How far is the road to success in the adaptation of novels
2021-08-08 09:58:56Source: Guangming Daily
How far is the road to success in the adaptation of a novel to a drama
Since the beginning of drama, novels, myths, long poems, etc., have always been inexhaustible and inexhaustible precious resources. As literary works, they generally have the characteristics of full story frame, free time and space conversion, full description of details, concentrated relationship between characters, meticulous description of scenes, and distinctive artistic images. Therefore, it has been adapted, played, and turned into a work of stage art. In a real drama situation, real people are shown to real people. This tradition has a long history. Ancient Greek tragedies are mostly based on “Homer’s Epic” and myths and legends, and many successful works performed on the stage of Chinese theater today are also adapted from classic literature.
1. Great works of drama adapted from literature on the current stage emerge one after another
In recent years, dramas adapted from novels have achieved great social and economic benefits. For example, Meng Bing’s adaptation of Chen Zhongshi’s novel “Bai Lu Yuan” and Lu Yao’s novel “The Ordinary World” of the same name were developed by the people of Shaanxi. Art theater performances have been performed all over the country for a long time, and a ticket is hard to find; among them, “White Deer Plain” has created a performance with a box office of more than 1.3 million yuan. Tian Qinxin’s drama of the same name adapted from Xiao Hong’s novel “Life and Death Field”, Lao She’s novel “Four Generations Under One Roof”, and Li Ao’s novel “Beijing Fayuan Temple”, performed by the National Theatre of China, has not only made artistic innovations and breakthroughs , And the smart and open narrative structure, vivid character images, and modern stage style created by her also bring people a refreshing aesthetic experience.
Zhao Yaomin’s drama of the same name based on Wang Anyi’s novel “Eternal Sorrow”, Yu Rongjun based on Bi Feiyu’s novel “Tuina”, and Wen Fangyi’s adaptation of Jin Yucheng’s novel “Flowers” of the same name, will be performed by the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center. The fate of the characters in the changing times is expressed swayingly, which makes people sigh with emotion. Fang Xu adapted the plays of the same name based on Lao She’s novels “My Life”, “Two Horses”, and “Niu Tianci”. These plays were performed by his theater studio. These plays have participated in the Lao She Theater Festival held in Beijing many times. They are quite Beijing-styled. . The Polish director Christian Lupa, produced by Beijing Drive Culture Media Co., Ltd., adapted the play “Maybe the Alcoholic” based on Shi Tiesheng’s novel “Assumptions about a drama with a movie as a stage background”, and integrated Lu Xun’s novels. The play “The Diary of a Madman” provides a new interpretation and interpretation of China’s history and reality through a contemporary open cultural perspective. Yu Rongjun’s drama “Jane Eyre” based on Charlotte Bronte’s novel and the drama “Count of Monte Cristo” based on Dumas’s novel is full of reflections on human nature and questions about the existence of life. People are inspired by ideas and cultivated by art.
The trend of adapting novels to dramas is still gaining momentum, which shows that this is an effective method of creation. With the help of literature, the dissemination of drama can be boosted; the reverse is also true. Mou Sen’s drama of the same name adapted from Liu Zhenyun’s novel “A Sentence Is Worth Ten Thousand Sentences”, Mao Jianfeng’s drama of the same name adapted from Yan Zhen’s novel “Canglang Water”, Feng Li’s drama of the same name adapted from Cao Wenxuan’s novel “Goat Doesn’t Eat Heaven” Grass, and Ouyang Yibing’s drama “Wild Bee Flying” adapted from Huang Beijia’s novel…all occupy an important artistic position in the contemporary drama corridor.
2. With the help of the matrix of literary works, a new stage style can be structured with a multiplier effect
Since the appearance of Chinese drama, although it is only a hundred years of history, it has always been accompanied by a shortage of scripts. In the 1910s, not only did not establish a real drama style, but the lack of literary quality was also a bottleneck hindering the development of drama. The Chinese drama at the beginning of its founding began with the adaptation of foreign dramas and novels such as “La Traviata”, “Black Slaves Calling the Sky” and “It’s Better to Go Home”. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, China was too big to have a quiet desk, and the script creation became more difficult. Mr. Cao Yu was often asked for scripts by various theater troupes. He was so anxious that he said, “I was thinking, I was thinking.” He wrote a script “Thinking”. Mr. Cao Yu often said that script writing is not easy, “it is hard work.” When the fountain of inspiration is cold and stagnant, with the help of the matrix of literary works, mobilize the imagination of art, develop new artistic interest, and integrate new plots. Logic and structure to create a new stage style will undoubtedly have the effect of getting twice the result with half the effort.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Tian Han adapted Chinese and foreign novels “The True Story of Ah Q”, “Carmen” and “Resurrection” into a drama. Zhang Ailing once adapted her novel “Love in the Fallen City” into a drama, Cao Yu and Wu Tianjiang Ba Jin’s novel ” “Home” was adapted into a drama, and Zhao Qingge took the material from “A Dream of Red Mansions” and created dramas such as “Lengyue Poetry Soul”, “Blood Sword Mandarin Duck”, “Flowing Water Flying Flowers”, and “Returning Birds from the Zen Forest”. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the creative trend of novel adaptations of dramas continued, with “Camel Xiangzi”, “Take the Tiger Mountain Outbreak”, “Red Flag Spectrum”, “Red Rock” and so on.
Since the 1990s, the trend of the connection between novels and drama has become more and more obvious. Many playwrights have returned to the literary field, absorbing excellent literary resources, using novels that have achieved good social influence as a blueprint, incorporating their own creative inspiration and life experience, and then creating a script suitable for stage performance.
The similarity between novels and dramas is also obvious. They are both for expressing human’s understanding and reflection of the objective and subjective worlds. They are all products of human spirit perfusion; they all use language as a carrier, and they have certain connotations, meanings and emotions. The narrative of tension is a meaningful form; among them, “human” is the core of its performance, human existence, human soul, human value, human limitations, human confusion, human destiny, etc., are often its manifestations Life, love and death are the three main motifs on which it relies, and truth, goodness, and beauty are the eternal values of his artistic pursuit. The creators have grasped these common points, and the adaptation is what Mr. Cao Yu called “doubling the effort with half the effort”.
3. A successful adaptation should give the characters the texture and moving effect of life in the novel
Successful drama adaptations are not only the refinement, sublimation and even appreciation of literary value, but also give the characters of the novel a sense of life and moving effects; unsuccessful adaptations are often criticized as losing the spirit and flavor of the original work, and even criticized as Subverting, falsifying, distorting, and deconstructing the value and meaning of the novel.
As we all know, Lu Xun’s novels and Ba Jin’s novels have been adapted into stage plays, but the adaptations of many people have disappeared invisible. However, Cao Yu’s adaptation of the play of the same name based on Ba Jin’s novel “Home” was called by Mr. Xia Yan as “extraordinary”. “The adaptation of style” has become a successful example of drama adaptation.
In November 1940, his friend Ba Jin came to Jiang’an to visit Cao Yu. During the years of war, the two comforted each other and talked happily. Ba Jin brought with him Wu Tian’s play “Home”, which was adapted from his novel of the same name. Although the performance was good, Ba Jin always felt that this adaptation still lacks shortcomings. After reading it, Cao Yu thought that the adaptation was “too faithful” to the original, so that it lacked creative creativity and dramatic features. And “Home”, adapted by Cao Yu, has become an excellent play often performed by Chang Xin in the history of Chinese drama.
In the process of adaptation, Cao Yu rediscovered and reinterpreted the ideological theme of the original novel, and adjusted and condensed the plot of the novel according to the structural characteristics of the drama. In the adaptation, Cao Yu not only strengthened the restriction of the relationship between the characters, the action of the drama, and the compactness of the plot, but also the lyricism of the drama and the rich poeticity and symbolism.
In recent years, there have been two different ways of adapting classic novels to dramas: one is the adaptation that is faithful to the original, and strives to show the original flavor of the novel, truly show its plot framework, and concisely express its original connotation. The second is to make choices for my needs, or even “seeking similarities”: boldly imagine, reinterpret, express with new drama, and give people a new artistic feeling. It is difficult to simply judge right or wrong with these two methods. It is necessary to take specific works as examples and make artistic judgments in accordance with the laws of art.
In 1997, Tian Qinxin’s play “Life and Death Field” showed the structure of prose culture and multiple shows. The story itself is composed of a series of life scenes of characters. The director adopts a “montage” technique, which has flexible time and space changes and vivid characters. Every scene revolves around life and death.
At the end of 2010, “Four Generations Under One Roof” directed by Tian Qinxin was staged. It reflects the chaos and misery of civilian life during the Japanese occupation of Beiping. During the performance, a group of star actors Lei Kesheng, Sun Honglei, Huang Lei, Xin Baiqing, Qin Hailu, Zhu Yuanyuan, etc. appeared collectively, which has a strong theater appeal.
The adaptor should first do enough homework to understand the connotation of the novel in depth, instead of superficial, simple, general combing and simplistic tailoring. Otherwise, the audience will have a sense of gap in psychological expectations. It is often said that there are a thousand Hamlet in the hearts of a thousand viewers, but no one will confuse Hamlet with the gravedigger in this play. When adapting a novel to a drama, we should try our best to be broad-minded, including English and Chinese, and retain the spiritual connotation and essence of the original. This is a question related to the success of the adaptation. In particular, some famous works that have been criticized in the history of literature and even in the history of culture can easily “reverse” the article, or ignore the basic narrative and blindly “joy” and deconstruct, and they are likely to fall into a situation of self-seeking trouble. Since the object of adaptation is a well-known novel that is recognized, it itself has a certain recognized value and embodies the universally recognized aesthetic meaning in the national aesthetic psychology. This meaning is worthy of respect and cherishment, and it should be carried forward in the adaptation.
In addition, the following issues should be paid attention to when adapting novels to dramas: First, respect the rights and interests of the authors of classic novels. The second is that the adaptor must have his own clear basic intention and starting point, and pay attention to accurately grasp the characteristics of the subject matter and genre. The third is to promote one’s own strengths, avoid one’s shortcomings, and give play to the adaptor’s own advantages and the advantages of artistic innovation. The fourth is to make a reasonable artistic choice of the original novel, instead of making “compressed biscuit” adaptations, but making “exhaust the yellow sand to get gold” type of processing, transformation, refinement, and sublimation, incorporating one’s own artistic inspiration and superior creativity , Creating an image jungle and a source of charm of “blue is better than blue”.
(Author: Song Baozhen, director and researcher of the Drama Research Institute of China Academy of Art)
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