介绍:
Themed "metamorphoses", the second installment of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival opened with one of China's most iconic plays, Tian Qinxin's Green Snake.
At last year's Wuzhen Theatre Festival, director Tian Qinxin brought her play The Yellow Storm to this canal town as the closing performance, while this year her play was invited to open the festival. Director Tian shares her view on Wuzhen Theatre Festival.
"I think Wuzhen Theatre Festival is an open festival, which started from a small ancient town. It represents a cultural opening. It's also a kind of 'poverty reduction' for culture."
Adapted from Lilian Lee's novel, the play Green Snake is based on a well-known folklore The Legend of the White Snake, which depicts love between humans and spirits. But Lee tells the story from the perspective of Xiaoqiing, the Green Snake, who is the White Snake's younger sister. The two snake spirits have been training for many centuries to take on human forms and experience love and wisdom, which are supposedly only available to humans.
And in Tian's retelling, she added many twists to the familiar story. The Green Snake is depicted as the one who embodies the basic human instinct of sexual desire, while Fa Hai is no longer the evil monk who's been trying to break up the forbidden romance. Instead, he becomes the target of endless rounds of the Green Snake's temptation. Through the whole story, he's been struggling to balance the voice from the bottom of his heart and the demand of his religious duty.
Director Tian Qinxin elaborates the two kinds of love portrayed in the play.
"From the perspective of female, I think the play depicts two kinds of love. One is the change of love. For example, men might change after being married. This is the story of the white snake and her human husband. The other one is you love him, but he doesn't love you. This is the destiny of the green snake, who loves the monk."
The play has been touring both in China and overseas. In every city it's performed, tickets were sold out in a minute. The play was also invited to represent Asian plays at the Kennedy Center during this year's International Theatre Festival and won wide acclaim. As the opening performance, the play was presented on the natural, dreamy stage at the outdoor Water Theatre in Wuzhen. Tian made many special adjustments to the play for the open-air, such as setting, lighting and even the length of the play.
Even though it kept raining throughout the play, none of the over 2500 audiences left. Tian Qinxin said.
"Some actors came to me saying it's so difficult to finish the play in the rain, but they also felt very happy because this is truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. The story originally had many scenes happening in water, so the outdoor water theatre provides a perfect natural stage. And the god of rain bestowed non-stop drops. But all the 2500 audiences stayed in the rain watching the show from the beginning to the end. This version of Green Snake is unique and audiences' experience is also unique."
After watching the thought-provoking play, some viewers expressed that they rediscovered a purity of spirit that they lost a long time ago. For those theatre lovers who didn't go to Wuzhen to watch the water theatre version of Green Snake, they might still have a chance.
"Wuzhen is such a beautiful ancient canal town, which has attracted countless tourists. Aside from theatre festival, I think it would be nice to have some performances in Wuzhen on weekends. After the last show of Green Snake, the stage at the water theatre will be taken down. It's a great pity. If it's possible, I'm willing to have regular performances of Green Snake here in Wuzhen. And I think audiences also hope they can watch Green Snake when they visit Wuzhen."
Wuzhen is undoubtedly one of the most popular tourist destinations, while the thousand-year ancient canal town is gradually becoming a new destination of pilgrimage for theatre lovers from across China.
For Studio+, this is Xiong Siqi.
大家还在听
