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Farce meets opera in play on styles
By Xu Wenwen |
00:56 UTC+8 April 23, 2010
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THE US-born theater director Stan Lai has taken a celebrated play with a dual plot theme and added a Yueju Opera-style twist in homage to the aged stage craft. The experimental adaptation makes its debut in Hangzhou, Xu Wenwen reports.
The combination of innovation and inspiration always seems to sparkle when Western and Eastern styles are blended in art. And when a traditional Chinese tragic play is threaded with a comedic southern China Yueju Opera, the result is hilarity and drama.
An example of this can be found in "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land," touted as an iconic play in Chinese contemporary art that is having its debut performance at Hangzhou Redstar Theater this weekend.
The storyline involves a drama troupe and a Yueju Opera company vying for the use of a single stage. The situation has arisen from a theater scheduling mistake in which dress rehearsals for each show have been booked at the same time.
Contemporary players from the drama troupe communicate in Mandarin at one side of the stage, while traditional performers sing Yueju Opera arias between themselves on the other side.
Amazingly, the two separate shows' dialogues complement each other and the result is a hilarious verbal confluence.
Sweeping Taiwan for 24 years, showing more than 200 times on the Chinese mainland during the past four years, "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" is directed and written by Stan Lai, a highly influential award-winning US-born Taiwan-based playwright and theater director.
It combines the modern tragedy "Secret Love" and the ancient costume comedy "Peach Blossom Land," charting the outcome of two troupes vying for the only available rehearsal space.
Lai, who the BBC has lauded as "probably the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world," says he was inspired by Yueju Opera's aestheticism.
He has revived the show by turning "Peach Blossom Land" into Yueju Opera while maintaining the tragic theme of "Secret Love."
Consequently, the play's original Mandarin dialogue is now a deft blend of Yueju arias and Mandarin speech.
Faced with the reality that singing is slower than speaking, Lai has trimmed some of the operatic parts to match the pace. And, the dialogue, costumes, settings, dance and music in the "Peach Blossom Land" section were all adapted to Yueju Opera style.
Though opera is less popular than pop music among young Chinese, Lai is confident about the production's appeal because "anything that's really beautiful" can lure fans.
Lai says he is consciously contributing to Yueju Opera because "it is a treasured codifier of a Chinese way of life. If operas are weakened, the traditional art is weakened too. So I do what I can to promote the art."
"Secret Love" is a serious drama involving hero Jiang Binliu who is desperate to see his old love Yun Zhifan who he lost contact with in 1949, the founding year of People's Republic of China.
But "Peach Blossom Land" is a farcical story about a lost fisherman who stumbles into a utopian land filled with blossoming peach trees where all people live in harmony.
The fisherman meets two people in the mythical Peach Blossom Land who look exactly like his wife and her lover. He gradually succumbs to their absurd lifestyle, but eventually leaves in the hope of persuading his estranged wife to escape with him.
Interlinked with a third story about a neurotic woman looking for her lover, a man who never appears on stage, the show strings together the three threads: drama in the drama, a tragedy and a comedy, and a drama out of the drama.
On top of all that, there are quarrels among staff from the different troupes and a brief search for lost people that turns out to be a red herring.
As Yueju Opera is often slow and elegant, Lai adopts "its aestheticism" to fit the utopian land, and to be in strong contrast to the "Secret Love."
However, in the section dealing with the realistic world, the fisherman (played by Zhao Zhigang, known as the "Prince of Yueju Opera") is a hapless, cuckolded husband who comes across as clipped in style and somewhat crazy.
The music, dialogue, singing and dancing in that part are crisp, humorous and fast, and as each performer in the opera part plays two reverse figures in and out of the Peach Blossom Land, they have to adopt two completely different dramatic styles to convey different characters.
Before entering into the utopia, Zhao Zhigang acts the fisherman as a clown, contorting his features and adopting exaggerated poses. But after entering into the "other land," he becomes a gentleman in a gown singing Yin Pai (Yin school) arias typical of a gentleman and literati in Yueju Opera.
The heroine Xie Qunying similarly plays a fisherman's wife then changes to a lady. As the wife, she sings Yueju Opera's coloratura, alternating between high and low pitch. In Peach Blossom Land, she plays the role of a virtuous lady in Yueju Opera, swinging gracefully in long white sleeves and singing the dignified and dulcet Yuan Pai (Yuan school) arias.
Consequently, the charm emerges of the players being alternatively fast and slow then elegant and hilarious.
The director doesn't ask Yueju Opera actors to speak standard Mandarin "in drama, out of drama" so they keep using southern China accents.
For an experimental play, the show has attracted much attention - tickets for opening night have sold out and Lai is happy.
"I'm glad that I can adapt a play and attract an audience familiar with it," says Lai. "The new version is a revolution, a tribute."
Date: Today-April 25, 7:30pm
Venue: Hangzhou Redstar Theater, Jianguo Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8839-8123, 8839-0720
Ticket: 100-580 yuan
The combination of innovation and inspiration always seems to sparkle when Western and Eastern styles are blended in art. And when a traditional Chinese tragic play is threaded with a comedic southern China Yueju Opera, the result is hilarity and drama.
An example of this can be found in "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land," touted as an iconic play in Chinese contemporary art that is having its debut performance at Hangzhou Redstar Theater this weekend.
The storyline involves a drama troupe and a Yueju Opera company vying for the use of a single stage. The situation has arisen from a theater scheduling mistake in which dress rehearsals for each show have been booked at the same time.
Contemporary players from the drama troupe communicate in Mandarin at one side of the stage, while traditional performers sing Yueju Opera arias between themselves on the other side.
Amazingly, the two separate shows' dialogues complement each other and the result is a hilarious verbal confluence.
Sweeping Taiwan for 24 years, showing more than 200 times on the Chinese mainland during the past four years, "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" is directed and written by Stan Lai, a highly influential award-winning US-born Taiwan-based playwright and theater director.
It combines the modern tragedy "Secret Love" and the ancient costume comedy "Peach Blossom Land," charting the outcome of two troupes vying for the only available rehearsal space.
Lai, who the BBC has lauded as "probably the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world," says he was inspired by Yueju Opera's aestheticism.
He has revived the show by turning "Peach Blossom Land" into Yueju Opera while maintaining the tragic theme of "Secret Love."
Consequently, the play's original Mandarin dialogue is now a deft blend of Yueju arias and Mandarin speech.
Faced with the reality that singing is slower than speaking, Lai has trimmed some of the operatic parts to match the pace. And, the dialogue, costumes, settings, dance and music in the "Peach Blossom Land" section were all adapted to Yueju Opera style.
Though opera is less popular than pop music among young Chinese, Lai is confident about the production's appeal because "anything that's really beautiful" can lure fans.
Lai says he is consciously contributing to Yueju Opera because "it is a treasured codifier of a Chinese way of life. If operas are weakened, the traditional art is weakened too. So I do what I can to promote the art."
"Secret Love" is a serious drama involving hero Jiang Binliu who is desperate to see his old love Yun Zhifan who he lost contact with in 1949, the founding year of People's Republic of China.
But "Peach Blossom Land" is a farcical story about a lost fisherman who stumbles into a utopian land filled with blossoming peach trees where all people live in harmony.
The fisherman meets two people in the mythical Peach Blossom Land who look exactly like his wife and her lover. He gradually succumbs to their absurd lifestyle, but eventually leaves in the hope of persuading his estranged wife to escape with him.
Interlinked with a third story about a neurotic woman looking for her lover, a man who never appears on stage, the show strings together the three threads: drama in the drama, a tragedy and a comedy, and a drama out of the drama.
On top of all that, there are quarrels among staff from the different troupes and a brief search for lost people that turns out to be a red herring.
As Yueju Opera is often slow and elegant, Lai adopts "its aestheticism" to fit the utopian land, and to be in strong contrast to the "Secret Love."
However, in the section dealing with the realistic world, the fisherman (played by Zhao Zhigang, known as the "Prince of Yueju Opera") is a hapless, cuckolded husband who comes across as clipped in style and somewhat crazy.
The music, dialogue, singing and dancing in that part are crisp, humorous and fast, and as each performer in the opera part plays two reverse figures in and out of the Peach Blossom Land, they have to adopt two completely different dramatic styles to convey different characters.
Before entering into the utopia, Zhao Zhigang acts the fisherman as a clown, contorting his features and adopting exaggerated poses. But after entering into the "other land," he becomes a gentleman in a gown singing Yin Pai (Yin school) arias typical of a gentleman and literati in Yueju Opera.
The heroine Xie Qunying similarly plays a fisherman's wife then changes to a lady. As the wife, she sings Yueju Opera's coloratura, alternating between high and low pitch. In Peach Blossom Land, she plays the role of a virtuous lady in Yueju Opera, swinging gracefully in long white sleeves and singing the dignified and dulcet Yuan Pai (Yuan school) arias.
Consequently, the charm emerges of the players being alternatively fast and slow then elegant and hilarious.
The director doesn't ask Yueju Opera actors to speak standard Mandarin "in drama, out of drama" so they keep using southern China accents.
For an experimental play, the show has attracted much attention - tickets for opening night have sold out and Lai is happy.
"I'm glad that I can adapt a play and attract an audience familiar with it," says Lai. "The new version is a revolution, a tribute."
Date: Today-April 25, 7:30pm
Venue: Hangzhou Redstar Theater, Jianguo Rd S.
Tel: (0571) 8839-8123, 8839-0720
Ticket: 100-580 yuan
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