Although the first season of the stage play "Flowers" has been successfully performed for hundreds of performances and has been tested by audiences in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, director Ma Junfeng was still nervous when it came to the Aranya Theater Festival.
"The audience of the drama festival is the core of the core. They have seen a lot of things." Ma Junfeng told China Business News that he attaches great importance to the drama festival. What's more, this year's Aranya Theater Festival brings together nine world-class artistic directors and 29 blockbuster plays, each with a different look at contemporary drama. The
stage play "Flowers" is the domestic opening play of the drama festival and is also the longest play in the entire drama festival. Artistic director Meng Jinghui said the play "represents the texture of southern drama."
was nervous because this was the first performance of the newly built Nine Theaters. This is Aranya's newly opened theater. The crew had to familiarize themselves with the venue in a very short period of time and complete a series of operations such as stage installation, composition, and rehearsals.
Before departure, Ma Junfeng bought 17 theater tickets. This was also a long holiday for him as a theater audience. On June 30, he posted a post on Moments back in Shanghai, saying that he had watched enough plays at the theater festival, met many friends, and gained weight. "I am really happy."
Hundred Performances of "Flowers" All different
html On March 30, the 100th performance of the first season of the stage play "Flowers", Ma Junfeng took the stage after the performance.He ran to the center of the stage amidst the waves of applause from the audience, held the microphone in his hand and sighed, these one hundred scenes have been adjusted and improved, and iterated in the constant changes to the plays.
Starting in 2018, looking back on the six years since the first season of "Flowers" was performed, he described it as "too crazy". In the past six years, he has been watching almost every scene from the sidelines and has basically never been absent. Hundreds of flowers are all different, and it may be difficult for the audience to detect all the subtle differences, but Ma Junfeng is aware of every subtle change.
After the performance ends every night, as soon as the actors return home, they will receive revision comments from Ma Junfeng the next day. This incredible creative method is the directorial creation methodology he insists on. His seriousness, meticulousness and painstaking efforts ensured daily fine-tuning and polishing, making the stage play "Flowers" even more refined.
"Actually, when I was doing the first round of performances, there were a lot of inner thoughts that I didn't put into it. I have been constantly revising and trying different boundaries and scales since then." Ma Junfeng said, just like movies often have director's cuts, just because they are not Satisfaction, and the advantage of stage play is that the creation can never stop for every performance.
modifications are often subtle but crucial touches. For example, in the first scene, he didn’t include the detail of Xiao Mao’s neighbor sister Yin Feng’s breast enlargement at first because he didn’t know if it would be unfriendly to the audience. “Later I found out that it wasn’t the case. It was a detail full of compassion. We saved this scene for the end, which laid the seeds for future character relationships and also allowed the audience to better understand the identity dilemma of people of that era."
Ma Junfeng would bring the original work to the scene every time we rehearsed. Once, he found a dialogue in the novel. Li Li always brought Bodhisattva with him. Abao said, "Bodhisattva can't see anything."
He suddenly felt that this was a very harsh sentence, "That is despair and helplessness." Help, it reveals the tragic background of "Flowers". Life is a desolate journey. We are born alone and die alone. The sense of weight and destiny is established at once. "
Ma Junfeng said frankly, " "Flowers" is a special project. From the very beginning, they determined to unfold the story bit by bit in the form of a trilogy, allowing the audience to survey a complete "flowering universe" on the stage.
From the first season in 2018 to the third season that will be staged in August next year, the seven years apart are a large enough space for both the audience and the creators to breathe and rest.
"With such a long time span, we have enough time and patience to taste it bit by bit like eating crabs." During the years when the first season was staged, Ma Junfeng even hoped to experience some small accidents during each performance. Small accidents and these accidental factors were a test for the crew and prompted him to reflect and make further adjustments.
From the beginning, he decided to use the Shanghainese dialect for performances and use non-linear narrative to tell the story. To a certain extent, this is also the narrative method of traditional Chinese legendary novels.
In the long timeline, he polished the details carefully and exquisitely, doing addition and subtraction. As long as the performance lasts a day, the creative drive will not wane. He reached a tacit understanding with the producer and actors, and everyone regarded this as something fun and kept practicing. For him, this approach is not work or completing a task, but complete enjoyment.
Presenting an era of great changes in China
This year, the TV series "Flowers" directed by Wong Kar-wai became a hit, once again boosting the popularity of stage dramas. Ma Junfeng obviously feels that the audience group is constantly expanding. "After the TV series is broadcast, there will indeed be many viewers watching the stage play. They will also find that TV series and stage plays are completely different." The stage play "Flowers" The audience ranged from the earliest drama lovers to fans of the original book, then expanded to white-collar workers and ordinary audiences, and then expanded from young audiences to the parents' generation, from Shanghai to the whole country.
Hu Zhiyi, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University, believes that Wong Kar-wai did not strictly follow the novel to create, but used "Flowers" to capture the charm of Shanghai in his mind in the 1980s and 1990s, which reflects his feelings about Shanghai. With the cultural imagination, the TV series "Flowers" was made into a movie, turning it into a world of light and shadow. The stage play "Flowers" uses turntables, multiple performance areas, multimedia and other means to show the hypothesis, space and imagery of the stage.
Ma Junfeng watched the TV series version of "Flowers" and felt that Wong Kar-wai was like "taking only one scoop out of three thousand people", integrating the original novel into his own system and forming his own vocabulary. He followed the original work and arranged what he felt about "Flowers". "I arranged my feelings on the stage, and what I presented was the 'silence' of Shanghainese."
In the inscription of "Flowers", Jin Yucheng wrote: "If God doesn't ring, it's like everything is decided by me..."
Ma Junfeng said that "No Ring" appears more than 1,500 times in the novel. "'No Ring' is the externalization of the most distinctive regional character of Shanghai people. It is The cautious, reserved and restrained performance of Shanghainese also reflects the superb wisdom of Shanghainese. "
Ma Junfeng, a northerner who has lived in Shanghai for more than ten years, once did not understand the character and style of Shanghainese until he saw it. "Flowers" gave me a new understanding of Shanghai and Shanghainese. "When the completely hidden things in this city are revealed, all the advantages, disadvantages and shortcomings of the city and its people become clear. You feel like you have obtained a copy of the city." The score will have some very gorgeous movements."
He regards the original work of "Flowers" as a great treasure. He likes to do this kind of text play. With a little creation, the audience can receive the message, "Different people. , can be interpreted from different angles. There are all kinds of young men and women in the original work, and there are so many nested stories. Young people will be moved by the fate of the literary girl after reading it, and they will not be able to understand the political trends and economic trends. Breaking free from the tide, what is behind "Flowers" is the era of great changes in China. Those whirlpools and waves will make people feel powerless. "
The stage play "Flowers" is Ma Junfeng's key to re-understanding Shanghai, and it is also his dedication to Shanghai. a love letter. This play has been performed for 14 rounds in six years, and the attendance rate of more than 100 performances has always remained above 95%. It is a veritable hit on stage. These gains are an unexpected surprise for Ma Junfeng. How to arrange the next "Flowers" is what he values more.
In the first season, screenwriter Wen Fangyi changed his draft ten times, extracting the experiences of three childhood friends, Hu Sheng, Xiao Mao, and A Bao, and connecting the turbulent fates of the characters. Now, the screenwriter has begun to conceive of the third season. Ma Junfeng will not have much communication with the screenwriter, but Jin Yucheng has always maintained communication with them, and will give opinions to the crew during each season's creation meeting and premiere.
Regarding the future of "Flowers", he feels that the biggest crisis is that there are fewer and fewer actors who can speak Shanghainese. If "Flowers" continues to iterate, the demand for actors will increase.He has developed a habit. Whenever he meets a new actor, he will ask them if they can speak Shanghainese, and mark his favorites in the notes to "reserve strength for the actor pool of "Flowers"."
(This article is from China Business News)
