"In 1976, the times changed..." Accompanied by a burst of singing, the original drama "Home guest" returned to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center Stage on May 5 after a year, and participated in the Shanghai Jing'an Modern Drama Valley Exhibition. The drama will continue to be staged in Shanghai until May 9, and will be in Tianjin, Beijing, Shaanxi and Zhejiang for more than a month.
"The Homemaker" takes Ma Shitu as the key character, and through him "returned to Shanghai from Tangshan", "did not return to Shanghai from Tangshan" and "returned to Shanghai from Tangshan", three different living conditions are shown. From the returner in the first act, to the intruder in the second act, to the mysterious character in the third act, everything has a different ending because of his different decisions during the Tangshan earthquake in 1976.
"Home guest" is jointly created by Yu Rongjun, a national first-class screenwriter of Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, and Zhou Xiaoqian, a first-class director at the national level, which is the second time that the two have collaborated after the drama "The Salty Taste of Cappuccino" and the musical "I Love You...". Both said, "The tacit understanding between them has brought many surprises to the creation of "Housemaker". Yu Rongjun revealed, "'The Guest' has been conceived for a long time, and I have always wanted to write a play about contemporary Chinese intellectuals, especially the fate of my father's generation of intellectuals and their current living conditions." Their fate has always been closely linked to the fate of the country. ”
In the play, the "Ma Shitu" who has experienced strange and emotional ups and downs, who has been promoted from a grass-roots worker to the management of the enterprise, is played by Zhou Yemang, and Song Yining plays "Mo Sang wan" who is subtle and introverted and represents the image of university intellectuals. Comic drama master Qian Cheng plays "Xia Mantian", who represents the image of intellectuals in the literary and art circles.
"Home guest" was designed by Huang Kaifu, the stage designer of "Shang Martingale", and Zhao Guang, a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, as the composer. This round of performances invited Fang Qiong, director of the Vocal Department of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, as vocal director. The set created by Huang Kaifu is simple and quite expressive: in the center of the stage, a bungalow with a courtyard is located in the center of Shanghai's high-rise buildings, but it is independent of the courtyard, like a paradise, which is out of place, symbolizing the attitude of the protagonist. The entire performance process is accompanied by a multimedia projection of various brushstrokes that flow slowly from time to time, sometimes bitter, sometimes bright, sometimes ambiguous. The hourglass of the roof rotates and moves, coupled with the combination and splitting of the various parts of the house, leading the audience through different time and space.
In the more than five years since its planning in 2016, "Home guest" has undergone many rounds of revision and performance, and has been judged to become a large-scale stage drama rolling funding project of the National Arts Fund in 2019. From 2019 to 2020, "Home guest" held "one reform" and "two reform" revision meetings in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, and more than 20 experts from all over the country exchanged views on the structure of the script, theme ideas, character relationships, stage presentation and stage design, etc., talked about true knowledge and bright insights in the middle of the debate, grasped key issues, and put forward effective suggestions. The revision of "Home guest" returned, and the crew said that it welcomed every audience in the theater with 100% creative enthusiasm, and strived to make the work "stand, spread and retain".
Column Editor-in-Chief: Li Junna Text Editor: Li Junna Photo Editor: Zi Xi
Source: Author: Lin Huan