Starting from Shanghai, which lasted three months and passed through 14 cities including Chengdu, Quanzhou, Zhuhai and Jingdezhen, the exclusive version of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring" ended its longest journey in the history of the tour on the evening of June 29.
Wang Meng, a young actor who has played "Lao Tao" in the exclusive version since his premiere in 2017, has also completed his growth and transformation on this touring road. For him, this is a graduation drama of performance learning, and it is also a new door to the inheritance of classics.
10 minutes of music is not enjoyable
Rooted in Shanghai to start the road of theater
"The name Wang Meng is very ordinary, it is the two words that naturally flash in your mind when you hear it." When we met for the first time, the reporter heard such a self-introduction. This may also be the first impression of countless viewers on Wang Meng, some familiar and some unfamiliar. But as long as you mention Uncle Zhu in "Treasure Island and a Village", Le Zhuan Tian in "Millennium Night, We Say Cross Talk", and Daqiang in "Once Upon a Time", you will soon suddenly realize and feel very cordial to him. In less than ten years after entering the industry, Wang Meng has already created many impressive roles on the Shanghai drama stage.
Unlike most actors, Wang Meng's artistic enlightenment started from quyi: at the age of 5, he followed his teacher to learn Shandong Kuaishu in the Children's Palace in Bengbu, Anhui Province, and was admitted to the Hunan Armed Police Force Art Troupe in the second grade of junior high school......
It was also from that time that Wang Meng, as a literary soldier, began to feel the breadth and profundity of art. "It's hard for my three-board axe to last long, and if you want to move forward, you must learn systematically." From the North China Quyi School to the Shanghai Theater Academy, from cross talk to drama, he gradually discovered, "10 minutes of quyi is beautiful, but the two-hour drama performance makes me even more enjoyable." So, after graduating from the opera, Wang Meng gave up her job in the army's art troupe and began to take root in Shanghai to find her own drama paradise.
Wang Meng, a young actor in the troupe. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Fortunately, five years later, the Chinese dramatist Lai Shengchuan founded the Shanghai Theater in Metro City, and since then, Shencheng opera fans have one more literary and artistic check-in place, and the wandering Wang Meng has finally found a home.
More than 200 performances have been accumulated
After 7 years of polishing, I finally graduated
The exclusive version of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring", which was born in 2017, is the first big drama that Wang Meng came into contact with after joining the group. "For me, it's like entering a new university, and it's a feeling of 'reinventing the wheel', whether it's creating a character or facing the audience, it's full of challenges everywhere." In Wang Meng's opinion, there are too many performance passwords hidden in "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring", and he is fortunate to explore it with the exclusive version.
"The happiest thing is that the theatrical atmosphere in Shanghai is very strong, which gives young actors like me more opportunities to practice." Wang Meng counted carefully, since the birth of the exclusive version, the theater has launched two rounds of "Crush Month" every year, adding up to thirty or forty shows, and more than 200 shows in 7 years. The large amount of experience accumulated during the period has not only brought the actors the improvement of their acting skills, but also the confidence and confidence to "go out".
In Wang Meng's words, this national tour is like a graduation drama, "On the one hand, we can finally go out of our Shanghai home and accept the review of the national audience; On the other hand, "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring" has been performed for nearly 40 years, and more than ten versions such as classic versions and commemorative editions have been born. ”
As a result, since March 30 this year, the exclusive version of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring" has set off from Shanghai and embarked on the longest itinerary in its tour history. Chengdu, Beijing, Quanzhou, Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Pingtan, Jingdezhen, Ma'anshan...... There are 14 cities all over the country.
Stills from the exclusive tour of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land". Photo courtesy of the interviewee
As long as the content is good enough
Peach blossoms can also bloom in the desert
Wang Meng walked all the way, acted all the way, and also studied and reflected all the way.
The regional culture of each city is different, and the habits and preferences of each audience are also different, how to quickly shorten the distance between them and the work? Dialect has become a big magic weapon for Wang Meng, "From the moment the plane lands, I will pay attention to local hot topics and characteristic slang, such as housing prices, attractions, and food, and integrate them into the stage performance in the appropriate scenes, and the audience will smile, and the effect of this performance will be different." ”
Wang Meng said with a smile that after touring all the way, he has learned 14 dialects, and now he occasionally brings out a few sentences of "mile thick", "Yakexi" and "Ba Shi Deban" when he speaks. This is the unique memory left to him by "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring", and it is also the exclusive romance of dramatists.
As the Nobel laureate Jon Fosse said, "Art, especially good art, always combines individuality and commonality in a wonderful way, transcending barriers of language, geography and national boundaries." "This is our first time in Xi'an, Yinchuan and Urumqi, and we were really worried about the market, after all, the theatrical atmosphere there is different from Shanghai." ”
What Wang Meng didn't expect was that the 7 performances in 3 cities were almost full, and each of them was a thousand-seat theater, even the Urumqi station, which opened at 9 o'clock in the evening, was just as hot. "This shows that everyone has a consensus on good works, even if they don't usually have the habit of watching dramas, as long as the content is good enough, it will still be attractive no matter how far and late it is." This is also the meaning of inheriting the classics.
The exclusive version of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring" toured to the three cities in the northwest and was well received. Courtesy of the Upper Theatre
Being an actor is a lifelong career
Go out to come back better
Since 2017, when Shanghai had its own "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring", the exclusive version has become a theatrical business card of Shencheng. Every year's "Crush Month" and "dragging suitcases to Shanghai to find the Peach Blossom Spring" are all a landscape of the Shencheng performing arts market.
In this tour, the young actors represented by Wang Meng brought this drama flower born from Shanghai to the north and south of the motherland, which is both blooming and learning. "Such an intensive and large-scale tour can be imagined as the trials and challenges brought to young actors, and the growth and tempering brought by it are also obvious."
In Wang Meng's view, being an actor is a lifelong career, and learning should not stop at the campus, nor should it be limited to the stage, every time you walk on the stage, every performance, and every time you face the audience, it is an opportunity to move forward. Just like this tour, going out is to return better, so that "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring" will continue to bloom in Shanghai, a hot land of drama.
The header picture shows stills from the exclusive version of the tour of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Spring". Photo courtesy of the interviewee