The original text is very long, and many theoretical descriptions have been cut out. In addition, I divided Tadao's works into two stages based on "Peach Blossom Fan 1699", and the analysis of the later works was questioned by the teacher as "not critical enough". I didn't feel deeply when I wrote my thesis. I have read a lot of books in the past two years and understand the teacher's doubts. So here, I temporarily deleted the analysis in the second half and only kept the conclusion. It's a pity for myself that most of Tadao's works I saw at the scene were late ... I hope to have a chance to do another analysis. )
-
From 1997, Tian Qinxin continued to write drama 19, and the first drama "Broken Wrist" was released to pay homage to the lost love and save his own love. She is very talented. When she was still young, her first work had a great influence, and she soon established a mature style with a personal label. However, she is young after all. After all, 19 years have passed. People and things have changed, and her works have gradually changed.
If Tian's early works are aimed at "expressing" and "telling" her feelings, personal aesthetics and thinking, then her later works are more inclined to "create" and "experience" thousands of ways of life and the world outside her own. Reflected in Tian Qinxin's works, it is from "ritual" to "relaxation": from the closed drama world, strong rhythm and body sound to flexible, open and elastic spatial expression, and getting rid of emotions and themes. In this process, Tian's aesthetics and skills are becoming more and more mature, but the expression of the drama world is still inevitably in conflict with the real environment. On the premise of adhering to the initial intention, we need to seek reconciliation with ourselves and the outside world.
If you like drama, you can continue reading. I will elaborate this conclusion bit by bit.
One,
In his early works, Tian Qinxin constructed an anti-illusion stage, but brought the audience into a deeper experience than illusion and * * *.
1. Crazy image charm
Tian Qinxin's plays have a magic power. The audience living in it seems to be gripped by their own throats and often feel quite stuffy. At the same time, they are full of strength, and feel their hearts and limbs shaking violently. Some scholars look for the source of excitement in the language world of these dramatic works, just as they do in literary works, and look for the causes of our spiritual collision pain from conflicts and contradictions. In Tian Qinxin's plays, this phenomenon is manifested in the rhythm and body, which washes away the emotions and nerves of the audience in the theater with its original power.
1. 1 rhythm
In China's well-known drama works, no matter how the language style changes, it does not deviate from its narrative function, mainly in the form of dialogue. For example, in the classic Teahouse, only the dialogue of the script has completed the shaping of characters' character and the ups and downs of characters' fate for half a century. The language is incisive and the content is thought-provoking. This is mainly influenced by realism and illusion, especially when drama has just been introduced from overseas and is strongly advocated as a drama that contrasts with traditional opera with songs as the main means, which highlights its advantages in communication and enlightenment (Zheng Fang, 2009).
The language in Tian Qinxin's drama works inherits the characteristics of China's avant-garde drama in stage literature, which is also the influence brought by the anti-script-centered, anti-daily and anti-logicism when western drama developed to the 20th century-breaking through the narrative and logic of drama language and showing poetic and prosaic culture.
For example, the gap between "homesickness" and "consistency" in The Knockout's drama, Shou Chang's monologue of feeling the world and looking for light, and his trance-like lines when he met Victoria in "Swing of Destiny" were not arranged for dialogue and action, but only for creating a chanting atmosphere. The charm of poeticization comes not only from its fuzziness, but also from the musicality and sense of rhythm naturally brought by the rhythm of poetry, which is rooted in the tonal characteristics of language itself. Here we are concerned about the tonality of language, and its material attributes are perceived by listeners independently of the content of the language.
Longevity: flowers, if popular, burn out, sow fire, but can not receive light.
Everyone: we see the corruption of old things and believe that they will die out, only temporarily hurt. We see the dawn of the future, but they are out of reach for the time being.
Longevity: old gods is dead, and the new god will not give birth to dusk. ...
Everyone: the front is bright, and the back is night.
Shouchang: If there are spirits flying from the sky to the earth, please come down from Xiangyun and take me to that fresh and gorgeous life.
The reason why "poetry" is marked as a distinctive feature of Tian Qinxin's drama works is not limited to this. When a language needs to be recited/performed on the stage, its paralinguistic features will be carefully trained and arranged by the stage creators of drama, usually directors and actors, which include many characteristics such as tone, sound quality, volume, speed, intonation, rhythm and pronunciation. The study of paralanguage features shows that they can affect the expressive ability (emphasizing and enhancing understanding) and emotionality (expressing the speaker's emotions and psychology) of speech content (Kiel Elam, 1998).
In Tian's early works, the paralinguistic features of drama texts are particularly prominent, even surpassing the language itself in some cases, making the audience's attention point to themselves. Orphan of Zhao is a work with the most obvious paralinguistic features. In the theater, the actors deliberately slow down the speed of reciting white characters, or prolong the pause between words, so as to generate accumulated energy on words, increase the volume of words, and strengthen the tone of words through cadence, making the tone more obvious. For example, in the preface, Cheng Ying read word for word "You are terminally ill"; Or lengthen the pronunciation time of words to provide an opportunity to show the actor's sound quality, such as Zhuang Ji's cry of "clearing the sin" during childbirth, which is hoarse and hoarse. All these have obviously changed the rhythm and tone of the voice, formed the strong and slightly trembling pronunciation characteristics of the actors, and shaped the weak and sensitive voice texture. Because the text of The Orphan of Zhao itself is obscure, it leads listeners to pay more attention to the phonetic (phenomenological) features of language rather than the semantic (semiotic) features.
1.2 body
Body plays an important role in Tian Qinxin's plays. Even in Tian's early works, stage vision is mainly symbolic and freehand, and "strength" and "tension" are still the most commonly used words to describe works. There is nothing on the empty stage at this time, only the enlarged body shows the poetry of the stage.
Tian Qinxin's attention to the body is complete, and the empty stage seems to be insufficient for her to gather her attention. She also needs to cooperate with the lighting, hide the information unrelated to the body on the stage with darkness, and guide the audience's line of sight with spotlight. The emphasis is on hieroglyphics shaped by body posture. The most fascinating modeling scene is the prelude to the field of life and death. The stage was dark, and a bunch of overhead lights lit up four men and one woman. Men's and women's clothes are very black, and they can't see the color, which blends in with the dark background. In this light, the woman's head is low, and the white legs and red shoes on her feet are particularly dazzling. This gesture can't find the source of imitation in real life and has no explanatory significance. It intuitively conveys a shock, which may be aimed at unrealistic gestures, discomfort to naked women's limbs, the original impulse of bright red color, or the image of piercing the sky sharply, which makes us stimulated. This is a feeling rooted in our ancient memory, just like the instinctive fear of wolves. Even if a figure is not drawn, the object itself can transfer heat. When strangled in The Orphan of Zhao, their trunks are still, but their muscles are tense and trembling. The state of muscle is the most easily perceived by human instinct, which can indicate human safety or danger. Even through clothes, they can still convey some tension and strength to the audience.
The particularity of action is that it is continuous and dynamic. Once the text tries to describe it, it is easy to cut off its coherence and cut it into gesture symbols in the form of pictures, so we can't describe it and adopt a whole expression. Each work has a unique action vocabulary score, the washing of broken wrists, the roughness of the field of life and death, the procedures of orphan Zhao, including the humor of red roses and white roses in the later period, and the naivety of hawthorn tree love. The similarities between them are as follows: first, the action deliberately deviates from the description of daily life, abandoning its "shape" and taking the "god" behind its action, so that people can directly see the spirit and emotion of the characters, which not only excludes reality, but also deliberately creates a pure artistic world and liberates people from the world where meaning and symbols are intertwined. The resulting impact must be inspired and moved, which is also called poetry. Four generations under one roof provides a comparative case. The whole work is represented by realistic language and natural body. Only the paragraphs of pulling carts and changing scenes adopt abstract expressionism techniques, which is called the most "Tian Qinxin" segment of the whole play, indicating that the audience has labeled Tian Qinxin's plays as poetic actions. Another feature is that Tian's works make full use of stillness and pause, including paying attention to modeling, and deliberately dividing the coherence of movements. On the one hand, it hinders the smooth flow of the theater atmosphere and forms a dignified atmosphere; On the other hand, it enlarges the sense of rhythm and forms the "tension" of action. This is particularly prominent in Tian Qinxin's early works. Orphan of Zhao is typical, with many pauses and shapes, and no naturally relaxed limbs, so that the work is always immersed in a depressed atmosphere.
1.3 the charm of the ceremony
Aalto's ideal drama form is power, body and sacred emotion that cannot be rationally recognized. Alto's pursuit of theatrical thoroughness, represented by refusing to symbolize the body, and pure art that is "more real than reality" have more or less become the source of inspiration for contemporary theater directors' drama experiments. Tian Qinxin mentioned Aalto many times in his personal records and interviews with his early works, hoping that the stage could create "image charm and enthusiasm" through the actors. The repeated appearance of this term makes Tian always regarded as a practitioner of Aalto's "cruel drama". But in fact, there is a big gap between Tian Qinxin and Aalto's drama thoughts. Judging from the performance method, she may be closer to the simple drama created by Grotowski.
Like Grotowski, peter brooke and other directors who followed Aalto's cruel drama, Tian Qinxin first learned from the means of rhythm, body and posture in Aalto's cruel theory, so that the theater could play a sense of ceremony and spiritual effect, enlarge the body and make the audience feel intuitively and strongly in shock. About the works, apart from the drama text, what she said most was the actor's body. When she wrote The Orphan of Zhao, she proposed to "show the story through the action of the living and the collision of the living" ... to shock the fixed audience sitting in various sitting positions, and "hope that there will be heat on the stage, which will be emitted through the actors' lines, mental state and body movements. This is the original singing method we described above, which caused an impression attack on the audience.
However, Tian Qinxin and Aalto are essentially different. The power that Aalto seeks is the cruelty of the universe, the essence of life and a metaphysical concept. What he pursues is irrational power beyond language and writing. He opposes all psychological, emotional, cultural and formal forces, and the author and text cannot be present (Ador, 20 10). As for Tian Qinxin, the origin of her creation is "I" ("Broken Wrist" is a work that pays tribute to love and regains her ideal), and she has been basically creating plays and stage performances according to her own understanding of classic texts, so her works contain her feelings, thoughts and even ideals, which is basically the "Latin" logicism drama that Aalto opposes. She asked the actor to convey the passion of his role. An actress must "analyze the emotional essence of the role, establish the ideological line and action line of the role, experience all the emotions and behaviors of the role, and shape the personality structure belonging to this role", which makes her closer to Grotowski's road.
Tian Qinxin's pursuit is basically the same as Grignard's. Based on her role experience, she asked the actors to use emotional externalization. For example, in The Orphan of Zhao, she asked, "The whole realm is sad, and the nerve endings are sad. It is real when it comes up, and it is not empty at all." She is especially opposed to the actor's superficial imitation or even following the action routine, and asks the actor to "not express fear and indignation superficially, but simply express it without affectation", which is similar to Grignard's request to express "people". Tian's requirements for actors as human beings are "connotation, determination, personality charm and proper control, which are beyond the role", which shows her recognition of the relationship between actors and roles in human nature. Therefore, the core of Tian's performance mode is naturalism, and the outside is expressionism.
The difference between her and Grotowski lies in the origin of "what is drama": Tian Qinxin regards drama as a Dojo to express "I", while Grotowski wants to explore the body and spirit of "man", so Gershou went further and finally gave up drama to explore the road of "artistic pluralism".
2. Communication space
2. 1 space poetics
The stage space of Tian Qinxin's plays has a relatively mature feature from the beginning, which is reflected in the abstraction and conciseness of the stage visual style on the one hand, and the staggered juxtaposition of the space-time structure on the other. This feature runs through her works and becomes more mature with the change of drama concept.
Tian's stage is dominated by neo-realism and symbolism. Even today, the illusion stage is still regarded as the imaginary enemy of drama reform, but in Tian Qinxin, such a problem does not seem to exist. When the directors of avant-garde dramas such as Meng Jinghui set up bands and added various modern machines on the stage, she didn't seem to care whether to use anti-illusion means: the minimalist stage is her consistent feature, and the stage of her "Field of Life and Death" is almost empty, with no color and no scenery, only low pits and high platforms, and occasionally some relatively realistic scenery is added to some important scenes; These scenes are covered with rough fabrics that conform to the rural background of life and death, and the props are poorly made, creating a worn-out texture. It can be seen that the stage is not used as a prop against any doctrine, but essentially to better present the internal characteristics of the work, which can be said to create another "illusion".
From the aesthetic point of view, the style of Tian's early works tends to be aesthetic, reaching its peak in The Orphan of Zhao. Large areas of red and black blocks, cerebrovascular curtains, hanging cages, red hair and other elements with strong colors and pure style are widely used, which complement the psychological abstract characteristics of the play itself. In the later period, the stage style began to tend to be "ethereal". Compared with the earlier stage, which was equally empty but emphasized color conflict, the stage at this time was no longer based on dark colors such as black and dark blue, and the colors tended to be softer. The stage lights diverged from the focus, creating a stage atmosphere with temperament and charm, such as the landscape painting installation in Ming, the background of ancient buildings in Green Snake and the abstraction in Love of Hawthorn Trees.
On the field stage, the most commendable thing is the free juxtaposition of time and space. In the early days, light was used as a hint to divide time and space, making an effect similar to montage editing of movies. For example, the flashback technique commonly used in the field of life and death-Zhao San recalled the reason why he wanted to kill Mr. Zhong, the "scandal" in which his son proposed for two and a half hours, Jin Zhi missed his mother in the cellar, and the most wonderful memories of Zhao San and Wang Po's "* * *" dance. These are all using the dark stage, first focusing on the characters with lights, and then spreading the stage to form a contrast between the past time and space on the stage. The Knockout's interlude with "play in play" seems to be more free to switch time and space than "Field of Life and Death", but in fact, the "framework" of the stage is still there, with "play in play" as the eye and light as the line, which leads to the switching of narrative. In the later period, when Tian Qinxin's stage space-time technique became more and more skillful, coupled with flexible actors' performances and panoramic stage space, time and space switched freely and smoothly, leaving no trace. "Red Rose and White Rose" is a classic work with a balanced combination of structure and fluency. On the stage, it shaped the psychological time and space dominated by Tong Zhenbao. The role is played by two people at the same time, regardless of reality and unreality. Past and present, reality and imagination are jumping in sentences, and the changes of time and space are dizzying.
This feature is more fluent and natural in Ming and his later works. For example, in Ming, there is no scenery on the stage except the background landscape curtain, and the lights illuminate the whole stage without hiding or separating. On the stage, the actors were in the palace for a while, turned back to the Prince's Mansion for a while, in the Francisco for a while, away from the capital for a while, and stood at the foot of the imperial city in three or two steps. At this time, it is the actor/role itself that pulls time and space. Drama moves with people, and time and space follow people.
2.2 "blank space"
The simplicity and abstraction of stage space and the freedom of time and space embody the virtual technique and freehand brushwork style of China's traditional operas, which is Tian's conscious application. When rehearsing "Field of Life and Death", she once proposed to "see through the integration of freehand brushwork concepts and add some basic skills of space-time expression of Chinese drama".
Tian Qinxin's stage fully stimulated the audience's imagination and deepened the audience's participation in the stage drama space by using the fictional techniques and freehand brushwork styles of China's traditional operas. People usually think that the non-realistic stage will make the audience break away from the assumption of the stage, and thus can not produce aesthetic feeling. Such a stage is unfamiliar and Brecht-style. But in fact, although the stage scenery and actors' performances in Tian's drama are virtual reality, the virtual form is not divorced from the reality of the drama art world, so the audience's association based on performance is oriented to the world inside the stage rather than outside the stage. This artistic technique will not produce the effect of alienation, but will fully mobilize the audience's association and imagination of the drama world, so that the audience can get a deeper aesthetic experience.
Combined with the above, we can imagine the theater space in Tian Qinxin: on the stage, the characters wake up the audience's subconscious emotions through the rhythm of music, action and posture; Under the stage, the audience fully mobilized their own conscious association and imagination, and mentally put themselves into the performance of the role-this is a theater space for in-depth communication between the role and the audience, forming a strong * * * sound and ritual fanaticism based on the drama art world. This is similar to the ritual drama and "blank space" studied by peter brooke after 1970s. It can be seen that the East and the West blend with each other on the road of exploring the development of the theater, which can be described as the same goal.
The analysis of later works is omitted here.
From the "ritual drama" which emphasizes emotion fanatically in the early stage to the "secular drama" which emphasizes rationality flexibly now, we seem to see the contrast between Nakata Han and Victoria: one is pure, naive and persistent, born for art; A kind of practical, simple and Chinese-style stability. Actually, it's exactly the same Director Tian Qinxin's artistic changes are closely related to her feelings and understanding of life.
In the early days, Tian Qinxin quoted pina bausch's famous words as her performance motivation, which was so important that it was used as the title of her drama collection-"I performed because I was sad". Tian Qinxin's works in this period are both "sentimental" and "serious". As mentioned above, Tian's early works convey vigorous vitality and warm emotions in the theater, and it is her own injuries that support this form. The media were keen to talk about Tian Qinxin's first performance when she returned to Beijing from Shenzhen, and chose the theme of mourning for the lovelorn wrist fracture, but did not say much about why she went to Shenzhen and why she returned to Beijing. Before he started acting, Tian Qinxin was even confused about his life and his heart. The mediocrity of work, the complexity of human feelings and the indifference of love mentioned by her are enough to make a person deeply realize the cruelty of reality. Tian Qinxin hates this chaotic world, which she always mentioned in her early job interviews. Fortunately, she also has a theater, which provides her with a stage to express her inner feelings and prove herself. We are also fortunate to see how much energy a person's real pain and desire has after the correct artistic expression. During this period, Tian's works were mostly tragedies. She expressed a serious life proposition, and the characters she created will never find a way out in the drama world. In the "Tea Zen" speech, Tian Qinxin said that at this stage, she wanted to express herself and prove herself as if she were competing with someone.
The difficulty of this society lies in the cruelty of reality everywhere. In the world, drama is not only an art, but also an industry. In 1950s, America realized that drama reform was no longer creative, and drama became a form of entertainment. In order to gain profits, conservative plays and gorgeous musicals occupy the Broadway stage, and the high ticket price has become an important factor to prevent plays from entering the mainstream art (Patterson, Hunter, gillespie, etc. , 20 13). Tian Qinxin, who was transferred to China National Theatre, is also facing the same problem. In fact, her orphan Zhao has a good reputation in academic circles, but the box office is not so good; At the same time, a funny drama called Funny Twist began to flourish in Beijing. "The commercial society is coming quietly," she said. "People are like dirt in this wave." In 2004, the rearrangement of her life and death scene was considered by some scholars to be less exciting than that of that year, because the state of the actors was inevitably influenced by the marginal nature of drama (Bai Ye, 2005). On the other hand, in addition to accepting the task of the National Language Institute, she also became famous at this time, and began to receive invitations from various scripts, which affected and even limited the topics she could express. On the one hand, she is disgusting and unsociable, on the other hand, she is shooting a commercial drama that she doesn't like. She said that she had entered a dilemma.
We suspect that Buddhism and a sense of responsibility for art started her life. If early Tian Qinxin often talked about injury, in recent years, she often talked about how to develop and inherit traditional culture other than Zen. In an interview with Ming, she said that drama should be entertaining. In the Ming Dynasty, there were too many words "music" and the word "teaching" could not be conveyed clearly. By Green Snake, she has been able to integrate Zen into the play and move the audience, and she is also happy about it. In several interviews, she talked about the hope of spreading and developing China's traditional culture through drama, which will not only affect domestic audiences, but also export China's classics (Four Generations under One roof in Taiwan Province Province and Green Snake overseas). Western art theory and theater technology can be used, and the concept of China's traditional drama should also be developed (Kunqu Opera Peach Blossom Fan 1699, Peking Opera Guan Sheng and other works that introduced drama concept in the later period). These are all related to the audience. Only good and interesting plays can attract contemporary audiences and complete her "transmission" and "teaching". This is a mean and compromise way to solve the dilemma between art and reality and reconcile the heart. The doctrine of the mean has always been rooted in her thoughts. No matter what period, Tian Qinxin always seeks dialogue and understanding in his works, and does not put himself above the "ancients", so he will not try to subvert and dispel them. She has a peaceful and kind heart. She understands the beauty of every creator and text and the reasons behind it, and expresses the beauty she feels in the most beautiful form.
In Cha Chan's speech, Tian Qinxin said that she didn't want to live in this era, but her body could only live in the present environment. We should be glad that the drama is still a Dojo that can make her feel happy, so that we can now see a mature commercial drama like Green Snake without losing its artistic connotation.
Now, it seems that what Tian Qinxin said to The Knockout actors is like writing to herself:
"He (Shou Chang) is a genius. He doesn't know how to fail or what to do. It's like standing outside naked and standing in society. Victoria always wants him to put on clothes and armor. He didn't. Therefore, he is constantly hurt. ..... you (Victoria) are willing to live a little confused. It is rare for people to be confused, and people's lives are stable. In China, you can go further, but Tian Han's short walk is a tragic ending. ..... I think the audience will like Wei Zhong. I think only the truth of the micro-crowd applies in China. " (Script 185)
I hope that Tian Qinxin's creative mood and art will be more proficient under the care of wisdom, and that the beast "the public" will do less harm to art, so that really good art can grow healthily.