22 December 2014
In the morning of 18 December 2014, the workshop on Huadeng Opera “Yan Yinliang and The Summer Palace” was held at the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
The workshop was co-organized by the Publicity Department of CPC Tongren Municipal Committee, Tongren Municipal Administration of Culture and Radio, Creation Centre of Shanghai Theatre Academy and Playwriting Research Centre of Shanghai Theatre Academy. Senior officials of the above-mentioned Tongren municipal authorities, Mr Lin Yajun, the playwright of “Yan Yinliang and The Summer Palace”, and members of the performance team participated in the workshop. The workshop was chaired by Prof Lu Jun of Shanghai Theatre Academy. A number of professors of Shanghai Theatre Academy as well as the two MFA students from Columbia University gave speeches during the workshop. The participants also included around 20 visiting scholars, post-doctoral and doctoral students and master students specialized in playwriting and theatre studies.
Ms Liu Jie, Director of Publicity Department of CPC Tongren Municipal Committee, thanked Shanghai Theatre Academy for attaching high level of importance to Huadeng Opera “Yan Yinliang and The Summer Palace”. She gave a brief introduction about the background of the story and author’s intention and expressed the hope to obtain valuable and extensive opinions through this workshop to assist with the second time creation of the play in an attempt to make “Yan Yinliang and The Summer Palace” a cultural name card of Tongren Municipality. Prof Zhang Shengquan of Shanghai Theatre Academy gave his insightful views from the perspective of the mutually beneficial interaction between art universities and theatrical companies, as well as from the perspective of producing good plays and talented performers.
The faculty and students attending the workshop all spoke highly about Huadeng Opera “Yan Yinliang and The Summer Palace”, especially, the full integration of folk legend with Huadeng Opera’s own characteristics and relatively high ideological and entertaining standards that have been achieved in the play. Meanwhile, they also provided pertinent comments about further revisions. The two MFA students from Columbia University put forward a proposition of the era, i.e. how the plays featuring historical stories can attract stronger resonance of the audience of today. The views of these two foreign MFA students were especially praised by Prof Lu Jun who is their supervisor during their study at Shanghai Theatre Academy.
Last but not the least, Prof Lu Jun provided a detailed analysis of the play in three aspects, i.e. what is this play trying to tell? Where is the key point of the play? What kind of a person Yan Yinliang is? Also, he sincerely raised the requirements and expectations that he has for the performance team in artistic terms. He hoped that greater efforts would be made to make this “cultural name card” a spiritual channel through which the “cultural soul” of the Tongren people could be touched. Ms Liu Jie, Director of Publicity Department of CPC Tongren Municipal Committee, took detailed notes of the opinions given by the experts for further revisions of the play and undertook to sort through and digest these opinions conscientiously and make the best efforts to improve this Huadeng Opera play.
