Taking advantage of the national trend to explore the new proposition of rejuvenating opera
——Starting from the Yue Opera "New Dragon Inn" "Out of the Circle"
Not long ago, the new Chinese style and environmental Shaoxing opera "New Dragon Gate Inn" won the "Annual Performance Award" awarded by Weibo Night. In the past few months, this work and its main actors have repeatedly reached the top of Weibo's hot searches simply by relying on fans' second-generation videos - this is a communication effect that many film and television dramas and stars cannot achieve.
The "out of the circle" of this work is not an isolated phenomenon, but a typical example in a series of "out of the circle" phenomena in operas.
The dissemination of opera needs to take into account the psychological inertia of young people who are the main consumers - they are curious about new things, have a personalized understanding and desire for independent identity and lifestyle, and are more concerned about the quality and experience of products. Today, the word "national trend" has covered almost every field from physical products to cultural creativity. It has not only become synonymous with vitality, fashion and popularity, but also led the consumption behavior of young people. "New Longmen Inn" positions the work as a "new national style", capturing the Z generation's pursuit of national trends and in line with their aesthetic taste and acceptance preferences. Its creative team is mainly composed of "post-80s" and "post-90s". They are innovative, creative, and capable. They are good at reconstructing and designing the form of Yue Opera from the perspective and needs of young people, providing a creative transformation of traditional culture. and innovative development, providing a new path and new ideas worth exploring.
Why "Sister Husband" became a traffic password
"New Dragon Inn" is very popular on the Internet, and the female student Chen Lijun who plays the supporting role of Jia Ting in the play is indispensable.
The story is an adaptation of the movie of the same name. It tells the story of the eunuch chaos in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. Cao Shaoqin, the governor of Dongchang, killed Yang Yuxuan, the minister of the Ministry of War. In order to preserve the blood of the Yang family, disciples Zhou Huaian and Qiu Moyan took the orphans of the Yang family and fled to the border of the Western Regions. The trouble lies with Longmen Inn. Cao Shaoqin pursued him all the way. With the help of shopkeepers Jin Xiangyu and Diao Buyu, Zhou Huaian, Qiu Moyan and others joined forces to kill Cao Shaoqin and save the orphan. In the Yue Opera version, Jia Ting is a secondary character and a new character, but this character is very malleable in character. On the one hand, he wants to carry out Cao Shaoqin's order and play tricks with Jin Xiangyu to trap Zhou Huaian until Cao Shaoqin arrives; on the other hand, he loosens his position and secretly helps Zhou Huaian. He is a figure who swings between good and evil, and is complicated. It is obviously different from the clear-cut character design of good and bad that is common in traditional operas, and it coincides with the type of characters that young audiences who are familiar with film and television culture like. In addition, Chen Lijun's performance is sometimes heroic and sometimes charming, and the Internet commented that "young people's opera DNA has been awakened."
What fans pay the most attention to is Chen Lijun's charming image and delicate movements and expressions. Based on the role of a school girl, she also absorbed and integrated film and television performance methods to interpret this character in a performance method that is different from traditional Yue opera, making fans "fascinated by the raised eyebrows and evil smile." I was impressed by her "circling around with the magic of love" holding Jin Xiangyu (played by Li Yunxiao). It can be seen that unlike traditional theater fans who pay attention to aspects such as appearance, singing, narration, and body posture, fans make judgments based on their familiar aesthetic experiences and points of interest, based on what they can read during the viewing experience. Gain recognition points from the information. This recognition is based on the satisfaction of curiosity to a certain extent. It is not entirely a resonance and understanding of the opera, nor is it based on the evaluation of the aesthetic characteristics of the opera.
"Female pretending to be a man" is a drama technique familiar to young audiences. It is both "strange" and "new" combined with the plot of the play. It is an artistic method favored by young audiences who have grown up in the Internet era. The Yue Opera fan base, which is dominated by female audiences, affectionately calls Chen Lijun "Sister Husband". Behind the name lies the unique psychology of fans' expectations. The performance of the female student combines the bookishness of an elegant young student with the graceful and handsome temperament of a woman, which conforms to the fans' aesthetic imagination of a suave and talented chivalrous man, and also satisfies the female audience's beautiful imagination of an ideal partner.
The handsome Yue Opera students have always shown themselves to the audience with their gentle, graceful and unrestrained temperament. From Yin Guifang in the early years to the "White Horse Junan" in the Internet era, to the current "old lady" Chen Lijun, the Yue Opera students have been influenced by The phenomenon of popularity continues. In essence, this is the charm of Yue Opera "Jiao'er".
Fashion and innovation are cultural genes deeply rooted in Yue Opera
The traffic carnival that Yue Opera has gained this time is certainly worthy of joy, but we must also clearly realize that there are more than 300 opera types with different styles, different characteristics, and different historical accumulations across the country. The regional environment and culture in which these opera types are located Soils have common characteristics but also have distinct personalities. The dilemmas encountered and the solutions cannot be the same. They need to be adapted and dealt with according to local conditions and the characteristics of the drama. For example, the youth version of Kunqu Opera "The Peony Pavilion" launched in 2003 has continued to be popular to this day, setting off a trend in the opera industry of how to combine "modern consciousness" with "traditional classics" in a youthful inheritance method to help opera cope with changes in the new environment. Provides ideas for reference.
The reason why Yue Opera has been so-called "breaking out of the circle" and "exiting the circle" at different times during its more than 100 years of existence is related to the gene of Yue Opera's pursuit of innovation and change. Yue Opera is the most successful opera that has completed the transition from traditional rural aesthetics to urban popular aesthetics in the complex cultural environment of the 20th century. This local opera from Shaoxing has established an evolutionary concept that keeps pace with the times since it entered the big dock of Shanghai. From the male troupe to the female "fashionable troupe", after the women's Yue Opera brand became popular in Shanghai, the characteristics of the popular opera and the female-dominated audience group were determined in the commercial and cultural competition. The 1940s was a historical stage of great development in the urbanization process of Yue Opera. The most famous actors in the female roles were "Three Flowers, One Juan and One Gui", namely Shi Yinhua, Zhao Ruihua, Wang Xinghua, Yao Shuijuan, Xiao Dangui, and the niche actors included Tu Xinghua and Zhu Su'e. , Ma Zhanghua, as well as emerging young actors such as Yuan Xuefen, Yin Guifang, Fan Ruijuan, Fu Quanxiang, Xu Yulan, etc. With their innovative thinking, they borrowed concepts from popular dramas, films and TV shows at the time, and borrowed experience from Shanghai-style Peking Opera, Shen Opera and even classical Kun Opera. They took the lead in introducing the director system, comprehensively improved the aesthetics of Yue Opera, and achieved a new leap forward in Yue Opera.
The four famous dramas "The Romance of the West Chamber", "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "Dream of Red Mansions" and "Blessing", which laid the foundation of Yue Opera aesthetics, fully absorbed nutrients from the four dimensions of classical opera literature, folk opera, classical literature and modern novels, and completed the Classic works that integrate modern aesthetics provide a good foundation for the contemporary dissemination of Yue Opera. To a certain extent, Yue Opera's advantages in literary stories, its emphasis on life-oriented rather than highly stylized body language, as well as its popular singing and popular narration, make its performance form easily accepted by young audiences. In addition, Yue Opera originated in the Yangtze River Delta, which is a highly developed economic and cultural region in China and has gathered a large number of talents. Its unique geographical advantages ensure that Yue Opera people can always be at the forefront of innovation, constantly adapt to social changes, and continue to gain. New life.
Another important factor in the success of "New Dragon Inn" is the famous Yue Opera performing artist Mao Weitao, who serves as the chief producer, producer and artistic director. She personally takes charge of the artistic style and direction, playing the role of a fixed star. Mao Weitao is a pioneer in Yue opera innovation. His representative works such as "Kong Yiji" and "Color Liulan and Du Liniang" were once at the forefront of Yue opera innovation. This time she boldly cultivated young creators and gave them full trust and free space to develop. At the same time, "New Dragon Inn" adopts an environmental audio-visual reception method in the theater space, allowing young people to immerse themselves in the world of martial arts, feel the "desert style" and "West Lake tenderness", and appreciate the legend of martial arts and the entanglement of love. It is also the highlight that ensures the success of the whole play.
In recent years, with the rise of the "national trend", traditional culture has received more and more attention and pursuit, and the commercial attributes of culture itself have been reactivated. By refining the audience groups and based on their different consumption characteristics, specially produced and created opera art works with new ideas will gradually form a consumption trend. "Generation Z" is a group of viewers who have a strong urge to pay attention to new things and at the same time need to be guided towards reasonable consumption. Although they do not have rich experience in watching operas, they have a broad vision because they grew up in an online environment, and have more personalized and niche aesthetic tastes. Once identified, they will take the initiative to "make up lessons" and dig deeper. This proactive learning habit will enable them to supplement the basic knowledge of opera appreciation in a short period of time. They often interpret and spread opera in their own unique way on websites such as Bilibili, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, forming a unique opera culture community. There is no doubt that these new fans are the "new and new human beings" who kowtow to CP, make figurines, draw their own fan comics, and open accounts on websites to write fan fiction. They are the audience group that opera needs to attract in the future. Along this path of youthful communication, opera needs a group of young opera performers with no generation gap to communicate with their own audience in their own way. At the same time, in the face of the so-called "flooding wealth" brought by the traffic of popular hits, opera people need to treat it rationally and clearly realize that being sought after after becoming famous is just the "halo" effect of a star, which is difficult to last. "New Longmen Inn" wants to avoid being a "flash in the pan", but its fundamental is still the path of returning to the continuous exploration and persistence of the essence of opera.
(The author Fu Guisheng is a doctor of drama and a lecturer at the Art Education Center of Tsinghua University)
Source: Wen Wei Po