"The Great Boring·Cyberpunk" ◎Ke Yuzhen's "The Great Boring·Cyberpunk" is the second part of the series "Chen Sanwu Niang·Parallel Time and Space" created by the Fujian Liyuan Opera Inheritance Center, and was selected for the 11th Contemporary Small Theater Opera Art Festival, h

◎Ke Yuzhen

"The Great Boring·Cyberpunk" is the second part of the series "Chen Sanwu Niang·Parallel Time and Space" created by the Liyuan Opera Inheritance Center of Fujian Province, and was selected as the eleventh The 2019 Contemporary Small Theater Opera Art Festival will be performed in the small theater of Beijing Fanxing Drama Village in November. Rather than saying that "Cyberpunk" is a "play", it is more appropriate to call it "installation art". It is like a mechanical walnut, wrapping the ancient and complete "Big Boring" in a cyberpunk shell.

Cyber ​​Shell

Director Zeng Long made no secret that the cyberpunk part was designed to "coax" the audience into the theater to watch the traditional "The Great Depression". "Da Meng" is the most representative one-act one-man show in the Liyuan Opera "Chen San Wuniang". It tells the story of a woman's lingering longing for lovesickness in her boudoir. There is no lively scene or plot conflict, so it is often played in The show starts in the dead of night. One of the plays that Zeng Jingping, the representative inheritor of Liyuan Opera, is best at is "The Great Boring". She also said, "Everyone knows how difficult and boring it is." In such a fast-paced society today, how can the audience enter the theater to listen to this nearly hour-long episode of resentment? Zeng Long found inspiration from the game - packaging elements of cyberpunk as a shell.

In terms of stage design, "Cyberpunk" shows sincerity. In an extremely dark theater, seven grotesque display screens were spread out on the stage, paired with neon strips. Before the show started, the words "Welcome to the Database of Human Art and Civilization" were displayed, creating a psychedelic and technological atmosphere. The male protagonist wears a mask and takes the stage with robot body movements. The director said sincerely in the post-performance talk, "I'm not lying to you, isn't this cyberpunk?" But there is also a problem with "Cyberpunk": the huge display screen is constantly showing up during the performance. A large amount of text flashed for the audience to read - the male protagonist's inner calculations, the data of the Liyuan Opera, the plot summary of "Chen San Wuniang", system prompts and warnings, etc., all flowed quickly in the form of text. The stage design composed of these cyberpunk style elements becomes a "note" during the performance. But cyberpunk has always been just a decorative embellishment and gimmick, and has not really entered Wuniang's world.

The opening of the play explains to the audience through subtitles: AI people cannot stand the hustle and bustle of human beings and yearn for tranquility and simplicity. However, he has not become a character in the drama, and lacks a complete logical construction of character emotions and action motivations. He only plays a role in guiding and relieving the audience's boredom when they appreciate the traditional "Big Boredom". So the audience will wonder, why does he have these thoughts? As an embellishment element,

’s actions attract most of the audience’s attention during the performance. The actor's job is to be ugly, but he has to play a sentimental young man in a mechanical, slow and sluggish state; he adopts a performance form that is similar to pantomime, and his movements are borrowed from modern mechanical dance, trying to present a feeling of "resembling a human but not human". However, without the support of psychological changes, his external body movements from "non-human" to "human-like" have also lost their meaning, which makes people feel regretful.

The core of "The Big Boring"

The "core" protected in the cyber shell by "The Big Boring·Cyberpunk" is inherited from "The Big Boring" by Zeng Jingping, the winner of "Second Plum", performed by Lin Qiuhan . This is the tenderness of the director. He is not willing to dismantle and deconstruct the ancient "The Great Boring". He is not willing to destroy the peaceful boudoir with one bench, one table, one mirror and one candle. He just wants Wu Niang to open the window and look into the mirror, feeling resentful and longing. Thinking of my lover.

In fact, the beauty of "Da Men" is very "conspicuous" - the unique steps and singing of Liyuan Opera allow Wuniang, who is sitting more and more drums, to vividly show her relaxed, soft, blurred and lazy attitude, which is similar to Kun Opera is similar to elegance, but also has a touch of charm. Lin Qiuhan's performance of "The Great Boring" added a touch of innocence and immaturity. The same sentence "Lovers are also round, and they have no words to complain about the east wind". For Zeng Jingping, it is a charming and resentful person, and for Lin Qiuhan, it is transformed into a girl's coquettishness. Different presentation, same charming.

Wuniang tossed and turned in the silence of the embroidered curtains, getting in and out of bed in the clear moonlight. When she turned over at the sound of the drum at midnight, she saw thousands of lines of tears on the mandarin duck pillow again."I miss you at twelve o'clock in the dark, and I always look forward to it; at five o'clock, my jade leaks at two or three o'clock, and I feel a little sad." This is a long night when I can't fall asleep. Only the foot drum beating in the ears of the audience is the accompaniment. The sound of her long night. The unique southern-sounding suona "Aizai" in southern Fujian opera is played in "Da Men", the sad sound of the flying geese heard by Wuniang when she was alone with the lantern, which is smart and light. When looking into the mirror, the precious mirror on the stage has no lenses. Through the hollow frame, the audience can see a pair of loving eyes that have traveled through hundreds of years. Wu Niang used her most lingering imagination to see her lover's face in the mirror.

This can’t help but make people sigh at the exquisiteness and richness of classical art. The reason why the play "Da Meng" can be passed down is because it interprets the inner essence of opera, which is to create emotions through scenes and move people with emotions. Although it is a one-man show, he expresses his emotions through the perception of external scenery such as admiring the moon, dreaming, and listening to wild geese. In just half an hour, the performance went from "moonlight through a blue window" to "a round red sun" naturally. Sleepless night.

Nowadays, many creators think of using modern pop culture to lower the threshold for classical art and guide the audience to enter and watch. However, if the settings are unclear, the explanations are unclear, and the suspense guidance is misleading, it is actually impossible for the audience to immerse themselves in "The Great Depression" It is so beautiful that you will be at a loss in the chaotic time and space of the drama.

Poetry lines are broken

The biggest problem of "Cyberpunk" is that there is no organic connection between "Cyberpunk" and "Big Boring".

First of all, in the setting of "parallel time and space", the identities of AI and Wuniang are blurred. In the traditional Liyuan opera "Chen San Wuniang", Chen San disguises herself as a mirror grinder and becomes a slave in Huang's Mansion, and enters Wuniang's boudoir; "Da Mong·Cyberpunk" cleverly echoes it, and the ai people are loading into the Liyuan After collecting the relevant data of the play and completing the modeling, he entered Wuniang's "stream of consciousness space" in the image of Chen San, and seemed to have an intersection with Wuniang. Why does he want to enter Wu Niang's world? Was he moved by the beauty of the Liyuan Opera, or was he moved by the lovesick Wu Niang? Is Wuniang a cold virtual image in the opera database, or is she a flesh-and-blood woman in another time and space who is tossing and turning?

When the setting of "what it is" that only involves material attributes is not clear, it cannot respond to the necessary personality, past events, character relationships and other elements in the dramatic situation. Starting from the promotional information before entering the theater, the audience's attention has been drawn to the expectation that AI Ren and Wu Niang will interact and have an emotional collision; however, during the performance, it is difficult to separate Wu Niang in the Boudoir and "The Great Depression" The AI ​​​​person outside the stage and the information about the Liyuan Opera on the screen are combined together.

Secondly, the spiritual core of cyberpunk has not been fully explained in the play. Let’s not talk about deeper topics such as dystopia in the cyberpunk worldview, even the most common questions about “machines and emotions” in works with similar settings, such as “Can machines or artificial intelligence have feelings?” “What if a machine "With emotions, how should humans and machines get along with each other" and so on were not expressed in "Cyberpunk". This makes people think about the creative impulse of this work: why choose the cultural element of cyberpunk to combine with Liyuan Opera?

The traditional "Big Boredom" was completely born out of emotion. It is a lingering emotion spread out by the word "love", which also interprets the unique emotional expression in Chinese classical aesthetics; AI people represent the extreme of reason, and should not be able to understand emotions. It is the most extreme reflection of human alienation in the data age. Classical and modern, passionate and cold, there is a strong sense of contradiction and contrast, which is in line with the aesthetic characteristics of cyberpunk and also contains dramatic tension. Unfortunately, the AI ​​in "Cyberpunk" did not establish effective interaction with Wuniang, and Wuniang's action of breaking the data wall and walking into the audience also lost its possible connotation. . After the most anticipated plot of "the intersection between AI and Wuniang" finally appeared, the story came to an abrupt end. From the beginning to the end, it is difficult for the audience to distinguish where to focus on watching the film, and it is difficult to get involved in the play. Beautiful emotions and cold machinery are like broken verses, failing to interweave into a harmonious illusion.

"Cyberpunk" is an innovative experiment. Its starting point is beautiful and gentle, and to a certain extent, it has indeed achieved the purpose of letting the audience see "Cyberpunk". The classic "The Great Depression" is beautiful, and "The Great Depression·Cyberpunk" still has endless connotations and possibilities worth exploring in depth, and it should not stop there.Photo courtesy of this edition/Stars Drama Village