In Russia at the end of the 19th century, on a lakeside stage in a lonely manor, the girl Nina appeared between the curtain, the lake, and the sky. She recited obscure lines created by the young playwright Constantine, which made the actor who played Constantine's mother burst into laughter in the audience. ——This is the opening of Chekhov's classic work "The Seagull".
In Guangzhou in 2024, five girls re-interpreted "Summer Echoes: Seagull" with their own understanding on the theater stage. The story takes place in a small city next to a big city . After the five girls in the play rehearsed this play-within-a-play in the last summer before the college entrance examination, they ushered in unexpected and unexpected events in their lives. Reasonable changes.
Stills from "Summer Echoes: The Seagull". (Photo/Photo by Xia Dong)
Although Chekhov's "The Seagull" has been re-interpreted many times in various ways by domestic and foreign troupes of all sizes, 's all-female performance is still absolutely rare. This is also the first attempt by young director He Qi and young screenwriter Hu Xuanyi to reconstruct classic works.
Since graduating from the Graduate School of Drama at National Taiwan University in 2018, the two consider their theater path to be a "vertical climb": the first time they collaborated on a play, they participated in the Wuzhen Theater Festival, and since then they have been moving forward, residing in theaters and accepting commissions. , planning commercial dramas, every attempt is an unprecedented challenge. But every opportunity they got, they firmly grasped it.
Screenwriter Hu Xuanyi (left) graduated from the Journalism Department of Sichuan University and the Drama Institute of
National Taiwan University.
won the first prize of the 2nd Global Pan-Chinese Youth Script Writing Competition,
the Script Award of the 37th Tian Han Drama Award,
Outstanding Script Award for Chinese Youth Drama Works at the 6th Chinese Drama Festival.
Director He Qi (right) graduated from the Chinese Department of Fudan University and the Drama Institute of
National Taiwan University.
was shortlisted for the Best New Director Award at the 2022 One Drama Awards.
(Photo/Photo courtesy of interviewee)
From a small theater troupe with only two people to a loose creative group of "four and a half people", He Qi and Hu Xuanyi have been together for 8 years. Although they still have no clear plan for their next step, in an era when everyone talks about worldly stability, they are still willing to discuss those abstract and ideal moments in life.
01
Describe life as it
looks like in dreams
When Chekhov wrote "The Seagull", the world happened to quickly enter the era of industrialization, and the appropriation and plunder of capital became more convenient. So at the beginning of the play, Chekhov asked the character Masha to put on black clothes and clearly expressed his views on the present moment - "I am mourning my life" because life is dead.
(Photo/"Seagull")
At the end of the play, the people in front of the scene were still playing cards and laughing. The sound of Constantine committing suicide behind the scenes was interpreted as the "accidental" explosion of ether. In other words, it is clear that an irreversible tragedy has occurred, but people choose to turn their backs, not look at him, and continue to live as if nothing has happened, and the due "mourning" has disappeared without a trace.
This is surprisingly consistent with a sense of decency. When they first graduated, He Qi and Hu Xuanyi were surprised to find that some audiences' demands for drama were "not to have anything too realistic in the theater," which was completely different from the education they had received.
According to He Qi and Hu Xuanyi, theater should be a free public space . Everyone comes here to discuss reality and things that cannot be discussed in reality. "But I understand this idea very well, because no one can change the status quo." Hu Xuanyi said, "I just feel very sad because everyone is already exhausted to this extent."
's insight into life has become the character of Constantine in the play. Ding's lines.
(Picture/@ Sleeping Bad Studio)
As creators, they must honestly face the world they see: the dreams of a large number of people have become extremely realistic, and they tend to "stable life". Fewer and fewer people dare to concretely describe the abstract future - and such people may even seem to be a bit maverick.
When reality has become a behemoth that resists possibility, we have ushered in the "world of dead seagulls."
How should we face such a world? He Qi and Hu Xuanyi’s answer is: rehearse a play, and then in the play, mourn well and describe life seriously, “according to what it looks like in dreams.”
(Picture/Photo by Xia Dong)
It is true that theater cannot solve any problems, and theaters and playwrights do not assume such responsibilities, but the two believe that "we should at least speak out about the problem."
02
sees the trend in the current of the times. Ordinary people
Ordinary dramas usually have a script and concept first, and then confirm the actors and casts. But starting from the collaborative drama "My Private Xinhua Dictionary and Me", He Qi and Hu Xuanyi insisted on " writing for actors" .
During rehearsals, He Qi often asks Hu Xuanyi to set a scene for the actors, allowing the actors to naturally reveal their various emotions facing things. When a usually mild-mannered actor suddenly scolded his companion who attempted suicide for being irresponsible during an improvisational performance, a character who cared more about the feelings of others than his own suddenly came to life in the actor.
gets inspiration from improvisation and then goes back to the script to rewrite the entire story. In the end, the drama becomes the director and screenwriter's "reading notes" for the actors. Hu Xuanyi is not too worried that this kind of script creation will be too personal: "We must first treat actors as human beings, they are not tools for directors or screenwriters to execute their own artistic will."
(Photo / "Summer Echoes: Seagull" Stills)
Although actors have a professional identity, they are essentially ordinary people. Even because of professional requirements, they will watch other people's lives and their own lives in more detail. Therefore, starting from understanding the actors and creating from the actors themselves is a better way to flesh out the characters. It was an accident that
became an all-female class. In order to find actors who can better dialogue with the characters, He Qi and Hu Xuanyi sent out a long questionnaire without any gender-related questions. They only talked about the original work of "Seagull" and the actors' childhood and dreams. From 145 responses, they shortlisted 33 actors for dialogue. Surprisingly, in the end the suitable actors were all women.
The female actors do add a more caring and gentle temperament to the drama. But compared to the pure female perspective, He Qi believes that a more suitable expression is "ordinary person's perspective" : "The actors are indeed female, but all our scheduling and reactions are showing an ordinary person like you and me. How should people deal with when facing reality?
(Picture/stills of "Summer Echoes: Seagull")
In every creation, Hu Xuanyi focuses on the relationship between people and the times. "When the older generation was growing up, society was in a stage of rapid transformation and development, and everyone saw various possibilities." However, the narrative they are familiar with after the 1990s is a story about the entanglement between people and the times. "In the past, everyone may have thought that life has just begun when you turn 30; but now my 30-year-old classmates who work in large companies have even mocked themselves as 'sunset red.'"
He Qi will also emphasize this in the theater. A sense of dislocation. "All the scripts written by Hu Xuanyi pay great attention to the historical background. So every time I get the script, I will think about how to strengthen the environment, make the outside world look more oppressive, and make people look smaller."
So, "Thunderbolt" "In "Me and My Private Xinhua Dictionary" they discuss the living conditions of urban people: "(People) grow up in cities and drift in bigger cities." "My Private Xinhua Dictionary and Me" uses Xinhua Dictionaries of different eras and different versions as clues , stringing together the collective memories of generations. "Summer Echoes: Seagull" uses film to recall various major historical events from 2006 to the present.
In "Summer Echoes: Seagulls", the collective memory of the post-90s generation is awakened by a short film.
(Photo/Photo by Wang Li)
But no matter how the times change, the protagonist of life is still every ordinary person.The rich stories that happen to everyone may not be worthy of being on the news or becoming "chicken soup", but they are always worth listening to and sharing. Therefore, "The living conditions of ordinary people in the torrent of the times is the motif of all our creations." He Qi said.
03
Climbing vertically without making many compromises
Compared with other young dramatists with professional backgrounds, the drama paths of He Qi and Hu Xuanyi look quite "wild".
are two newcomers to drama. After graduation, they broke into various drama festivals single-handedly, relying on their works in drama festivals to keep improving. When their work was invited to participate in the Wuzhen Theater Festival, their friends joked that they had become "380 directors." Hu Xuanyi also felt uneasy: "Is the play we did worth the 380 yuan others spent to watch it?"
Being in the highly competitive drama industry, the two of them were indeed lucky: they experienced little waiting, and also received praise from some seniors and friends. Help, there were very few compromises made creatively.
The members of the studio who couldn’t sleep well
were painting their own paintings. (Photo/provided by interviewee)
But at the same time, they also made extraordinary efforts. In the drama industry that pays attention to inheritance, as pure "self-employed people", He Qi and Hu Xuanyi do not have the same guidance and help from their contacts in the circle as other major students. They have to explore everything by themselves - they don't know how to do resident dramas. I don’t understand the operating logic of commercial dramas, and I have never adapted a classic. Facing the audience's judgment every step of the way, Hu Xuanyi felt that she was "climbing vertically."
"Frankly speaking, when I am walking on the way to the rehearsal venue, I always want to turn around and go home." He Qi said. After all, a play involves not only two people, but also a whole group of actors and staff. "The opportunities given to young creators in the industry are very limited. If is not done well once, you will not get the next opportunity ."
Especially for female practitioners, opportunities are fleeting. In recent years, there have been more and more musicals and plays produced by all-female classes, and more female directors and screenwriters are emerging. But according to the observations of He Qi and Hu Xuanyi, under the same conditions, men in the industry will still get more opportunities.
Hu Xuanyi and He Qi. (Photo/Photo courtesy of interviewee)
In stereotypes, everyone seems to naturally believe that men are calmer, more decisive, and more suitable to be directors; while women are more delicate, more empathetic, and suitable to be screenwriters.
" I hate it when people call me beautiful director . I can't regard it as a compliment." He Qi said. When these two words are linked together, the former seems to become an auxiliary to the identity of the latter, and his talents can only be suppressed under the label of gender or appearance.
And even among the scriptwriter roles that are recognized as "mostly female", Hu Xuanyi also feels the difference caused by the identity of men and women. At first, because of her strong writing skills and objective perspective, some of her works were often mistaken by editors as being written by men. In the end, she was surprised and "praised" as "the person who wrote such words was actually a girl born in the 1990s." After
, Hu Xuanyi deliberately softened her writing style and showed a clear female bias in . "I could stick to a very 'hard' writing style, and that would be the writing style that would get more praise, but why bother? There are enough masculine writings out there, including me. I should write about fewer people Those who pay attention. ”
04
The essence of life is art
When he first started working, Hu Xuanyi believed that since screenwriting and directing could become a profession, he could survive in this profession. "Later I found out that I was too naive at the time. This industry cannot allow so many creators to support themselves."
After the performance, Hu Xuanyi and He Qi took a group photo with the
actors and staff.
(Photo/Photo by Feng Xuexian) When
was recruiting actors, He Qi and Hu Xuanyi discovered that there was a gap in the age of actors in the industry. “There are many particularly young actors, and there are also many older and successful actors, but few middle-aged practitioners can persist.
Some actors will definitely switch careers when they get opportunities in film and television; while some actors will most likely change careers when they reach middle age and face pressure to survive.
Age anxiety is a common situation in the industry, and He Qi and Hu Xuanyi are no exception. Fortunately, their families are very supportive of their careers. As for the future, both of them are still in a period of confusion. Hu Xuanyi feels that " and other industries can probably see a development path , but we don't know where to go next."
"Every day I think about what I can do if I don't do drama, and I always tell Hu Xuanyi that I want to find a class." He Qi is also struggling, "Now I can support myself, but my life is not that good, and I don't know how. It can be better."
Director He Qi plays Constantine in the play.
(Picture/@ Sleeping Bad Studio)
But despite the many uncertainties, after a tour, He Qi and Hu Xuanyi rushed non-stop to the rehearsal hall of the next play.
The topic in "Seagull" is eternal: How should we face our lives? How much room is there in life for abstract dreams? What is the essence of life?
They have always believed that the essence of life is art: "One of the manifestations of real life is: No matter who you are, you can actually create something . Whether it is great or small, creation is our resistance to forgetfulness. and the way to die."
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