(East thing asks · character) Lantian Ye: The last curtain caller of the golden generation
China News Agency, Beijing, June 25th, title: Lantianye: The last curtain caller of the golden generation
“China News Weekly” reporter Ni Wei
On the afternoon of June 8, when Lan Lanye died in his sleep, the Beijing People’s Art Theater was busy. Four days later will be the big day of the 70th anniversary of Renyi. The whole hospital is busy preparing for the commemorative performance and live broadcast every night. A reporter met Pu Cunxin in the rehearsal hall. He seemed to be prepared for this day. He smiled and said, “It’s very successful. His wonderful life is like a play. It’s time for the curtain call.” ill, refused treatment. In a TV interview at the beginning of the year, Lan Lanye revealed that he had pancreatic cancer.
On November 4, 2010, Lan Lanye was painting in the studio.Photo by Guo Haipeng issued by China News Agency
The highlight of Renyi’s 70th anniversary is the collective performance of the second generation of the “Tea House” team on the day of the anniversary, and it was broadcast live for the first time. Liang Guanhua plays the treasurer Wang, Pu Cunxin plays Chang Siye, and Yang Lixin plays Qin Zhongyi. In 1958, “Tea House” premiered, Qin Zhongyi was performed by Lan Lanye, when he was in his early 30s. The people on the same stage include Yu Zhi, Zheng Rong, Ying Ruocheng, Huang Zongluo, etc., screenwriter Lao She, director Jiao Juyin and Xia Chun, who are the founding generation of Renyi and also the golden generation.
In 1958, Lan Lanye (second from right) played Qin Zhongyi in “Tea House”.Photo courtesy of Beijing Renyi issued by China News Service
In that generation, Lan Lanye was the last to leave the stage. In 2020, he also took the stage and participated in “Home”; in 2021, he directed “Wu Wang Jin Ge Yue Wang Jian” for the third time.
He once said: “I am quite satisfied with this life sometimes, even a little proud, but it is more about twists and turns and ups and downs. I think it is life that taught me how to create on stage.” As long as he still Standing on the stage is a coordinate of Chinese drama. Now, the old coordinates are retiring.
Remnants of the Golden Generation
“He has a kind of decency in his bones.” Wang Keran, artistic director of Yanghua Theatre, said that Lan Lanye’s decency comes from firm values in his heart. If you respect him, he will be very happy and treat you as his own. If you don’t respect him, he will sometimes hit a snag, “He has a lot of edges and corners.”
Lantianye is the relic of the golden generation of Beijing arts and crafts. That generation was active from the founding of New China until the early 1990s, shaping the theatrical style of Beijing Renyi. What Jiao Juyin called the “Chinese School” was also established in their performances.
Since the establishment of Beijing Renyi Institute in 1952, Lan Lanye has been merged into Renyi with the Central Academy of Drama Theatre Troupe. He has acted in more than 70 dramas, and his classic roles include Zeng Wenqing in “Peking Man”, Qin Zhongyi in “Tea House”, Dong Si in “Cai Wenji”, and Hu Hanye Shanyu in “Wang Zhaojun”. After being transferred to the director’s establishment, he has directed more than ten Chinese and foreign dramas.
In October 2017, “The Lady Returning Home” directed by Lan Lanye was staged at the Capital Theater, with Chen Xiaoyi and Pu Cunxin leading the performance.Photo by China News Agency reporter Tomita
In 1987, Lan Lanye retired on time at the age of sixty to concentrate on painting and calligraphy. At the invitation of others, occasionally act in TV dramas. In those years, his unintentional works in “Fengshen Bang” and “Desire” won him nationwide recognition, and then completely left the public eye.
No one may have imagined that Lan Lanye would later act until he was in his 90s and lived to be 95 years old. When he was young, he was a well-known “sick seedling”, and the root of his illness was brought down during the “Great Leap Forward”. In addition to acting, he has to participate in steel smelting and ore smashing, and his body can’t bear it. Whoever wanted to leave the drama, but his body miraculously improved, his blood pressure returned to normal, and he became the toughest person in the old generation.
On April 2, 2018, Lan Lanye attended the launching ceremony of the “Beijing Campus Drama Education Alliance”.Photo by China News Agency reporter Tomita
In 2011, at the invitation of Renyi leaders, the 84-year-old returned to the stage after a 19-year absence and starred in the drama “Home”.
Originally, I thought that I had been unfamiliar with acting for too long, but after one round of performances, Lan Lanye felt that he had grown better than before. What grows is life experience, and the understanding of life, society and people has changed. He said that it is not about how good his acting ability and skills are, but he feels that drama is his life, and it is life that teaches him how to create.
Life is like a play revival “Wu Wang” takes history as a mirror
The second year after starring in “Home” was the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Beijing Renyi Academy. The theater commemorated the year of Jiazi with a new play “Jiazi Garden”, and moved Lan Lanye out of the mountain.
This is a story that happened in a nursing home. The protagonist played by Lan Lanye in the play talks about the past, “In 1945, this was the liaison station of the CCP’s underground party.” At that moment, it seemed that Lan Lanye, who was also in his twilight years, was reminiscing about his life: in 1945, he was a Peking underground party, and his home was an underground party stronghold, with a radio station and an antenna. He threw himself into drama to carry out revolutionary activities, which was to complete the work assigned by his superiors. The name Lantianye is also a pseudonym for underground work. His original name was Wang Runsen, and he was born in Raoyang County, Hebei Province in 1927.
The memory in the play came to 1968, “This place was looted… Grandpa died tragically under this big tree”. Lan Lanye has seen and experienced such a scene. In 1966, he became the first person to be impacted by Beijing Renyi. Personnel turmoil seems like a lifetime, and his acting methods and mood are changing. When rerunning “Tea House” in 1979, Lan Lanye had a deep understanding. “I personally witnessed some people being tortured and imprisoned… Not only physical damage, but also a blow and insult to the mind and personality,” he once recalled, “not only knowing and understanding, but also having experience.”
The trauma caused by the political movement may make Lantian cherish the trust in people.
The “Wu Wang Jin Ge Yue Wang Sword” directed in the 1980s was written by Lan Lanye looking for writer Bai Hua. At that time, a film written by Bai Hua was criticized, and Beijing Renyi therefore shelved the play. A year later, Lantian Ye restarted the play, and after the performance in Beijing, the response was enthusiastic, and several central leaders gave high praise, so they started a national tour.
After more than 70 performances, Bai Hua called and asked if the play was still being performed. Some people said that Beijing was performing a Bai Hua play, which was alluding to some phenomenon. Lan Lanye didn’t care, but only later learned that Bai Hua had been criticized for more than a year because of this play.
Thirty-one years later, in 2014, Beijing Renyi asked Lan Lanye to choose one of the 14 plays he had directed for a revival. He chose “Wu Wang Jin Ge Yue Wang Jian” without any hesitation. It is neither his most influential work, nor his most famous play. The reason for this is “for Bai Hua’s talented script, but encountered an abnormal public opinion environment at that time.”
He called Bai Hua who was in Shanghai, and Bai Hua was surprised. This drama retells the allusion of “paying for your money and trying your best”. Goujian, the king of Yue, endured humiliation and burdened, and finally completed the great cause of restoring the country, but his selfish desires were inflated, repeating the tragedy of King Wu. It is a story that learns from history. “The big public opinion environment is different. These dramas are good dramas and have practical significance. This is the principle of our drama.” Lan Lanye showed a stubborn side.
At the beginning of 2021, 94-year-old Lan Lanye walked into the art rehearsal hall on crutches and rehearsed “Wu Wang Jin Ge Yue Wang Sword” again. He thought of his old friend Bai Hua, who passed away two years ago, with a sad expression on his face, choked and said that Bai Hua wrote this play with a strong sense of family and country. But at that time, they encountered the opposite misunderstanding.
The cross-strait drama world interprets “The Power of Confession”
When he was in his 80s, Lan Lanye occasionally went to the small theater to watch new plays by young people. Once, at the Penghao Theater, he told the playwright Wan Fang that he wanted her to write a play about two old people. He originally wanted to cooperate with his old friend Jiao Huang in Shanghai, but by chance, the play was contracted to be produced by Yanghua Drama, directed by Lai Shengchuan, and the collaborator became Li Liqun.
The play is called “Winter Journey”, and the theme is profound. The two main characters, Chen Qixiang (played by Li Liqun) and Lao Jin (played by Lan Lanye), were classmates and best friends when they were young. Later, during the “Cultural Revolution” period, Chen Qixiang betrayed Lao Jin under pressure, which resulted in him being wrongfully imprisoned, Home is broken. In his twilight years, Chen Qixiang found Lao Jin, whom he had not seen for many years, and wanted to ask for his forgiveness.
Wan Fang recalled that Lan Lanye did not make any requirements for the script. When she conceived the content, she thought of her father Cao Yu and the experience of that generation. She was most familiar with the ten years of the “Cultural Revolution”. She used the most cruel era to write manuscript papers and do spiritual biographies for her parents. “Repentance requires strength, but forgiveness requires greater strength.”
Lan Lanye liked this script and was very moved when he first read it. “What an actor is most afraid of is encountering a scene that makes his heart move. What really touched me in this script was not only the experiences in the play, but also a kind of release.” He said.
“Winter Journey” toured fifty or sixty times, and even went to theaters in Taiwan, creating a sensation wherever it went. This play is extremely exhausting. In 92 minutes, 88-year-old Lan Lanye and 63-year-old Li Liqun were on stage every second, even for young actors, it was a physical test. In the afternoon before each performance, Lan Lanye had to reword the words with Li Liqun. Before the show, the two held hands and cheered each other backstage.
On July 15, 2016, during the performance of “Winter Journey” in Shanghai, Lan Lanye (back center) took a group photo with Qin Yi (back right), Bai Hua (front), and Wan Fang.Photo courtesy of China News Service Wanfang
Through the stories written by Wan Fang, Lan Lanye revealed his twilight state of mind. He said that the themes of repentance, forgiveness and recollection are also the life issues he is thinking about. Although he is almost 90 years old, many things in life cannot be let go. It is the hurt between people, and the forgiveness and understanding after that.
In “Winter Journey”, Lao Jin and Lao Chen have a knee-jerk conversation, ironing the knot that has been entangled for half a lifetime. Not just letting go of the grievances, but crossing the desperate situation and entering another realm of life.
At the end, Lao Jin leaned on a cane and faced the lights on the side of the stage, “Goodbye, goodbye”, he left his old friends behind and his past events behind him. Lan Lanye also walked down, “Goodbye, goodbye”. (Finish)
Article source: China News Service
Author: Ni Wei | Editor in charge: Yu Ying