"If you want to start, then the pioneer is a forward-leaning posture." At the end of the 2024 Aranya Theater Festival, Meng Jinghui said this to the entertainment reporter of Global Network.
Meng Jinghui. Image source: Aranya Theater Festival
When Meng Jinghui is mentioned, many people will think of "Rhinoceros in Love".
In 1999, the first run of "Rhinoceros in Love" created a net profit of more than 300,000 yuan, becoming the first small theater drama in China to make a profit through box office. Taking "Rhinoceros in Love" as a starting point, Meng Jinghui gave birth to "Bedbug", "The Life Opinions of Two Dogs", "Murder in the Hanging Garden", "The Story of a Strange Woman" in the following decades of small theater drama experiments. Works such as "Letter" and "Teahouse" are characterized by avant-garde form and sharp expression.
In 2008, for the permanent performance of "Rhinoceros in Love", Meng Jinghui established the Beijing Beehive Theater, which is China's first drama theater led by a drama director. Since 2012, Meng Jinghui has initiated or served as the artistic director of theater festivals such as Hangzhou Theater Festival, Wuzhen Theater Festival, and Shenzhen Contemporary Theater Biennale. His theater territory has expanded from Beijing to Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places. In 2021, Meng Jinghui began to serve as the artistic director of the Aranya Theater Festival.
Meng Jinghui. Image source: Aranya Theater Festival
"Aranya is a new community, with both the sun and the sea. It is broader and younger in temperament. It is different from places like Wuzhen." 2024 Aranya Theater Festival It will be held in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province from June 20th to June 30th.
In Meng Jinghui’s view, drama festivals and theaters provide completely different experiences. The drama festival creates a utopia separated from regular life. "Creators gather together to perform, display their works, interact with the audience, and then re-examine themselves." The audience here has the possibility of "living elsewhere" and can get closer to the drama more immersedly. "The audience usually lives in the city and returns home after watching a drama. At most, they post a few comments on social media about the drama. The experience ends here. But at the drama festival, you can communicate face to face with others after the performance and continue to be in the atmosphere of the drama.”
Photo source: Aranya Theater Festival
After Meng Jinghui joined the Aranya Theater Festival. Nine artistic directors from eight influential theater festivals in the world, including the Avignon Theater Festival in France, were invited to bring their works to the seaside of Arnaya. "Inviting them here is not to show how high they are, but to let everyone know what is happening in the world now and what aesthetics is highlighting. You may not understand some things, but it doesn't matter, you can find all the differences Only by looking more broadly can we be more profound. "This is particularly important. We must open ourselves up," Meng Jinghui said. Image source: Aranya Theater Festival
In Meng Jinghui’s words, he “ran around” during the theater festival. As artistic director, he needs to be attentive to audience feedback and the feelings of invited foreign crews. As a creator, he brought two complete drama works "Guns, Lies and Roses" and "Tender Is the Night", and also directed the script readings of "Waiting for Godot", "The Imperial Envoy" and "Here's the Toilet".
Among them, "Tender Is the Night" is performed for the first time. The play is adapted from "Fear" by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. It tells the inner activities of a woman when she faces a blackmail that may cause social death. "Tender Is the Night" is also the final chapter of Meng Jinghui's "Zweig Trilogy". From using piano sound and light and shadow to metaphor a woman's life in 2013's "Letter from an Unknown Woman", to adding exaggerated physical performances in "24 Hours in a Woman's Life", to using the seaside in "Tender Is the Night" The storm and black-and-white images are used to materialize anxiety and fear. For Meng Jinghui, adapting Zweig's works three times is not only his own "three soul exchanges with Zweig", but also the growth of his stage control ability. .
Stills from "Tender Is the Night".Image source: Aranya Theater Festival
In recent years, Meng Jinghui has continued to deconstruct and adapt classic literary works, trying to incorporate elements such as rock music, and using new technologies such as video and VR to continue to extend the theatrical experience. Some viewers think Meng Jinghui is bold and cutting-edge, while others think his plays are formal and difficult to understand. But for Meng Jinghui himself, this is an effort to enrich artistic expression. “My own works have several types. One type is acceptable to the public and more commercial; the second type is experimental and has nothing to do with understanding. And I don’t understand, it has nothing to do with the concrete perception of social life, it is purely my personal aesthetic logic; the third is the expression of an eternal emotion or emotion, which is between commercialization and aesthetic logic. Although I can, But I don’t want to do just one of them for the rest of my life.”
Stills from Guns, Lies and Roses. Image source: Aranya Theater Festival
In 1989, after graduating from Beijing Normal University, Meng Jinghui did not want to repeat the life of being a teacher, so he was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama to study for a master's degree in directing. In 1990, he directed his first drama "The Food Elevator" and officially became a drama director.
In the 1990s, Meng Jinghui's works were synonymous with "pioneers" on the theater stage. Almost all the plays he directed during that period were not about understanding or not understanding, but about "personal aesthetic logic." Chen Jianbin, who later starred in Meng Jinghui's drama, recalled in an interview how he felt when he first watched Meng Jinghui's drama in 1991, saying he "couldn't understand it at all."
Meng Jinghui describes his play as "both pioneering and not pioneering." He believes that "pioneer" is a gesture of wanting to go first. "Gesture is particularly important, because if you want to move forward, you must first 'think'." In drama, there is always unconscious innovation in collective aesthetics, and the vanguard is at the forefront of wanting to innovate. Of course, the important thing is that the times give you the space to express yourself, and your expression is in line with the values of the era.”
