Why do we love each other? Why do we hurt the people we love deeply?
In 1997, British playwright Patrick Marble directed his own play "Stealing Hearts", which premiered at the Royal National Theater in London. That night, the London audience felt a sense of oppression after watching this play with only four characters. People are faced with the above questions, which touch their hearts but are difficult to answer.
At that time, Patrick Marble was 33 years old and a fledgling playwright and director in the London theater circle. He did not expect that the play would win the 1998 Laurence Olivier Theater Award, the 1997 Best New Play Award and the 1997 London Critics Circle Theater Award. "Stealing Hearts" has appeared on London's West End and New York's Broadway stages. In 2004, director Mike Nichols adapted "Stealing Hearts" into a movie, starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman. To this day, "Stealing Hearts" is still performed all over the world.
The story of "Stealing Hearts" revolves around the complex relationship between two men and two women. Dan, a frustrated novelist, encounters the girl Alice and writes her story into his first novel. Many years later, when he met Anna, an outstanding photographer, he couldn't help but be fascinated by her. The entire drama is filled with love and betrayal, revenge and pain in a long timeline, revealing the contradiction and complexity of gender relations.
html From January 11 to 21, the drama "Stealing Hearts" produced by Zhenrong Drama and directed by Han Jie and Zhang Mengqiao was performed at the Mandarin Pioneer Wisdom Theater. It reinterprets this drama that faces human nature and desire in an absurd and humorous way. Stealing Hearts".
Facing the meaning of drama
Patrick Marble is one of the most popular contemporary British playwrights. He has been active on the drama stage for a long time and has also served as the screenwriter for the film versions of "Stealing Hearts", "Scandal Chronicle" and "Asylum".
Drama translator and visiting scholar at Columbia University School of Drama, Hu Kaiqi was invited to translate the Chinese version of "Stealing Hearts". In his opinion, Patrick Marble is a representative figure of contemporary British "face-to-face drama", and "Stealing Hearts" is also on At the end of the century, "the most important work that directly confronts the relationship between men and women is also the most successful work."
In 1964, Patrick Marble was born into a middle-class British Jewish family. He grew up in Wimbledon and studied English at Wadham College, Oxford University. At the beginning of his career, he worked as a stand-up comedian and radio comedian.
"His main works are avant-garde comedies, revealing the naked sex, violence and degenerate urban culture of contemporary society." Hu Kaiqi believes that Patrick Marble has been deliberately exploring the emotional nature of contemporary life, as well as the political and cultural changes in the contemporary world. Changing lifestyles.
Patrick Marble never expected that "Stealing Hearts" would take the world by storm. In an interview in 1999, he admitted that his debut film "Businessman's Choice" was a commercial drama, while "Stealing Heart" was a personal drama. However, the play "Stealing Hearts" became the focus of British public opinion as soon as it was staged. When the play was performed in the theater, some people broke down and cried, some ran out of the theater, some laughed, and some sighed. The media at the time evaluated "Stealing Hearts" as "the best-performed, sexiest and most spiritually powerful drama" and considered it "a profound and exciting adult drama, sad and stylish, desperately funny, and heartfelt." "Sadness."
In Hu Kaiqi's view, the dramatic structure of "Stealing Hearts" is exquisite. There are only four characters in the play, and their emotions and fates for four and a half years are fully displayed in twelve scenes. Not only are the scenes never repeated, the four characters never appear on the same stage.
""Stealing Hearts" emphasizes the conflict between the sexes from beginning to end, and in the conflict, the men described by Ma Bo are always at a moral disadvantage. At the end of the story, he seems to be blaming men more." Hu Kaiqi said, "Stealing Hearts" Another feature of "" is that puffball writes a kind of "irrationality" about love and lust. Love is irrational, and desire and betrayal are also irrational, but he believes that “it is this emotional abruptness and disorder that adds to the tension of the drama. After all, throughout the ages, people have had thousands of rationalities, but Difficulty freeing oneself from the control of irrational passions.He nakedly presents the relationship between the sexes in contemporary society, forcing people to face this emotional and social dilemma head-on. I think this is the social significance of face-to-face drama since the 1990s. "
A pessimistic comedy
Since its premiere in London in 1997, "Stealing Hearts" has been performed from London to New York, from the Czech Republic to Russia, from Australia to Argentina, from Iceland to Israel, and has been staged in more than 50 countries around the world. .
How to deliver a classic drama to the current Chinese audience is a question that director Han Jie is thinking about.
In the new version of "Stealing Hearts", Han Jie started to explore new concepts from the stage design, setting the entire stage as a In the "Dojo", four figures go up and down, and all the props are placed next to the "Dojo". He regards the actors as magicians, and props such as chairs, beds, tables, etc. are magic tools.
The stage is based on red, which means love and sex, romance and passion. In the last scene, the director designed a special "grave". The red stage is filled with white chairs, with the backs of the chairs facing the audience, symbolizing the tombstones. The heroes and heroines who have passed through thousands of sails are in Reunion in the cemetery, the past confusion and madness have been over, the depth of love and the intensity of hatred have become a thing of the past.
"In the 12th scene, we also created a red grave. Red is both romantic and passionate, as well as death and sadness. Han Jie believes that "Stealing Hearts" is not only a drama, but also a comedy. "This is a special comedy. All the laughs are on the most painful parts of the relationship between men and women. The moments when the problems are most acute are also the audience in the theater." The happiest moment of laughter. "
At the performance of "Stealing Heart", the audience felt the seductive performance while laughing knowingly, or their hearts beat for those straightforward and familiar scenes. In Hu Kaiqi's view, this is the charm of live performance, Through drama, a direct glimpse into people's private hearts.
"In this drama, love survives the lies." When the truth is told, love dies. This is the exciting part of this drama. " Han Jie said that this play tore a hole in the rigid rules of reason and morality.
In the epilogue of the script of "Stealing Hearts", Patrick Marble said, "This is a pessimistic comedy.
Director Han Jie gave another definition of the theme of "Stealing Hearts": "No matter how high we elevate our love to a spiritual height, we cannot get rid of our heavy body." "
Hu Kaiqi has been cooperating with Zhenrong Drama over the years, translating masterpieces such as "Blackbird" and "Stealing Heart" that face drama into China. In the future, Zhenrong Drama will also bring more different types of dramas that explore the depth of human nature. To the domestic stage."
