Hanfu made in the Song Dynasty, elegant gatherings of literati, poetry and prose, piano, chess, calligraphy, painting, tea, wine and incense gathered together, and the ancient style of Song Dynasty appeared on the stage. During the Dragon Boat Festival, the Chinese-style suspense stage play "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival" premiered at the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center. As a type of stage play that is rare on the current stage, this well-produced ancient-style suspense play gained a lot of praise after its premiere. It received many positive reviews and opened additional performances.
Stills of "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
"The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival" is adapted from the novel of the same name. It is a masterpiece written by the author Ye Wenbiao for ten years. The book consists of six volumes, integrating history and mystery suspense. The original work uses famous paintings as the starting point, and also brings out stories from famous paintings, giving stories to each of the 824 characters in the painting. The author tried to describe the story of each person in the painting in a documentary way, and meticulously gave them their true names and identities. At the same time, the novel also restores all aspects of life in the Northern Song Dynasty to the greatest extent, and at the same time sets up hundreds of puzzles for the story.
Stills from "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
Regarding his novel being adapted into a stage play, Ye Wenbiao said, "To be honest, I can hardly imagine that this story can be shown in the form of a drama. If I look forward to it, I hope The drama version can have the cultural charm and character of the Song Dynasty, and can show the conflicts between light and darkness, right and wrong, love and hate among traditional scholars, bringing a cultural shock and historical reflection to the audience. "
stage. The play "Code Along the River During the Qingming Festival" took 4 years of planning to be put on the stage. Ma Nan served as the screenwriter, Wang Junye directed, Shen Li served as the stage designer, and Lu Liang composed the music. Because of the huge scale of the original work, the stage play this time selected the "Mei Chuan Case" and "Bazi Case" from the original work.
Stills of "Code Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
The whole play opens with a gathering of literati at the beginning of spring. They played the piano, composed poems, and dropped paper. It was a dispute between eight close friends of the Northern Song Dynasty about the "new and old party struggles" caused by "Wang Anshi's Reform". "The debate also started. The crew hopes to reproduce the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty in all aspects such as music, costumes, etiquette, and lifestyle. The entire play strives to reproduce the cultural elegance of the Song Dynasty from the beginning.
The actors in the play are the result of three months of intensive training. Director Wang Junye said: "When I selected the actors, I included several young actors with talents in their own right. They may be able to write calligraphy or have opera and martial arts skills. After joining the group, teachers from different fields were specially invited to teach the actors the etiquette of the Song Dynasty, practice the etiquette of that time, improve their calligraphy skills, and learn how to order tea and make incense seals. "
played the song "Chun Qi" in the elegant collection. It is a guqin piece played live on stage by actors, but at the beginning of the group's formation, the actors had almost no basic knowledge of guqin playing. The music in the play is also composed using traditional musical instruments such as the flute, guzheng, and pipa to achieve the unique aesthetic musical style and atmosphere of the play.
The stills of "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
The stage design and costumes are also the highlights of the whole play. The overall structure of the stage is derived from the beam and column structure of Chinese architectural woodwork. All stage objects are produced by continuous reorganization of wooden materials. Different shapes and different volumes of wood intersect vertically and horizontally and are layered on top of each other to form a huge Lost network. There is a plot in the play where the bluff in which the ship disappeared out of thin air was completely restored on the stage, which even more amazed the audience.
The costumes in the play also use Song Dynasty calligraphy and painting as the aesthetic standard, replicating the Song Dynasty costumes and fabrics as much as possible, with details supplemented by hand-painted patterns and hand-sewing. The "tube top + bra" worn by the female characters in the play is the most typical and fashionable attire for women in the Song Dynasty. In the play, the brocade used by Gu Zhen, the inspector of the left army in Kaifeng Prefecture, is different from the coarse linen worn by the literati characters. The colors use low-saturation blue, green, gray, brown and other colors to express the simple and elegant robes of the Song Dynasty, and the aesthetic taste of returning to nature.
"The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has many characters, so the whole drama also has many characters, and has gathered many actors, including He Ping, Guo Lin, He Yi, Lu You, Wang Yenong, Zhang Chang, Bai Zhuoming, etc. to co-star.
Stills of "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival"
Various characters appear one after another. Although it increases the "brain-burning degree" of the whole play, it is also one of the starting points for the original author's creation. ""Along the River During the Qingming Festival" should be the first work among the famous paintings handed down from generation to generation that expresses urban culture on a large scale. There are nearly a thousand characters in the painting, but they are all treated equally, regardless of high or low. To me, this spirit of equality is the most precious thing about this painting. The greatest place. You can see a vivid scene of the times and real life in the painting, almost like a huge real-life photo. As a story writer, seeing such a huge scene and bustling crowds is even more exciting. I can’t resist the urge to tell.”
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