"Spring Death": Gently tell a good story

Cao Xuemeng

This spring that has just arrived, the drama "Spring Death" has returned again with new actors. Entering the third year, this drama seems to be a small drama with the theme of falling flowers and rain, but it still brings a warm texture of grass and vines and spring mountains.

The story of "Spring Death" grows from the cracks of history. Wu Jianxiong, a physicist known as the "Lady Curie of the East", worked for a year at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica before studying in the United States in 1936, when her colleague and supervisor was Gu Jinghui, China's first female doctor of physics. The director of the Institute of Physics at the time was the patriotic physicist and playwright Ding Xilin.

The lives of the two physicists met again in a year and were separated again. "Spring Death" began here, "big things are not vain, small things are informal" to create Gu Jingwei (prototype Gu Jinghui), Qu Jianxiong (prototype Wu Jianxiong), Ding Xilin (prototype Ding Xilin) three characters, in a parting encounter, the time of the year is painted colorful, the ideals, beliefs, women and other topics wrapped in it. In the words of Zhu Hongxuan, the screenwriter and director of the play, it is to present the subtleties that are outside the spotlight of the times and within the "width" of history.

Just like Ken Xiong's sentence in the play, "The majority is not equal to normal", "Spring Death" casts a warm gaze and serious observation on those "minorities" who are easily overlooked. In those days, women who studied physics, people who studied theoretical physics, people who did particle research, and physicists who engaged in drama were all in the minority. Similarly, such a well-told, light-laced two-heroine drama can now be counted as a minority. What "Spring Death" does, that is, in the magnification and detailing of the minority, let those who cannot see are seen and those who cannot be heard are heard.

In many evaluations of Spring Death, the word "gentle" is frequently mentioned, which is probably related to the way it tells stories, especially the way it presents difficulties. Through the story of Jing Wei and Ken Xiong, you can easily feel the lofty feminine consciousness of the play. But this exaltation is not sharp, as objective and calm as possible, but it makes people clearly feel the storm surging under the sea. The state and moments when women are besieged really become the folds of life in the play: it is Jingwei's repeated blind date paths, it is the anger of Ken xiong who is forced to give up his study abroad qualifications because of his gender despite winning the first place, it is also the women's toilet that has never been in the Institute of Physics, it is a chair prepared according to male height, it is a woman who is awarded an excellent teacher but the prize is only a tie...

The opposite of this restraint is a gentle and determined struggle. "Spring Death" does not set up a frontal conflict for the two sexes, nor does it have a fierce indignation to wave the flag, but through the power of women's alliances, women's self-growth is realized. Ken Xiong, who has been repeatedly frustrated by gender in the Gengjian exam, once wanted to give up physics, and Jing Wei slowly explained. She admits how difficult the road ahead is, "but if we take one more step, the later people will be able to go one step further." And Jian Xiong will tell Jing Wei that although Wei Cao is short but the most vigorous, it is also her, and she teaches Jing Wei to dance at a glance, and carefully changes the tie that Jing Wei got to a women's bow tie.

In the relationship between mentor and friend, Jingwei and Kenxiong form a community, showing that in the face of difficulties, the encouragement and cooperation between the same sexes has become a social supporting force. Jing Wei has endured hardships and is optimistic, knowing that women are in the dark night and still have hope for the light; Ken Xiong is full of enthusiasm, persistence and fearlessness, and a lonely courage to seek the truth. Their encounters, acquaintances, and collisions create a different spark.

For a long time, the friendship between men has always been highly glorified, and the depiction of female friendship is often accompanied by denial and questioning. However, in fact, from ancient times to the present, for women, intimate connection with same-sex friends is precious to knowing themselves, finding themselves, and becoming themselves. This spring, as we continue to lament the complex and subtle friendship between Lila and Lennon in the series "My Genius Girlfriend" that runs to the third season, the friendship between Jingwei and Ken Xiong in "Spring Death" shows another side, showing how friendship between women "can provide the best conditions for learning to become self", and also making people think about how far women are from true liberation in addition to being free and liberated as "pleasure power" and "fashion power".

In the play, Ding Xilin's constantly revised script "Oppression", the landlady wants to evict the single male tenant on the grounds that he is homeless. As Nancy Smith put it: "As long as there is a woman who takes a step towards her own liberation, there must be a man who finds himself closer to the path to freedom." Although in fact the creation of the play and the encounter between Gu Jinghui and Wu Jianxiong are not in the same time and space, through this play within a play, the oppression of gender is about to come out, and the easily overlooked male part of the gender equality issue is also presented.

In the play, Jing Wei wrote in her parting letter to Ken Xiong: "The eyes of the world may be divided into men and women, but tiny atoms and nuclei will not." Outside the play, in 1964, Wu Jianxiong asked the audience at a symposium held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "What makes me curious is that small atoms and nuclei, or mathematical symbols or DNA molecules, are also biased toward men or women?" "Life and art are contrasted, and the tension between story and reality is full of points."

"The scale of time is relative", this is the "time relativity" of Jing Wei's grandmother in the play. Through Jingwei and Jianxiong's three different feelings about the length and shortness of time, "Spring Death" explores the individual's pursuit of ideals and beliefs and how to view the scale of time. In addition to the women's issue, the reverse use of the "theory of time relativity" has been used many times, which further extends the connotation of the work, and also adds layers to the plot, the progression of the relationship between the two and the transmission of each other's strength are highlighted, and the struggle and pull of the "bench sweet ten years cold" in front of the ideal and the ordinary individual facing the "jianghu night rain ten years of lights" are also more natural.

This is precisely the success of "Spring Death": as one of the works of the "Drama Nine" Republican intellectuals series, it makes a number of topics and concepts land in a heavy weight, gaining a gripping ability and the afterglow of singing and sighing.

One of the great things about this round of performances is that different actors interpret the same role differently. Wang Xiaohuan injected a more vivid color into the role of Gu Jingwei. The characters are relaxed and natural, the emotional transformation and emotional transformation are progressive, and the sense of rhythm and layering is clearly grasped. Perhaps the script intends to use the personality differences between Jingwei and Jianxiong to add stronger drama to the story, so that Jingwei is more lively and more rigorous, but the design of the two characters is more or less overexerted - the former is less scholarly temperament, the latter lacks three-dimensional emotions, and the emotional development between the two also has abrupt points. As the only male character in the play, although the plot has increased his sense of existence as much as possible, relying solely on writing the script, reading the ledger and other plots is not enough to make the characters plump and organically combine with the main plot.

At a glance, the short and concise "Spring Death" is also a bit thin, and it seems that it can only be regarded as a comfort and support for "us who walk on the road". But it gently crosses the audience's heart, it can draw a drop of tears, which may not be entirely related to the plot, but it not only restates "reality is like this", but also like the sentence that Jingwei gave to Jian Xiong, "I hope you will always yearn for the arrival of summer in the gray days", leaving room for the imagination that "reality can still be like this". In this sense, although it is finally "the forest flowers thank the spring red", after all, the flowers have bloomed, and the afterscent is still there.

Source: Beijing Daily