Author: Shen Jiequn
Time is the clay we use for sculpture. This clay is relative, and your play makes the audience think that three minutes can be like three hours. If the audience can blend in, time does not exist and the clay disappears.
On the outer wall of Shanghai’s “Shang Theater”, Lai Shengchuan wrote: “The absolute charm of the theater lies in its liveness. Its romance lies in that it is the epitome of the shortness and impermanence of life.”
Due to the impact of the epidemic, when the 8th Wuzhen Theatre Festival opened this year, 731 days have passed since the previous one. Lai Shengchuan said: “We haven’t seen each other for more than 700 days, but our hearts have been in Wuzhen. When we don’t have it, we feel that we need it more.”
Lai Shengchuan
The closing drama of this year’s theater festival is Lai Shengchuan’s “It Was Once”. The play was performed by Hao Lei, Zhang Jie and the actors of the theater. It took more than 6 hours to lead the audience from the mountains of Yunnan, across the Pacific Ocean to Manhattan, then to India to find the “pure land”, and finally return to New York to complete a long journey. .
With super-long dramas and circular stages, many people would think, “Once Once” is the sister chapter of “Dream Like a Dream”? In an interview with reporters, Lai Shengchuan agreed with the statement of “sisters”, but also pointed out that there may be some inevitable comparisons in the “appearance” of the two dramas, but the content is independent of each other.
A question that Lai Shengchuan often thinks about is: For drama creators, what exactly is time?
Lai Shengchuan said that he used to watch plays adapted from Dickens’ novels by the Royal Shakespeare Company in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. “Six hours and two nights, let’s see if I can make it. After two days of watching, I am very happy and comfortable. The audience feels like they have completed one thing together, and they have a feeling of common progress, which is very enjoyable.”
When creating “Dream Like a Dream”, Lai Shengchuan sighed that when the initial inspiration came, he wrote a 29-page outline, which was “unstoppable”. “I was shocked myself, and then I was very happy because I did it in school without any commercial restrictions and pressure.” At that time, the only restriction other people placed on him was that as long as the audience watched the movie at night, he could still take public transportation. Just go home.
Lai Shengchuan confessed that he did not deliberately create a very long play, but because the idea of ”Dream Like a Dream” and “Once Once” was huge.
“I always feel that as a creator, time is the clay we use to sculpt. This clay is relative. When your play makes the audience feel that for a long time, 3 minutes can be like 3 hours. If the audience can blend in, time will not Exist, the clay disappeared.” Lai Shengchuan said.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: Some viewers feel that “It Was Once” is like a sister chapter of “Dream Like A Dream”. What are the innovations of “It Was Once”?
Lai Shengchuan: It’s easy for the audience to associate “Once Upon a Time” and “A Dream Like A Dream” together, because the two dramas have two things in common. The first point is that there is a lotus pond in the auditorium. The audience sits in the middle, and the play “winds” around. This is a method pioneered by “Dream Like a Dream”; the second point is that “It Was Once” is very long. In addition, the way the two plays start is very similar, so it makes people think that they are sisters. In my mind, it should be regarded as a sister work, but no characters in the two works are connected.
Many people who have watched “Once Upon a Time” told me that they felt that some of the issues and ways of thinking it discussed were bigger than those of “A Dream Like A Dream”. Some people say that watching “Dream Like a Dream” is as passionate as watching “King Lear”, while watching “It Was Once” is as quiet as watching “The Tempest”. I write different scripts at different ages, and of course I have different moods.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: What impact will the epidemic have on the ecology of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival and the drama itself?
Lai Shengchuan: I think everyone will cherish the drama performed live in the theater. Whether it is because of the epidemic or because the Internet is becoming more and more developed, everyone is looking at their mobile phones. As you enter your own small world more and more, the more you will feel how important it is to contact people. Contact with real people in large public places, and seeing real people telling our real people’s stories, this experience is very precious. During this period of time, I feel that we have not changed much, and it is right to tell the story of this era. The audience will naturally flood into the theater, this will not change.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: What do you think of film and television stars entering the theater to perform dramatic works?
Lai Shengchuan: These are all processes. What we care about is the soundness of this ecology. For me, if a star comes to perform my work, the audience will see him as incompetent and whether he can afford that role. This is our standard. If he can’t, then why would we ask him to act?
Like Ni Ni in “Yaoyaodongba”, everyone watched this drama and they had forgotten that she was a star. The audience was watching a stage actor in a stage play, what a powerful actor! Our standards are very clear and we will not deliberately manipulate this market.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: You participated in the reality show “Drama New Life”, you moved the drama online, and this time the drama festival returned to offline performances. What is it like?
Lai Shengchuan: The works of “A New Life in Drama” are too peculiar and incredible. “Drama New Life” is different from general variety shows. It does not have a sense of competition that “kills” each other. Instead, it encourages everyone to cooperate, and the result is such a wonderful work. Although we did not hold a drama festival for two years, I showed up in Wuzhen when we recorded the show and felt that the connection with Wuzhen was still there. I told Huang Lei that these scenes in the show must be invited to the festival. Although the audience has watched these works on the video platform, the shocking power is completely different when viewed on the spot.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: This year, talk show actors came to Wuzhen Drama Festival to perform repertoire. Is this a kind of cross-border performance?
Lai Shengchuan: I don’t think this can be considered as a cross-border, because the package capacity of drama is very large. We look at drama from the artistic level. If it is a pure entertainment commercial performance, we will not accept it. The step we took this year was to start doing dance theater, which was not available before. In the past, our theater festival did not have opera or dance, but now we slowly start to have it. We “expand cautiously” every year, but dare not expand too much.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily: Your works reflect the thinking about the times and society. Can these works answer the questions you raised in your mind?
Lai Shengchuan: For decades, I have been curious about making various new attempts, such as the “Lotus Pond” auditorium in “Dream Like A Dream” and “It Was Like It Was”. Everyone found it fresh. I hope to return to some of the most basic things, and that is the sense of ritual in theater. Why do humans have drama? This is related to human rituals and “healing”.
The whole environment of “Dream Like a Dream” and “Once Once” is very beautiful and diverse, but every scene is an actor telling a story to the audience, it’s that simple. The charm and magic of the theater are so simple, the most important element is the audience, the audience’s imagination. You can drive the audience to think and feel something that he (she) has not felt before. This is the essence of theater. (Shen Jiequn)
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责编：刘冰雅 ]
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