Stills from "Camel Xiangzi".
A huge wheel hangs in the air, rolling forward, repeating the cycle. As the melody of Beijing accent sounded, more than a dozen running coachmen ran in a straight line, and all the living beings in the smoke and mist were displayed in front of the audience... Last night, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center opened the new year drama "Camel Xiangzi" in the Oriental Performed at the Opera House. Tickets for this stage production, adapted from Lao She's novel of the same name, were sold out before the show started.
At the beginning of 2024, theaters in Shanghai ushered in a batch of stage plays with their own highlights. Some are based on classic texts, while others are re-creations of popular movies, with star casts or dialect expressions, bringing more humanistic flavor and popularity to Shanghai's drama market at the start of the New Year.
"Lao She's professional" allows three Xiangzi to talk on the same stage
"Camel Xiangzi" director Fang Xu has the title of "Lao She's professional". Starting from the first adaptation of the novel "In My Life", he successively directed "Cat City" There are many dramas adapted from Lao She's novels, such as "Old Li's Fantasy of Love", "Niu Tianci", "Lao She Goes to the Market" and "Two Horses".
During the adaptation process of "Camel Xiangzi", Fang Xu hopes to use new stage presentation methods and modern drama techniques to "rejuvenate" this literary classic on the current stage. Therefore, the audience saw three young, middle-aged and old Xiangzi perform on the same stage, using the method of cross-time and space dialogue to interpret the story of the little man from being vigorous and full of hope to being disillusioned and falling into despair, and finally self-destruction and insensitivity. life path. The play also cleverly transforms the chorus form common in Western dramas into the image of "carriage drivers". It also uses the mouths of the coachmen to depict an image of Xiangzi in the hearts of the people on the stage.
In both "Niu Tianci" and "Two Horses", Fang Xu boldly adopted an "all-male cast" cast. In "Camel Xiangzi", he followed this creative idea and had all the characters in the play played by male actors. There is no need for dark scenes, transitions, or getting on and off the stage. The actors tear off their costumes, complete the live transformation in a few seconds under the watchful eyes of the audience, and quickly transform from the image of a "car driver" to other roles.
Stills from the dialect drama "Thunderstorm".
Nearly 90 years have passed since "Camel Xiangzi" was serialized in "Universe Wind" magazine, and the classic text still nourishes stage creation for a long time. The same is true for Cao Yu's "Thunderstorm". The dialect drama "Thunderstorm" was performed twice at the Wanping Theater last month, and tickets for next month's performance have been released recently. Hua Wen, a famous Shanghai Opera artist, boldly breaks through the boundaries of performance in the play and competes with a group of Shanghai Opera actors. The language breakthrough of the play is not only to translate Mandarin into the unique expressions of Shanghainese, but also to get close to the message conveyed by the script, which is a huge and cumbersome matching project. The main creator needs to be familiar with Shanghainese slang and find expressions that fit the background of the times and the characteristics of the characters. The accurately "translated" Shanghainese lines, the alternate use of sharp tuanyin and tuanyin, and the unique Shanghai-style stage design are all well prepared for the "Northern Opera and Southern Performance".
first time! All foreign actors perform in Chinese drama
Many movie fans must still remember the famous scene in the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" - the protagonist Andy climbed out of the sewer with all his strength and enjoyed the joy of freedom in the heavy rain. Just next week, this story that travels through time and space and still has strong appeal will be launched at Shanghai Cultural Plaza. The Chinese version of "The Shawshank Redemption" directed by Zhang Guoli is the first in the industry. It uses all foreign actors and all Chinese dialogues, and brings together 11 actors from 8 countries: Canada, the United States, France, Australia, Italy, Russia, Argentina, and Finland. actors, jointly present this world-class IP.
"Hope is a beautiful thing, perhaps the best thing in the world." From the story of "The Shawshank Redemption", the audience can find answers to their confusion about human nature, change, persistence, growth, and hope.In the play, Zhang Guoli focuses on the process of establishing trust and friendship between Rhett and Andy, explores the complexity of human nature and the importance of spiritual strength, and shows how an ordinary person can find hope in adversity and ultimately achieve self-salvation. touching stories. Host Dashan, who is familiar to Chinese audiences, plays the role of Red. He said in an interview with the media: "We are definitely not selling the concept of foreigners acting in Chinese dramas. We are seriously producing a high-level drama."
From dramas to movies, Returning to the stage, "Hello, Madman!" directed by Rao Xiaozhi! 》It took ten years. Starting next weekend, "Hello, Madman!" "The 10th anniversary edition will be staged at the North Bund AIA Grand Theater. In the movie of the same name, actress Wan Qian plays seven roles, and her superb acting skills were rated as "explosive" by netizens. This time, the two collaborate again after the movie, and Wan Qian will reinterpret the classic moments in the movie in different forms. In the new version, Rao Xiaozhi re-constructed the work from ten years ago, made drastic adaptations in terms of actors, scripts, stage design, etc., and added new thinking over the years. From the perspective of artificial intelligence, he created a new setting for the identity of the protagonist icy, which closely integrated the work with the times and gave the audience more space to think.
Author: Wang Xiaoli
Text: Our reporter Wang Xiaoli Picture: Picture provided by the performer Editor: Fu Lu
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