines.
Wang Ting not only has to change the style of drama, but also speak Sichuan dialect.
During the rehearsal days, Wang Ting was always tense: "Slept for two hours at night, woke up, read the lines, then went back to sleep, over and over again."
Wang Ting cherished this performance very much: "It is another coordinate in my acting career, and it is another departure."
"From the rehearsal to the performance, the pressure is always on, and the head is like a top mountain. All parties have raised some opinions. After the performance, they will continue to polish and revise, and strive to make a real quality play." Cha Wenhao is very determined.
(Reporter Liu Jiangwei of this newspaper)