Lasting 8 years and handwriting 1.15 million words, Liang Xiaosheng’s novel “The World” takes the life trajectories of the three brothers and sisters of the Zhou family as clues, showing the development of Chinese society in the past 50 years from the 1970s to the 2010s. Changes, and won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award with the highest votes.
At the beginning of 2022, after the TV series of the same name of “The World” was broadcast, it caused heated discussions. The ratings hit a new high for CCTV in the past 8 years. The topic discussion volume on Weibo exceeded 13.8 billion, attracting nearly 500 million viewers of different ages and circles. Explosive film and television works starting in 2022.
Today, the audience can not only watch Zhou Bingkun’s life trajectory from the screen, but also experience the development and changes of China in the past 50 years reflected from the “light character film” in front of the stage. On March 28, “The World” held a media meeting for the 2022 drama tour in Beijing, announcing that this year’s new round of national tour will officially kick off on April 15.
It is very difficult to adapt such a huge literary work into a drama. However, the “Daily Economic News” reporter noticed that in recent years, many novels have been successfully adapted into dramas, such as “White Deer Plain”, “Ordinary World“, “Four Generations Together”, and even the adaptation of popular novels is also entering the boom. In the drama world, the well-known “Notes of Tomb Raiders”, “Ghost Blowing the Lantern” and “33 Days of Broken Love”, which are well known to readers, have achieved good responses.
Poster of the drama “The World“
Image source: drama “the world》 Weibo
The drama “The World” opens its second round of tour
Before the broadcast of the TV series, directed by Yang Jiayin and starring Qiao Zhenyu, Guo Jiaming, Du Ruoxi, and Zhao Qin, the drama version of “The World” has already launched its first tour in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jiangsu and other places in 2021.
As a literary masterpiece with a story background spanning 50 years, it is not easy to condense “The World” into the stage. Although the first-round tour drama “The World” has many fly in the ointment, it is still recognized by most audiences, with a Douban score of 7.5, and more than 70% of the audience rated it with 4 stars or above.
The reporter of “Daily Economic News” learned at the meeting that the second round of the national tour of the upcoming drama “The World” is still directed by Yang Jiayin, winner of the National Drama Culture Gold Award and Beijing People’s Art Theater. After drawing on the opinions of all parties in the first round of tour, the drama “The World” will be comprehensively upgraded in terms of script, stage art, actors and so on. Among them, the most eye-catching is undoubtedly the powerful team composed of actors from Beijing People’s Art Theater (hereinafter referred to as Beijing Renyi).
Group photo of the main creative team and actors of the drama “The World“
Image source: Photo courtesy of the producer
Beijing Renyi is a relatively well-known professional theater with a solid foundation of realism. Many plays such as “Longxugou”, “Tea House” and “Thunderstorm” have become classics. Therefore, the drama “The World” starring Beijing Renyi actors is also highly anticipated.
In the second round of touring drama “The World“, Miao Chi, who plays Tang Xiangyang, one of the “Six Little Gentlemen” in the TV series “The World“, will play Zhou Bingkun. Regarding the leap from TV drama to drama, Miao Chi admitted that he has similarities with Zhou Bingkun, but there are also differences. He hopes to combine his own characteristics on the basis of fitting the characters and show a different Zhou Bingkun.
In addition, the drama version of Zheng Juan is played by Beijing Renyi actor Li Xiaomeng, who has appeared in film and television dramas such as “Ordinary World” and “Antique” and other drama works, and is also from Beijing Renyi and participated in the classic drama “Tea House” “National first-class actors Sun Xing and Li Zhen will play Zhou’s father and Zhou’s mother in the 2022 tour.
On April 15, the first stop of the second round of the play “The World” will be held at the Shunyi Grand Theater in Beijing, and will be performed at the National Grand Theater from June 22 to June 24. Later, he plans to go to dozens of cities such as Suzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xiamen, Quanzhou, etc. for continuous tour.
Expanding the income boundary, famous novels and popular novels are now being adapted into dramas
Liang Xiaosheng, the original author of “The World“, once said that the novel’s 1.15 million words were all written by hand, which took 8 years.
Putting a novel with millions of words on the stage is a crazy thing in itself. How to keep the essence and present it in the extremely limited three hours is the biggest problem for the team.
Yang Jiayin bluntly stated that, as a literary work, “The World” has a wide range of radiation. However, the time of the drama is relatively fixed, and it is very difficult to adapt the “Human World” of this size to expand the infinite space within a limited time.
For example, in the initial stage, the drama team discussed with the original screenwriter for many rounds about which main lines should be retained and how the sub-line characters should be involved in the main line characters. “Fictions can be eloquent and straightforward, but drama works need to be simple, refined or even ‘rude’, and the stories and characters must be quickly put in front of the audience. The characters in the sub-plots should be simplified again, and the interweaving between characters should be made. more diverse.”
Sun Xing also admitted that the original novel is a history book, but the charm of the drama is that the audience can directly feel the characters in the theater, as if Zhou’s father is in front of the audience. After the tour in 2021, the drama team of “The World” will accumulate experience and improve the story while performing.
The first tour of the drama “The World“
Image source: Weibo of the drama “The World“
Wu Fengwei, chief producer of the drama version of “The World“, said: “The drama “The World” is full of life and power. It is the eighth work in the history of the Mao Dun Literature Award since 1977 that has been put on the drama stage. Thanks to all those who participated in the creation, I hope that in the post-epidemic era, this work can bring some positive energy to everyone.”
In recent years, many novels have been successfully adapted into plays, and have achieved good reputation and economic benefits. For example, Meng Bing’s plays of the same name based on Chen Zhongshi’s novel “White Deer Plain” and Lu Yao’s novel “Ordinary World” were performed by the Shaanxi People’s Art Theater and received rave reviews. The National Theatre of China has also performed a number of plays adapted from novels, such as Xiao Hong’s “The Field of Life and Death”, Lao She’s “Four Generations Together”, Li Ao’s “Beijing Fayuan Temple” and other famous plays.
The drama industry has also set off a wave of adaptations of popular works and popular novels. In recent years, well-known dramas such as “Notes on Tomb Raiders”, “Ghost Blowing the Lamp” and “33 Days of Broken Love” have appeared on the drama stage one after another. As Song Baozhen, director of the Drama Research Institute of the China National Academy of Arts, said, drama and literature have always been interdependent and complementary.
Source of cover image: Weibo of the drama “The World“
