Today, it is the anniversary of the death of Mr. Cheng Yanqiu, a famous Peking Opera performance artist. He was the youngest of the "Four Great Famous Dans", ten years younger than Mei Lanfang and four years younger than Shang Xiaoyun and Xun Huisheng. The art started the latest, but the achievements did not lose to anyone.
Mr. Qi Song, a Taiwanese opera researcher, said: "If listening to Mei Lanfang's play is equivalent to eating opium, then listening to Cheng Yanqiu is equivalent to playing morphine." Because eating opium is still possible to quit; once morphine is marked, it is very difficult, and in the end, it is only martyred. This is almost a joke, but it is really impossible to deny.
Mr. Guo Baochang, the director of "The Gate of the Great Mansion", is an addicted "old" opera fan, and he mentioned the story of his three days of filial piety for Mr. Cheng in his new work "Great Games: Where is peking opera good". He wrote: "When Mr. Cheng Yanqiu died, I wore filial piety for three days. When I was in high school, my classmates asked me, who in your family died? I said your family is dead!" I asked who I was wearing filial piety to, and I said Cheng Yanqiu. Ask again, who is Cheng Yanqiu in your family? I said I didn't know. ”
In the 1950s, why did some audiences regard Peking Opera actors as friends, lovers, parents, and comrades? How was the plot of Bai Yuting and Mei Lanfang's photo marriage in the TV series "Big House Gate" "made up"?
Today, Movable Type Jun shares with book lovers the relevant chapters in the book "Great Game" co-authored by Guo Baochang and Tao Qingmei. The applause is the close cooperation, inspection and communication between the famous characters and the audience. Sometimes, as soon as an actor appears on the scene, he has the ability to perform hard, and the audience is not applauded, and he has no emotion. Guo Baochang said that this relationship has allowed generations of artists to continue to mature in performance, and promoted the formation of the Peking Opera genre, because actors and drama classes are looking for different audience groups in the applause, so as to establish their own style.
Guo Baochang Wen
This article was originally published in "The Great Game: What's So Good about Peking Opera"
Guo Baochang Tao Qingmei by Sanlian Bookstore 2021
Seven categories and eight factions talk about applause
Applause, this unique way of appreciating the nation originated when it is impossible to find out. Probably the wild stage drama in the Song and Yuan dynasties was produced. This is the way to appreciate farming civilization. There were no theater rules at that time, and we didn't know what kind of applause it was. Before and after the formation of the former Qing Dynasty, there are some very interesting records. In 1992, I made a TV series "Big Boss Cheng Changgeng", which used the legend that the audience was not allowed to applaud when The Big Boss Cheng sang, and the Peking Opera history books recorded that Cheng Changgeng "was very disgusting in his performance". Cheng Changgeng believes that applause is an interference with the normal performance of the actor, and his fans all comply. Not only did he not dare to applaud, but he also heard that Boss Cheng did not like the smell of smoke, and there were no smokers in the field. This is not unusual, even if Boss Cheng went into the palace to sing to the emperor, he was not allowed to applaud the emperor, he said: "If you call on the emperor, you will be slave, don't sin." "This means that if the emperor applauds, I will stop the performance, and ask the emperor not to sin against me." Shockingly, it is said that the Xianfeng Emperor who listened to the play did not dare to applaud. I used this detail in the TV series, and at the time there were experts who accused it of being made up, saying how is this possible?! In doing so, the big boss cheng is going to be killed. A legend, what are you more real? I use this passage in the TV series, just to illustrate that applause is controversial in history. It is an extremely complex phenomenon, and how we should understand this aesthetic phenomenon should be studied as a subject. But how to study the applause, more than ten years ago, I occasionally turned over the "Lu Shen Collection" of the old master of Zhong Wei, there is an article "Overcoming the Bad Habit of Strange Noise", which has such a text:
According to the analysis of insiders in the opera industry, in the past, there were seven types and eight schools of applause in the theater, some who listened to singing, some who focused on doing work, and some who had no interest in singing and doing work, only looking at the appearance of the actors, for many years, the interest of these audiences has effectively influenced and influenced and left and right on the stage...
This "seven categories and eight schools" he said gave me a good entrance to observation and research. I've listened to the drama for decades, but I really don't know if there's ever been such a thing. So I consulted a lot of insiders, famous tickets, big names, senior old gentlemen, but unfortunately none of them knew. I asked several old artists in their nineties, but they didn't know. This formulation was probably summed up by anyone before the 1930s and 1940s. This is a valuable legacy, which is soaked with a deep understanding of traditional culture, but unfortunately it has been lost.
No one knows, so I'll sum it up myself. I'll just categorize all the applause summaries I've experienced that have impressed me. In the process of sorting out hundreds of applauding experiences, I gradually discovered that the seven categories probably belong to why the audience applauded; the eight factions belong to how the audience applauds. Of course, why and how to applaud are sometimes related.
The study of the seven categories and eight schools is not only to summarize and analyze the various phenomena of applause, but also to analyze and study some characteristics of opera aesthetics through applause, through why and how the audience applauds, and study what kind of, and even may even be decisive, role it has played in the process of the development of drama. What I try to make clear below is: If each kind of applause reflects the different special relationships between the audience and the actors in peking opera performances, then what characteristics of the peking opera performing arts are reflected by the different applause?
▍ Seven categories: why applaud
Let's start with seven categories.
The first category, and the lowest level, is to watch the drama is to watch the plot and watch the story. I say that the lowest level is not high or low, but the lowest requirement, the most basic requirement. A layman looks at the hilarity is a story.
Peking Opera actors must have unique skills (Photo by Jin Sixiao)
The second type of applause is to look at the skills and look at the unique skills. Watching a play is to watch "work".
Sichuan opera has a unique skill of "kicking the wise eye". In "The Legend of the White Snake", Li Jing, the King of Tota, sent Erlang to catch the demon. Erlang God wants to see what is wrong with the Nether, what do you think? He wants to open his eyes, the eyes of wisdom, the third eye in the middle of the eyebrow. The actor on the stage pulled a mountain arm and said, "Wait for me to open my eyes and look at it", and then there was a large sieve gong, and the sound was particularly grand and long, especially thick. It was in this sieve that he was going to kick the sticky eyes on the tip of his boots. This eye, to kick to the center of the eyebrow, the eye opened. This scene is easy for the movie, just cut a shot, and our artists actually came up with a trick on the stage to stick an eye on the tip of the boot, and kick it up and stick it between the eyebrows. This trick requires considerable skill, kicking the big kick will kick the brain door swollen; kicking small, it will not stick. In the 1950s, when I was in Beijing, the National Day was performing, and the newspaper was eager to introduce "Kicking the Eye" a month in advance. In the auspicious theater, as soon as the actor appears, the audience stands up, and it depends on the actor's toes. In fact, how can you see it? The side of the eye must be facing inward, but even if you can't see it, stand up and look. Sure enough, this actor kicked, really kicked, the whole audience stormy applause and applause, are all cheered for this unique work.
It has become the most important school of Peking Opera performances, which has directly inspired the development of Peking Opera performing arts and directly promoted the formation of genres. Peking Opera's plate singing cavity and even performance method are regular, "starting to dominate", "walking on the side" and "riding horses", which is a routine. For Peking Opera audiences, the program is familiar to him. However, he has to look at the unique performance of different actors on the program, so for the actors, each program can be different from others. The same is "walking edge", Yang Shengchun's "Night Running" is different, he wears high-soled boots, wearing high-soled boots to walk the edge is very difficult, adding another level of audience aesthetics. Li Huiliang's "Lin Chong Hair Match" is also different: he wears a long shackle to walk away with "hanging hair", which is not something that ordinary actors can come, and the sound of applause can turn over the roof.
So a lot of times applause is to applaud the particularly wonderful way of performing in the same program - over time, these masterpieces become genres. It is precisely under the encouragement of the audience to applaud the unique work, the technology of the Peking Opera actors and the unique skills on the Peking Opera stage can be continuously renovated, which has greatly promoted the formation and stabilization of the aesthetic concept of Peking Opera, and the prosperity of Peking Opera is also related to this. Roughly since the Republic of China, the indoctrinating effect of Peking Opera repertoire has become weaker and weaker, and even the so-called indoctrination effect of Peking Opera in the early and middle periods has only ended at the extremely superficial and even distorted Confucian loyalty and filial piety, and most of the repertoire is not only superficial, but also decaying. After the 1930s, the aesthetic consciousness of only looking at the unique life and others occupied the mainstream, and the audience gradually watched the play no matter what you preached, no matter what the plot was, he was more familiar than the actor, and regardless of whether the content was good or bad, whether the values were stale or not, only whether there was a unique life. Because such an audience is becoming more and more the main body, the actor must perform a unique skill that only he can act and others cannot perform to have the audience applaud. For example, Cheng Yanqiu, his original singing style is different, and others can't come - you use Mei Pai's voice to pronounce cheng cavity is not different, this is a unique skill! This is the like of Mei Lanfang, the stick of Shang Xiaoyun, the singing of Cheng Yanqiu, and the wave of Xun Huisheng. Four legs side by side, each with its own.
Stills of Cheng Yanqiu's "Suolin Bag", the art of the Cheng School he founded has been passed down to this day
The third category is to pick faults and call them good. This is also almost non-existent in all other art disciplines.
This is now almost extinct. I know of an example of a clown in "Muhu Guan". The protagonist Gao Wang wants to change the image of the staff to a groom, he goes down to change clothes, this time the stage can not be empty, let his men come down to prepare horses for him, and the clown comes up. A big set of seven or eight minutes of performance is to serve the horse that has no physical object, washing the horse, brushing the horse, and pulling the horse belt. One day when he was doing these actions, someone applauded, it was good, it was good to bend over. This is good, this is both a category and a faction. This category is to pick faults, and the way to applaud is to have to turn around and call. This ugly can't understand, what am I wrong? The second performance was still this man called down. The third time, he knew that this man must have come to pick a fault, so he went to ask the person who called down the good man what was wrong. The old man said, this is a fighting war horse, and the horse's belly you are strangling should be strangled twice. Understand, the next performance changed, this old man is really applauded. This type promotes actor improvement to correct mistakes. You want to say whether he has to do this twice, in fact, it is not necessarily - just like some characters go upstairs and downstairs, and some viewers count. You go up and take five steps, and then you take four steps down, which doesn't work, and it will be called down. In fact, what is the difference between four steps and five steps? But this special exchange of performances is a wake-up call, a love, and a participation in creation.
Opera has this old tradition of timely feedback, and this is really good. If it's a mule or a horse, you pull it out for a walk. Timely test the level of artistic standards.
When I was in middle school, I watched a monkey play "Haunted Dragon Palace" in the Qingle Opera Garden, the actor who played Sun Wukong was still a little famous, that day I didn't know why I had been hanging On the stage, playing the golden hoop stick without two clicks and falling off the stage, without waiting for the audience to coax, he first playfully pointed to the golden hoop stick and said: "Oh, it fell!" The audience laughed, picked it up and didn't play a few times and fell off, and he repeated the same trick: "Oh, it fell off again!" The audience stopped laughing, and when he fell for the third time, he was not allowed to open his mouth, and the audience suddenly shouted angrily: "What a thing!" go down! "Until he was knocked off the stage, very relieved."
The applause of Peking Opera is more directly related to the actors. This kind of direct relationship with actors, I roughly divided into three categories: there are those who watch the horns, there are those who hold the horns, and there are those who organize people to applaud themselves.
Let's start with the horns. The horns are going to appear, that is, the gongs and drums on the scene together will be "good". This is called "before you see them, hear them first." Ma Lianliang "hummed" in it, and the audience knew that this corner was coming out. A muffled curtain, the audience applauds; no matter what comes from inside, first applaud; you come out again, whether you are a small gong or a big gong, there is "good" when you come out. Before I saw you, I said "yes". These masters have extremely high artistic achievements, have a very high reputation, even if there are any shortcomings and omissions on the stage, no one will be coaxed to fall down, the fan group will be extremely tolerant, and do not allow others to pick faults.
Tan Fuying and Qiu Shengrong cooperated, an excerpt from the Peking opera "ErjinGong", a live recording in 1960
Mr. Tan Fuying sometimes sang in his later years not very seriously, once singing "Erjin Palace", blowing his nose on the stage, and an uncle of the People's Liberation Army next to me asked me in surprise: "Is this Tan Fuying?" I said yes. He said, "Why is Tan Fuying still blowing his nose on stage?" I looked at him angrily: "Why can't Tan Fuying blow his nose?" Frightened, he didn't dare to speak again. This is also the reason why Qiu Shengrong was not allowed to go to "Cuckoo Mountain" later, he had "good" as soon as he came up, and he couldn't stop it if he wanted to stop it, and he suppressed the protagonist Ke Xiang's play, which was a trick to stir up. The model play completely cuts off and distorts the relationship between the viewing and acting, which is a major deficiency, touching the bottom line of the aesthetic viewing relationship of the opera, which we will talk about in detail in the later chapters.
The other type is to make some unknown horn popular.
"Wen Zhaoguan" Ma Changli sings (excerpt)
This category is the kind of person who sees that the actor is a good seedling with a future, hopes that he can become popular, and there is a group of people to praise him. For example, Ma Changli was first held by a group of middle school students. He started to praise him in 1953, so he wouldn't be anything! We can only sing the mat scene in front, we must arrive every time, and the applause continues. One day, after he finished singing "Wen Zhaoguan", he came to us from the side of the theater wall, and he came to see, who applauded me? A bunch of us shouted, "Long gift! We're here. Ma Changli was also very humble: "Look for me when you watch the drama later!" "So Ma Changli was originally picked up by our group of middle school students, which is undoubtedly a great encouragement for a young actor." This is the audience spontaneously holding the horns, not adulterated at all, and directly affects the attention and cultivation of the troupe leaders to him. He said that he had been very unappreciated because of his appearance, but he worked hard, successively worshiped Ma Lianliang and Tan Fuying as teachers, and eventually became the main force of the troupe, a "Sha Jia Bang" Diao Deyi, famous in the north and south of the river.
This kind of applause is sometimes really good or bad. When I saw Ma Changli a few years ago, I also asked him if once the Beijing Theater also sang "Wen Zhaoguan", do you drink too much or eat too much fat, what is your voice? He remembered saying that there was a time, but he couldn't listen. Later, the song "Parents' Revenge" has been out of breath. We applauded at the bottom. The people next to him are gone. Do you × understand drama?! I said what's wrong, it's good. Also called: Good! Over there, just shout, don't understand the drama to get out! A bunch of us yelled too, get out! Looking for a punch isn't it?! At that time, two groups of people were killed. When I arrived at the door of the theater, I began to push and shove, and then a big man came out: "Don't mind, don't mind, it's all buddy." Baochang, this is one of the middle, all buddies, this is Guo Baochang in the East City. "The situation calmed down and they all went back to listen to the play." If I applaud again, they won't care. This experience of fighting for the sake of the horns was later used in the TV series "Big Boss Cheng Changgeng".
This kind of applause best reflects the unique relationship between the audience and the actors in the characteristics of the integration of the performance. This kind of applause is so good that there is a premise, and the audience must be familiar with the art of Peking Opera and see who can fire. Countless excellent actors have grown up rapidly in this applause. From the day there was Peking Opera, there were people who applauded it like this. Therefore, there is the "Mei Dang" who praises Mei Lanfang, the "Xun Society" who holds Xun Huisheng, and the "Horse Gang" that we hold the horse changli, we are a big gang, and I am just one of them.
The third type of praise is the praise of red tickets. This kind of praise continues to this day. I have personal experience. In 1956, I took the stage for the first time to perform "Yao Period", in the Bowstring Hutong Auditorium, selling a ticket for triangular money, regardless of the front and rear seats, I rented the "Sanyiyong" theater box at my own expense, please scene, I bought thirty tickets for my buddies, just for them to give me a good call. This kind of red ticket is very important, and someone must bring the audience to applaud and applaud. Afraid that the audience does not know when to applaud, it is equivalent to someone to take the applause. The red ticket was issued, and as soon as I came out, the good voices of those people rose up, and there was a cheer in every paragraph after that. My mother also went, very happy, and took me to Fortress Garden to have a meal as soon as the play was over.
All kinds of "horns" more truly illustrate the particularity of the relationship between the audience and the performance in the Performance of Chinese Peking Opera, and the audience and the actors are inseparable as a whole. Issuing red tickets today looks like a bad atmosphere, and it is the bluff of some incompetent actors, which is harmful to the actors in the long run. But is the red ticket just for vanity? No! Whether there is applause at the bottom directly affects the performance on the stage! If you look at it from another perspective, you will find that this also shows that the actors have a demand for the audience on the stage. This probably also shows that the performers are really lonely on stage. The Stanley system is through training, so that actors are accustomed to "public loneliness"; while the Chinese Peking Opera performance system, due to the organic nature of the integration of performances, does not deliberately emphasize the loneliness of the actors, but uses the applause of the audience to dilute this loneliness and give the actors more support on the stage. The applause of the audience is an encouragement to the actor, an encouragement, and an internal motivation for him to constantly create his own unique skills.
In addition to the above six types of applause, there is also a very peculiar kind of applause, that is, those who really understand drama, and it is the exchange between artists and artists.
The knowledgeable is not only listening to the singing, he is looking at your singing and playing in all directions, just like a professional director watching a film and television work, he has to examine the screenwriting, performance, art, composition, he wants to see all the elements, all his attention is focused on the overall artistic presentation. The drama is the same, the real knower can know where is really good and fake good.
There is a very special example in my experience. The teacher I studied in middle school was Mr. He Shaowu of Beijing No. 1 Middle School. One day I went to school and passed by the Ruilin Book and Tea House, and I saw that the water sign at the door said that mr. He Shaowu's "Catch and Release Cao" at four o'clock in the afternoon, I looked at it, and I thought I was ok, at most two classes, the third class was not on, and I rode to the tea house. Listening to the play in this teahouse, I always met a woman before, more than thirty years old, wearing a bamboo cloth cheongsam, permed hair, white and pure, rarely seen in the tea house, she is not very beautiful, but very temperamental, feel which is the thousand gold of the broken royal palace, always knitting sweaters there. At three o'clock that day, I went to the tea house. The woman was there too. Mr. He sang the first sentence of the guide board: "Hate Dong Zhuo's dictatorship and chaotic chaogang", "gang" word to be turned high, generally in the "chaotic chaogang" here to give "good", but that day he sang the second sentence "bullying the heavens to suppress the princes", "Hou" after the word Huqin has a small cushion head "3532 123", only two seconds, followed by "Yasai Tiger Wolf". In the middle of this, the woman suddenly gave a "good", and this "good" was pressing on the first 3, and the head was still knitting sweater there without lifting. Why? What's wrong with this sentence? This singing does not have any pretty head, and it is not a good place at all. I asked Mr. He, and he said that the word "Hou" is particularly difficult to sing, and it must be used in the back of the head. The back of the brain sounds resonate with the chest cavity. She could applaud here for two seconds, neither obstructing the front nor stirring up the back. Only a great insider can call it that, dare to call it that! In the history of listening to the play for so many years, this "good" has made me unforgettable.
This kind of applause among professionals, by extension, has a unique variant - ticket holders. Ticket holders are from the beginning of watching the play, from the applause to get started, watching the play into the fan to learn to sing, only then there is the box office (a kind of organization that provides ticket drama services for ticket friends, equivalent to the current club or salon) for them to enjoy ticket plays, only to have guest performances, only ticket friends to go to the sea, only to have ticket friends sing more than professional actors, there are countless new genres. A generation of great audiences themselves has become a generation of great actors, this unity is not only a conceptual and theoretical unity, but also a real material entity, see how many master Peking Opera actors come out of the audience. During the Guangxu period, there were more than a dozen lower sea ticket holders who were chosen to be enshrined in the inner court. There are also masters among ticket holders, and Pu Dong, the owner of the red bean restaurant, is the "king of the ticket world". Zhang Boju during the Republic of China period was the leader of the ticket industry. From the founding period of Peking Opera in 1790 to 1840, the fans who went to the sea, Zhang Erkui, Lu Shengkui, Liu Chaisan, Gong Yunfu, Yan Jupeng... Until 1977, the last genre of Peking Opera, Xi Xiaobo, the xiahai ticket friend who created the Xi school, died, and among the nearly eighty genres, almost twenty genres were founded (most of which have been lost, and the total number of schools that Peking Opera is still passing on to this day is only about twenty). Once these audiences who applauded and applauded offstage once they played the tickets to the sea, they became an indispensable pillar of Peking Opera from its founding to prosperity, not to mention the unparalleled contribution of those fans from all walks of life to the development of Peking Opera.
When we study applause, we are studying the relationship between watching and performing, and these fans who have influenced the rise and fall of Peking Opera, they start from applauding others, and gradually go from offstage to stage. This kind of more common ticket holder is probably the most unique phenomenon of Chinese Peking Opera. It does show that in Peking Opera, there is no real/false, no stage/offstage, between the stage and the audience, between the stage and real life, there is almost no boundary. Peking Opera Theater is an absolutely open space; it is in this open space that the audience and actors are well-connected and promote the development of Peking Opera performances.
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