As one of the most watched works of the inaugural Aranya Theatre Festival, Meng Jinghui's theatrical work "Song of the Sad Cafe" will depart from the silent and vast seaside and fly to the Shanghai Oriental Art Center on March 4-6. When "The Song of the Sad Cafe" accompanies the spring wave to open the journey of the 2022 tour, the entanglement of love, the pain of loneliness, all the absurdity, passion, and despair of the shouts are more mellow and intense in the fermentation of time.
Pictured: Poster of "Song of the Sad Cafe"
The story takes place in the spring of the 30-year-old, when she hopelessly falls in love with a chaos demon king and opens a sad and crazy café for him. The other he returned from prison bringing her a kiss and a knife. Three lonely people try to fight fate through love, and the love triangle instantly forms a closed loop...
"The Song of the Sad Cafe" is adapted from the novella masterpiece published by McCullers in 1951, an important female writer of the "Southern Renaissance" period in the United States, with a strong personal style and vivid depictions of marginal characters that make her occupy an important place in the history of American literature. The story continues her usual style, set in a hot, remote southern town, and revolves around the deformed love triangle of Emilia, Marcy, and Lemon, who try to use love as an antidote, but fall into greater loneliness.
Director Meng Jinghui's "Song of the Sad Cafe" continues the story and theme of the novel, which is also the first time that McCullers's work has been put on the stage of Chinese drama. The fragments of Chekhov's "Seagull" hidden in the main story make unexpected changes in the rhythm of the play. When Chekhov's "Seagull" enters Emilia's dream, Chekhov and the eccentric genius Girl McCullers miraculously meet in the play "Song of the Sad Cafe"—Emilia and Nina, two women, who make a choice between the lover and the beloved.
Pictured: Stills from "The Song of the Sad Cafe"
"I played that 30 years ago. Putting in the Seagull clip is not only a tribute to Chekhov, but also because "Song of the Sad Cafe" and "The Seagull" are about a woman and two men, and the two form an intertextual beauty. Meng Jinghui said.
The heroine Huang Xiangli is the white cloud in the movie "Lyceum Theatre", known as the "queen of one-man shows", she changed her former state and returned to the multi-person stage in "Song of the Sad Cafe" and became the heroine Emilia. Li Meng is played by young actor Sun Yucheng, who is also a regular visitor to overseas drama festivals. Wu Zhoukai has participated in Meng Jinghui's "Two Dogs' Life Opinions" and "Soft", and will play the cynical villain MaXi in this "Song of the Sad Cafe". Independent musician Zhang Weiwei tore off the label and filled in the atlas of loneliness in "The Song of the Sad Coffee Cafe" with the avant-garde color of electronic music.
The play premiered four times in Aranya and has three different endings, how is it different when the stage comes from the seaside to the city, when it all takes place in a closed indoor theater? Meng Jinghui said, "The blowing of the sea breeze, the real smell of coffee, and the immersion of music have created a stage that is difficult to replicate during the premiere." But back indoors, the fun props and dances are all there. The same thing is just as wonderful! ”
Pictured: A giant hand stands on the stage
The house expresses reality, the fish symbolizes the dream, and the hand symbolizes the ideal - a giant hand stands at the golden section of the stage, three houses are placed on the edges of the stage, and the fish are imprisoned in the building. As Chekhov's portrait sweeps over the viewer's head, 30,000 ocean balls pour down, and in the limited and infinite space of the theater, the surreal atmosphere weaves the heartbreaking café. (Xinmin Evening News reporter Zhao Yue)