What is truth? It has some basic qualities. First, it can convince the audience. The audience knows that the drama is fake, the stage is a fictional world, and watching the drama is entertainment and a mental game. Why are they willing to be psychologically influenced by the drama and do "conscious self-deception between belief and unbelief"? The reason is that the life displayed on the stage can make the audience have all kinds of associations that can go in and out of their own experiences, thus deepening their understanding of life. With this kind of association and understanding, you will get aesthetic pleasure, although it is false. American playwright arthur miller said: "Drama needs more relevance and appropriateness than any art ... If a drama can make people believe that' this is the way it is', then even if it has many shortcomings, it is still a good drama." If a drama can't even pass the level of credibility, the audience will constantly have doubts in the process of watching the drama, it will be difficult to enter the aesthetic state, and sometimes even feel that their intelligence has been hurt. What is the truth of such a play? Secondly, the authenticity of drama must be touching and emotional. In social science, truth can be directly expressed by reason. But in drama, reason is hidden in emotion, and it depends on the truth of emotion to influence the audience. Yuan Yuling, a writer in the Ming Dynasty, put it well: "The play is fake, but it is true." This kind of "true feelings" is the artist's first experience, and he is excited by his own experience before he can impress the audience. The emotion of drama is the rationality of perceptual state, which always contains the judgment of right and wrong. The expression of good feeling or bad feeling has been illuminated by the artist's rational light, which is an aesthetic thing, not a natural thing. Therefore, looking at Shakespeare's tragedy will not be infected with Macbeth's ambition, Richard III's cruelty and Othello's suspicion. Truth in drama always leads to goodness. Modern opera will be detached from the past value judgment in the description of human nature, and its expression is not necessarily black or white. Some works also focus on the "gray zone", which still won't destroy the spirit of right and wrong, good and evil, and rationality. That kind of pleasure that does not include right and wrong, good and evil is just a general pastime, not a noble entertainment, not a real aesthetic pleasure of drama. So third, the truth of drama should also have power and power. This power comes from the truth and true feelings of drama, which is not trivial or humble, but expresses a certain "purport of universal significance to mankind" (in Hegel's language), or "historical content with great ideological depth and consciousness" as Engels said. We can't expect many works to have ideological strength and depth, but if there are too few such works, modern opera will have no backbone.
Truth is different from facts, what is important is the closeness of the mind.
Truth is a feeling, a subjective feeling that comes from objectivity and has cognitive significance to objectivity. Truth is different from fact. History depends on facts, and drama depends on truth. Drama writes "facts" (stories) only to let the audience feel the truth, not for the "facts" themselves; And this "fact" generally does not need real facts (or facts) to support it. Regarding the art of satire, Lu Xun said: "It is not necessarily a fact that already exists, but it must be a fact that will exist." Therefore, art is inseparable from fiction, allowing fantasy, and even being in a trance. When creating historical dramas, artists can swing freely between historical facts and artistic fiction. The freedom of swing is restricted by the convincing "inner possibility" (Lessing language) and closely linked with the artist's intention, so as to realize the mutual infiltration and free transformation of emotion and reason. We seem to have a tendency to attach importance to facts and ignore truth, such as the so-called major themes, thinking that we can get great truth when we find it, but the objective effect is often not the case, because we are bound by more facts and it is difficult to get full freedom in real excavation. In the past, when the media was underdeveloped, the drama of writing current affairs news was very appealing, but now it is not the case. For the audience, it doesn't matter whether the "facts" in the play are close or far away from us in time, what matters is the closeness of the soul. The closeness of soul is very important for artists and audiences. Moreover, it should be noted that the distance of time is precisely the favorable condition for having greater freedom in creation. The Peking Opera Cao Cao and Yang Xiu and the Liyuan Opera Dongsheng and Shili are good examples.
Truth is supported by the right form.
Hegel famously said, "An artist is an artist because he realizes the truth and lets us observe and touch our emotions in the right way." What the artist wants to convey to the audience, or what the audience can feel, is mediated by form. Artists deal with the audience in form. The so-called "putting it in the right form" can also be correctly called formalization and formal creation. Speaking of drama, how can this form be "correct"? There are several basic points to explain.
First of all, in drama, formalization is action. From the perspective of artistic taxonomy, drama is the art of action. It has two basic qualities: (1) "Action is the will to realize"; (2) "Action inevitably leads to conflict in essence" (Hegel). Dramatic action is not equal to people's behavior in daily life. For the latter, it must be selected, refined and endowed with the above two qualities before it becomes a dramatic action. Will and conflict, arising from the past, directly point to the future, and their perceptual process now is drama plot and character history. Because action is to realize the will and cause conflict, it will "lead to action and reaction" and it will be dramatic. When we watch a drama, we feel "dull", "cold" and "hopeless", mostly because of the lack of really dramatic action. Truth without action is not the truth of drama.
Secondly, dramatic actions have different forms. For an actor, action is not a physical action (expression and posture), but the sum of language, psychology and body. Its perceptual presentation is the role image. Drama has different styles, such as drama, opera, ballet and opera (to say that "drama" is the real classification of drama, and many of the so-called "drama" in our opera are local factors, not all of which have the meaning of style category). In the final analysis, there are different forms of action. The action of drama is close to the original form of life, and its focus is on language, which is colloquial lines. Opera focuses on singing and music, while ballet focuses on dance and music. Opera does not take dance as the action form, and ballet does not take song as the action form. The action of China traditional opera is a comprehensive form of singing and dancing, which is usually called singing. No matter what kind of drama style, including realistic drama, it is "second nature", artificial nature and an art form that has been carefully treated. Therefore, when we want to "put the truth in the correct form", there is a pre-existing condition, that is, we can only "put it" in the action form of a specific drama style. Therefore, whether acting has a sense of style is an important key to being "correct". The audience often criticizes some operas as "drama plus singing", mostly because of the lack of style awareness in the overall formalization. Having a clear sense of style is the noumenon consciousness in creation.
Third, the form of action is both inherited and changeable. As far as China traditional operas are concerned, no matter singing, reciting and playing, there are historical accumulated formal skills, and their standardized forms are usually called programs. Since form is the embodiment of the special relationship between the artist and the audience, it is in line with the appreciation needs of the audience to pay attention to the style characteristics of drama and make full use of the inherent programming skills in the process of formalization. But this inheritance is relative, because it needs to show the truth, and it will change to some extent at any time. So formalization cannot be simply equated with stylization. Formalization is greater than stylization, and non-procedural factors can be absorbed and integrated in formalization. More boldly, in modern opera creation, formalization is the pluralistic unity of stylization and anti-stylization. The formalization of modern opera also includes a new task: to achieve a broader and new synthesis in form. With this broader new synthesis, we can realize the diversification of performance styles in the same drama. The core of performance style is the actor's action, which is the characteristic of action style, but it is not enough to have this core, but also its extension, including auditory music, audio-visual makeup, clothing, scenery and lighting. In addition, in the relationship between appreciation and performance, special space processing can be done. Under the positive and "correct" intervention of these factors, the performance style can obtain a distinctive artistic style. However, there is little experience in this field, so it is necessary to learn from foreign experience, which is a process that cannot be skipped in the modernization of traditional Chinese opera. Introducing foreign experience often leads to disharmony, easy absorption and difficult digestion, but we should not give up eating because of choking. The modernization of art has two aspects: innovation and destruction. We should try our best to protect innovation and reduce damage. Cultivating a group of artists depends on the accumulation of practical experience, so as to gradually reduce confusion and pain. Once the real formalization is successful, it will give the audience great aesthetic pleasure. Here, it really leads to beauty. The audience should not only be moved by the truth, but also be purified and sublimated by kindness, and also be brought repeated tastes and lasting intoxication by beauty. However, being satisfied with moving or even shocking the soul is not the whole experience of drama aesthetics. We can achieve what Zhu Guangqian said: "Content sinks and form emerges" (sinking is not disappearing, but emerging form is meaningful). At this time, we can really appreciate drama as a work of art, and we can deeply appreciate the infinity of drama art.