On June 28th and 29th, the School of Performing Arts of Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts ushered in the final performance at the Black Box Theater, with six drama highlights staged, including "Xiucai and the Executioner", "The Edge of the Cabinet", "Innocent Sinner", "Suspicion of Truth", "Murder on Dante Street" and "Xiucai and the Executioner". Among them, "Xiucai and the Executioner" was well received, and Mr. Wang, the audience, bluntly said that five college students performed the "puppet show" into a "performance package".
As the finale of the night, "Xiucai and the Executioner" cheered the audience as soon as it started. A little girl came on the stage as a frog, with funny postures and exaggerated staring eyes, which made people laugh, and played the first "puppet".
Director Song Yi introduced that the play is a black humor live-action puppet show, excerpted from the script of the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center, which uses laughter and anger to show the world and the vicissitudes of the world. In order to let the "post-00" young people understand the background of the times, the director took them to study relevant historical documents and social customs books, such as "Ancient Chinese Social History" and "History of Ming and Qing Customs", etc., and also watched the complete repertoire and understood the content of the whole play. Even so, it was still a challenge for students who were rehearsing comedy for the first time.
"The animal I chose was the frog, so I watched a lot of frog documentaries, learned the rhythm of the frog, and tried to anthropomorphize the frog as much as possible." Tian Yiran said with a smile, "I tried to keep my eyes wide and keep smiling, and my expression was closer to the frog, and then I also added forward rolls and ingots jumps to make the movements more silky." The hardest part was to keep the look and expression motionless for a few minutes, which was a challenge for me. ”
The puppet "pig head" expression played by Wang Yiyang and Guan Jiao Jingxian has also become the highlight of the show. "We've been racking our brains about how we can make this scene more exciting and fun. During a rehearsal break, I stumbled upon the green pig from Angry Birds and suddenly felt that the expression and image of this green pig were particularly suitable for this scene. So we tried our best to imitate its demeanor, and with two pig cries, it was really full of joy! Wang Yiyang said.
Text, pictures: Jia Li
Editor: Zhou Jiayao