Suzhou Art School, adjacent to Hanshan Temple, is known as the cradle of Kunqu art successors. Five years ago, "Little Orchid" came out from here, and now it is emerging on the stage; Nowadays, a group of young students are sitting in the Kunqu class and have "close contact" with ancient art. Recently, a "new" teacher appeared in the school to serve these children in the Kunqu class. He is the hero of this article, Lin. As a "famous and ugly" Kunqu opera, Lin's first contact with art was not Kunqu opera pingtan, but calligraphy and painting. Before coming into contact with Kunqu Opera, Lin entered the world of Chinese painting obsessively. He was born in a scholarly family in Suzhou. His father is a professor in Tsinghua University and his grandfather is a famous doctor in Wuzhong. He likes to collect calligraphy, paintings and antiques, and often invites painters to drink, recite poems and paint at home. The representative of Wu Pai is one of them. Mr. Zhang and Lin's grandfather are good friends and live in the same alley.
What Lin saw, heard and felt from the moment he remembered was China's paintings and calligraphy. Grandfather certainly wanted the child to succeed in the future, so he asked Zhang Xinjia to teach him calligraphy. Lin gets up early at school every day to practice calligraphy, and often goes to Mr. Zhang's "Frost Room" studio to grab discarded rice paper and scribble. The old man looked happy and thought that there was a ghost in this childish smear that the conformists lacked. Therefore, he added and subtracted what Fan Ji Jr. daubed.
In less than two years, Lin officially went to learn Kunqu Opera. Zhang Xinjia, who is proficient in Kunqu opera, said to him, "Relax, study Kunqu opera well and take painting as a hobby." A few years later, with Fan's great progress in performing arts, he did not lose his paintings. Zhang Lao weighed it for a long time before telling him two words: "pay equal attention." For more than ten years, when Lin ran wildly in the theater, the old gentleman solemnly encouraged him: "You might as well put the painting first." Unexpectedly, when Fan Ji won the "Plum Blossom Award" in Beijing, the old gentleman died in Suzhou. Lin still firmly remembers the two words that Zhang Lao gave him: "Leaning drunk". At that time, as long as the teacher drank old wine, his eyes became blurred when he looked drunk, so he splashed ink between his fingers and finished painting. "I, when can I get it?" For many years, Lin has been exploring hard on his own artistic path. When Lin 12 years old, the Pingtan class of Jiangsu Opera Academy came to Jiangsu to recruit students. Perhaps it was his natural endowment and active nature that made him admitted. Grandpa didn't know about it, but Lin told his family before he left. Everyone is stupid: there are all scholars at home, but this time there is another "storyteller". Grandma asserted, "The child is just going to play and will be back soon." Unexpectedly, Lin was "gone forever" from now on. He began to learn pingtan, then changed to Kunqu opera, and later became an actor in Jiangsu Su Kun Theatre (the predecessor of Jiangsu Kunqu Opera Theatre).
Although the family environment is superior, Lin must "eat through this door" if he wants to make a difference. In order to learn good plays, it has become a forest of "sacrificing life for righteousness". To this end, his left leg and right hand ring finger have been broken, and his right arm elbow joint has not been straightened yet. Once he practiced too hard and broke his waist into a compression fracture. He went to the hospital for a plaster cast and a steel plate to protect his waist. He was afraid to tell his family, but the result was really unbearable. The leader told him to go home to recuperate. Grandpa saw this situation and said, "I don't think I will go again." Unexpectedly, three months later, before the injury healed, he went secretly again. He is not a martial arts actor, but he demands himself with the basic skills needed for both civil and military skills everywhere, so he practices all martial arts with ease and uses them freely. In order to play the jujube in Drunk Soap, Lin practiced all kinds of drunken steps and drunkenness. Before dawn, he quietly got up and practiced "private work". At the end of the night, at the dawn, there are dark shadows flashing in the aisle of the rehearsal field, either up or down, left or right, or rolling or crawling, accompanied by light or heavy noise. An old man passed by here, stunned! Turned and ran out of the door, shouting, "Ghost!" "Who knows this" ghost "is Lin. Jianfeng Bao has been tempered, and now he is 57 years old, and his skill is still vigorous. Lin's wife Gu Xiang is from Changshu, and his grandfather Gu is a pingtan artist. Gu Xiang loved the art of pingtan from an early age. He was admitted to Jiangsu Theatre Academy with Lin, changed to Kunqu Opera and became a professional dancer. Learn the "Buddhist monk and nun meeting" with Zhejiang Wu Opera Troupe, that is, "double downhill". Later, the National Kunqu Concert held in Suzhou required students to perform, and they performed the play together. Many famous artists were present at that time, including Yu Zhenfei, Xu Lingyun and Mr. Chuan. After watching the play, many teachers fell in love with this "little face". Even Yu Zhenfei knows that there is Alin Fan Ji in Jiangsu. Mr. Lingyun of Lao Xu was even more excited: "This child is so good that he is a good prospect to learn ugliness. Tell him to come to me at once, and I'll teach him a play. " Went to the forest. There is such a photo in The Historical Draft of Kunqu Opera Performance: A shaved head is learning Chinese opera from Xu Lingyun. That "bald" is Lin. This year, Lin Cai 14 years old. What I told Lin was ten times the drama of "Embroidering the Sasakawa". Lin said that the real teacher of his clown play was. After the performance, the famous and ugly Mr. Wang and Mr. Hua Chuanhao also called Lin aside and said, "You should learn to be ugly! It was at that concert that Wang fell in love with Lin.
Wang, the clown master who plays the floor rat in Fifteen Levels, will never accept disciples unless he finds out that the other person is a "jade worth carving". After watching Lin's play, Wang was moved at once. "The child looks beautiful, her voice is crisp, and her performance is clever. It is' aniseed'! " His aesthetic standards are different: Kunqu clowns don't have to be "crooked", on the contrary, they have to find people with particularly good conditions to play them. Wang Lao recognized Lin: a beautiful and clever little face like this will definitely do something in the future. At that time, Wang was over 60 years old and still active on the stage. He began to teach Lin a very standardized procedure for judging ugliness. After more than 20 years of research, Lin finally achieved results.
"Wang and I, an ugly and famous Kunqu singer, were sitting in a teahouse and said that an excellent actor could make Jiulongkou (performance center) look full as soon as he appeared. Now, his disciple Lin is coming to Jiulongkou. Before he arrived there, he enriched Jiulongkou with his vivid performances. I love watching this actor's performing arts ... "In May 1982, Lin performed" Youdian "in Nanjing. Wang Chaowen, a famous aesthetic theorist, was very excited after reading it. He visited Lin overnight and wrote a 5000-word drama review, praising Lin for shaping Facong into a young monk.
In May of the same year, 76-year-old Wang decided to make an exception and accept him as an apprentice. Thus, among the many students taught by Wang Lao, Lin became his only disciple. At the master meeting, Wang earnestly said: "I hope that in the future, on the road of art, you will still learn from me, not from Wang, but from how Wang plays characters." Lin always follows Mr. Wang's method to create characters, pondering one scene after another, and then turning it into his own. Lin inherited more than 20 traditional Kunqu operas, such as Fifteen Passes, You Dian and Jian Yi, many of which have been further improved and developed. Recalling the love between teachers and students, Lin said, "This is my happiness and will benefit me for life." Lin is as clever as his "Fa Cong". Besides learning from teachers, he is also good at absorbing other artistic expressions. I was often taken to the bookstore by my grandfather to listen to books since I was a child, and entered the drama school to learn to play and comment on the piano. In his spare time, besides painting, Lin's greatest hobby for many years is listening to books, which makes him understand the profound art of pingtan. He knows very well that Kunqu Opera and Pingtan are inherently interlinked. In order to integrate the "excitement" in pingtan into the performance of Kunqu clown, Lin often asked the pingtan master, and Mr. Jin enthusiastically gave many good ideas for his role shaping and performance.
The house rat in Fifteen Pass, Gao Lishi and the bartender in the Palace of Eternal Life, Zhang Sanlang in Water Margin, Jiang in Lulin, the fake champion in Dog Cave, and Ruan Dacheng, the traitor in Crazy Monk ... Lin has been a clown for forty years, creating beauty for the audience and pursuing beauty. His characters are excellent, whether they are alert, smart, honest, humorous, treacherous or greedy. The audience said in succession: there is no choice but to play Lin's ugly drama; The characters are all alive. "Among them, his masterpieces and farce-YouDian, captured, LuLin, drunken soap, sword, etc. , popular with refined temperament and exquisite brushwork. The reason is not only related to his long-term charm under the guidance of teacher Wang; It is also related to his long-term study of painting under Mr. Zhang Xinjia; It is also related to his emphasis on self-cultivation and his exploration of artistic theory.
In addition to people in the field of traditional Chinese opera, many painters and calligraphers are also very interested in Lin's plays, thinking that his plays have rich background and artistic conception. Lin himself thinks that the changes in composition and scheduling of his plays, especially the creation of artistic conception, have the freehand brushwork and ethereal technique of Chinese painting. He is very good at Chinese painting and calligraphy painting. His works were also included in China Contemporary Famous Paintings and Calligraphy Series and made into postal postcards for distribution. Lin knows that there is an inevitable connection between traditional Chinese opera and traditional painting. He remembers that Mr. Zhang Xinjia often talked with him about painting theory and how to draw light and shade, dryness and wetness, distance on a piece of propaganda paper; It is also said that the stage is actually a piece of rice paper, and the key depends on how the actors "ink". Tell him that planning should focus on "cherishing ink as gold" and "treating white as black", and performance should also focus on "economy".