Director Tian Qinxin found herself transported back to 17th
century Nanjing by the Qinhuai River, famed for its beautiful
scenery, charming courtesans and talented young scholars.
She did not need a time machine, however.
All she did, over the past 10 months, was to immerse herself in
a classical Kunqu Opera script and direct a cast of mostly teenage
performers to revive late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) scenes of the
Qinhuai River and unfold a tragic love story on stage.
"It is such a leisurely and romantic place that I wished I could
have had a love affair with somebody during my work here," Tian
said in a rehearsal break early this month in Nanjing.
"I am really fascinated by the lifestyle here and I have been
really addicted to Kunqu Opera," she added.
Tian was commissioned by the Jiangsu Provincial Kunqu Opera
Theatre to direct the theatre's brand new production "The Peach
Blossom Fan," one of the gems in the Kunqu Opera repertoire,
written by playwright and poet Kong Shangren (1648-1718) 300 years
ago.
The three-hour epic will premiere at Beijing's Poly Theatre on
March 17 to 19 and has been invited to the 2007 Zurich Arts
Festival.
"I immersed myself in the peaceful and prosperous scene along
the two sides of the Qinhuai River. I felt so good, escaping from
the hectic metro life while working with so many graceful Kunqu
Opera artists to revive an old play," she said.
The general touch of the production is leisurely and quiet, the
director said, but underneath it lies the sorrow the playwright
felt for the dying Ming Dynasty, which Tian tries to exemplify
through the separation and reunion of the two protagonists, the
courtesan Li Xiangjun and the scholar Hou Fangyu.
Playwright Kong, a distant descendant of Confucius, once was
sent to the Yangtze River valley to help with flood control. While
visiting Nanjing and Yangzhou, he learned much about the fall of
the Ming to the rising power of the Manchus from the north. He
began to think of writing a play about it.
Major challenges
After he returned to Beijing, he devoted some 10 years to
writing the play "The Peach Blossom Fan," based on the episodes of
the short-lived so-called Southern Ming regime in Nanjing.
The play premiered in 1669. Made up of 44 scenes, it lasted nine
nights.
Tian's main challenge was how to shorten the 44 scenes into six
acts and come up with new ideas, revitalizing and maintaining the
original spirit of the masterpiece but making it accessible,
palatable and enthralling for a modern audience.
That, Tian said, has not been easy, given that "The Peach
Blossom Fan" is originally a story, not a play.
"The most difficult task is to visualize a literary work," she
pointed out. "The work is at its best when it is read and not
performed," she said.
Tian is not the first to try a modern version of the classical
play.
Chinese dramatists Ouyang Yuqian (1889-1962) adapted the
legendary story into a play in late 1930s while director Sun Jing
made it into a movie in 1963.
However, Tian revealed that she did not want to follow in the
footsteps of Ouyang and Sun, and she believes her version will be
much more loyal to Kong's original version.
"Ouyang's version is more concerned with loyalty to the Ming
Dynasty, a kind of patriotism, as he created the drama during the
War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45)," she
explained, "while Sun's movie highlights the love between Li and
Hou.
"I am more interested in the 'legend'," She said.
After carefully studying the scripts, she said she found many
things in the story that will appeal to modern audiences.
For instance, there were political maneuverings. One minute Hou
and Li are seeing an opera, the next court men break in and take
them to jail.
There were sharp contrasts: The courtesans and court officials
are still flirting without any worry or fear even when the Manchu
army is approaching Nanjing. And a loyal general named Shi Kefa
sheds tears and blood when he fails to defeat the Manchu army.
Tian also points out that Kong wrote a surprising and
interesting ending to his script, but Ouyang and Sun worked out
their own different versions. Li and Hou reunited after the
Southern Ming regime collapsed, but they did not live a happy life
together. Instead, Li entered a nunnery while Hou became a monk.
The peach blossom fan was collected by an old Taoist priest.
Using intuition, Tian created some 30 roles of different jobs to
revive the prosperous scene of the Qinhuai River, and produced a
magnificent fighting scene featuring more than a dozen Ming and
Manchu soldiers.
"These scenes are seldom seen in today's Kunqu Opera play which
usually has an actor and an actress singing slowly on stage. But
according to my research, there were such grand scenes in history,"
she said.
The set design by Xiao Lihe is simple, mixing modern art with
tradition, yet still fully functional.
A small "stage" stands at the centre of the real stage against
the backdrop of an old scroll featuring scenes of the Qinhuai
River.
The painting is transparent, allowing the audience to see the
band behind the backdrop.
Stage set
The whole set looks like a courtyard of a museum. The
surrounding backdrop of the painting is structured like the winding
corridor of the courtyard. Performers not acting the scene sit or
stand on the corridor just like they are audience watching the
performance on a small stage.
"Opera stages, museums and Chinese courtyards jointly inspired
me for the setting," said Xiao, who studied theatre in New York
with the distinguished lighting designer Jennifer Tipton.
"First, the playwright Kong used a narrator to tell the story
and director Tian follows this approach and has a narrator on stage
and some performers pose as viewers, so I thought to build a small
stage," Xiao explained.
Kunqu is an old art like something restored in a museum. And the
Chinese courtyard is a typical symbol of Chinese culture, she
said.
The floor of the main stage has a shining mirror surface. With
special lighting effects, the floor looks like a gently moving
river. It is for the scenes happening over the Qinhuai River.
Whatever their efforts, they are recreating scenes and events
three centuries ago.
"Kunqu has developed for more than 600 years. To be honest, it
is impossible for us to make a play 100 per cent in the style of
hundreds of years ago," Tian said. "What we can do today is to
learn from old artists and from their documents, while giving play
to our own interpretations and modern concerns."
Asked whether today's audience could endure a three-hour long
play, she said she has no qualms if viewers doze off during the
show.
"People fall asleep watching Wagner's 'Ring Cycle,' so, if you
want to sleep, that's OK," Tian said.
(China Daily March 14, 2006)
