Annie

In his 2017 film Ice Cream and the Sound of Rain, Japan's "post-85" director Daigo Matsudui paints a pseudo-documentary portrait of a group of young people chasing their dreams of the stage.

In the film, a work by a famous British playwright is to be staged in a small-city theater, with a cast of young people with little acting experience, who have gone through a selection process and dream of stepping onto a glory-filled stage. Between rehearsals, the group sits around the rehearsal hall drinking beer, and the musician of the play's live band sings in a cheering rap, "The izakaya isn't the whole point of my life / In fact, you've found out, haven't you? / There are still dreams that have to be realized."

At the end of the film, their show is called off, and the crew defiantly breaks down the door locks and rushes into the theater to finish the show in front of an empty auditorium. Before going on stage, they put their arms on each other's shoulders and formed a circle, cheering each other on. One of the girls said, "I feel especially happy to be standing here."

For most of the audience, Ice Cream and Rain was a brutal youthful tale of idealism, with a lot of "middle-of-the-road" slogans, like another line in the rap, "Shake off the sweat/wipe away the tears/start a revolution/overthrow the darkness. ". But for theater actors like the protagonists in the film, the interviews, rehearsals, performances, and the confusion and anxiety behind the light of the stage are like a mirror in front of them.

After the play, the curtain goes up, and then where does it go?

Interview

As far as the group of actors is concerned, the theater circle is a relatively closed circle of acquaintances.

There are three broad categories of actors on stage, and three paths to becoming a professional actor. Graduates of the school, with certain alumni resources, starting experience is basically the same, mostly through the introduction of teachers and siblings, began to enter the group acting; campus drama clubs or folk non-professional groups of enthusiasts, year-round participation in all kinds of acting training courses and workshops, small theater plays and a variety of competitions are often their silhouettes; film and television, dance, behavior and other areas of the performing arts across the line of the actors, often because of chance coincidences The first time I saw a movie, I saw a movie, I saw a movie, I saw a movie, I saw a movie, and I saw a movie.

However, no matter who you are, what kind of acting resume, want to go on a play, you have to go through the interview.

Sun Shuyue is a familiar actress to the domestic theater audience, and when her name is seen on a theater poster, her face pops up in front of the audience with a big smile. Sun Shuyue grew up dancing in elementary school and was admitted to the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts at the age of 10. In 2002, she suffered a knee injury and couldn't afford the heavy dance training, and at the age of 17, she began to think about a career change. At first, she did not want to be a drama actress, in her imagination, "actor" is a star, Zhao Wei, Zhang Ziyi, such a big beautiful girl is called an actor. She began to enroll in night school, learning radio and television, the teacher said her voice is good, quite suitable for actors. Also at that time, the Nanjing Military Region Frontline Drama Troupe to arrange a big play, need a girl who can dance, take this opportunity, Sun Shuyue transferred to the drama troupe, into a new world.

In these ten years of being an actress, Sun Shuyue has performed in big plays in theaters, and later left the system and started drifting north. She has acted in Sanbao musicals, gone to Happy Mahua, participated in Chinese and foreign cooperation in large theater groups, but also acted in a large number of experimental small theater works, step by step, and gradually gained the recognition of the industry and the audience. Sun Shuyue's favorite comment is "at ease", which she believes means that her performance fits the character and accomplishes the expression she deserves. 2018, Sun Shuyue appeared in eight plays, including Chen Shuyue's Ibsen's famous play The Lady at Sea starring Chen Shuyue, The Imperial Train directed by renowned playwright Yi Liming, and the play The Imperial Train by French director Michel Tidim and his wife, Michel Tidim and his son, Michel Tidim. Michel Tidim and his team adapted Lu Xun's masterpiece "A Q" ...... But this is not the busiest time, much earlier, there are also a month to line up four plays. She this state, belongs to the revenge work of successful theater actors, revenge, is the early years of those days without theater.

Sun Shuyue and a few familiar actor friends have a small group, usually in addition to sending food and drink, is to inform each other of the interview information. The drama group is like a mysterious underground ghost organization, if the head is not familiar, no visibility, the actor knows the group news, the play has been opened. Drama actors outside of theaters are almost all independent actors, without agents or brokers, everyone is working alone. In the past, the introduction of the theater group, are relying on friends by word of mouth, in the past few years better, many of the theater group will be released in the public number of actors recruiting information.

The interviews for drama casts, because of the differences in the way the directors rehearse and work, there is almost no formula that can be mapped out. "The bigger the director, the stranger the casting process." A "big director" Lin Zhaohua, an actor who has worked with him many times, told me that during the interview, the director would sit in a corner against the wall, far away from the actor, and the actor who participated in the audition would display at will, and throughout the entire process, the director was as if he was asleep and did not say anything, and the actor would go home and wait for the news when he felt he could do it himself. She later worked with the big director for a long time before she realized that the way he chose the actors was to listen to the voice, not only the lines, but also the breath of the actors when they were thrown on the stage.

"I'm not the kind of actor who would audition, and I feel particularly bad after every interview, so maybe I'm just not cut out to be an actor at all." Sometimes the crew would send out clips of scripts that the actors were required to show, so she rehearsed at home on her own, and when she didn't have a script, she prepared a monologue. Among the countless interviews she's had, Sun Shuyue has enjoyed the "workshop-type" interviews. Some overseas directors with a strong personal style will design their own working method as a workshop, "the director actually wants to see if the actors can adapt to their own working rhythm, to put it bluntly, whether they get along or not. This is very happy for the actors, to go to the interview is also a free learning opportunity".

There are a lot of North Korean drama actors like Sun Shuyue, and a veteran producer once told me, "An actor, in Beijing, as long as he works hard, he can eat. This sounds quite absolute, but also out of the circle of the great mobility and narrowness, "mature theater to tour, the new play also want to row, face 10 groups, always face one or two, because a **** on so many people.

In the "industry top stream" position of Meng Jinghui Theater Studio will be open to recruit new actors every year. The studio is a dream come true for young actors just starting out in the industry, as they can act in Meng's plays and have a guaranteed number of performances. However, there is also fierce competition within the studio. After all, only a very small number of actors can become Liu Xiaoye or Huang Xiangli, and the plays they perform are always in the same mold. New actors want to go in, but also the old man will leave, "I can no longer learn new things here, I graduated."

Rehearsal space

Every theater actor knows that in this day and age, even if you play the lead role once in a big theater, or if you've collaborated with a big director, you're not going to become famous overnight. So, in addition to earning performance fees and the love of acting itself, what actors with options look for is the ability to learn something new.

In the rehearsal hall, the actor is always secretly observing the director. Drama audience recognized acting Wang Xuebing talked about acting, said the most is the rehearsal, and do not tell the story, are their own thinking and summary. "The big director taught me a lot of sense, he is the first person who let me understand how acting is; Tian Qinxin director 'very Chinese', rehearsals, she gives you to unfold a Chinese picture scroll; Christian Lupa, Polish, is a philosopher, there are a lot of exchanges with us, he will put the Christian Lupa, a Polish philosopher, had many exchanges with us, he would put everything he thought on the stage and scrutinize it over and over again, we might not be quite sure where he was trying to go, but he himself was very conscious, except that he would share the process of thinking with us without any reservation."

The actors seldom talk about "acting", which is a basic skill in their view. "It's only people who don't have acting skills who keep talking about what acting is, right?" said Sun Shu, who has been working as an actor for many years. When she said this, Sun Shuyue had a kind of joking meanness on her face, and with this expression, she talked about several popular variety shows in the past two years, "Nowadays, the threshold of film and television performances is too low". In her opinion, acting is technology, to put it plainly, is "live", performance is really difficult, is "inside" things.

Sun Shuyue had a memorable collaboration with the famous Hong Kong director Tang Shurong. Deng Shurong is a yoga enthusiast who doesn't like to talk much, and always asks his actors to feel it in action. Antigone is an ancient Greek classic, rich in meaning, and it is not easy to perform the play well. Deng Shurong's stage has a strong sense of religion, and the actors have to lower their voices and move slowly to form a special energy field. At first, the actors didn't understand the significance of the actions and took copious notes on the script. "Raise your leg to your knee here" "Turn back slowly when you say this word" ...... Everyone wondered why they had to spend a lot of time raising their heads and saying their lines in a voice that bordered on choking . "The rehearsal process was particularly painful, and every day I thought about rushing through the show and forgetting about it. But one day I was on stage and suddenly I got it, and it was like a divine favor at that moment, and I felt like I had taken a big step forward."

Constantly learning and absorbing is a difficult process, the actor called it "breaking", breaking himself, is progress. "What is taught in school can help you in a few plays at first, but soon it's not enough. The world is changing so fast, and there are always new ways of doing things that you haven't seen before. Some directors want to be close to life, others want to be interstitial. Even whether to wear a microphone or not, how to control the volume, everyone has different requirements." Sun Shuyue recalled his more than ten years of stage performance experience, said with certainty, "There is no all-purpose pass in the theater."

Theatre actors like to meet up to watch each other's plays, and after the show breaks up, the actors who have just come off stage can't even take off their makeup before they're dragged off for a drink, and the atmosphere is tantamount to a critique session, with friends pointing out the details of the performances as they go along.

"My last play, a particularly good friend came to see it and criticized me very harshly after watching it." The play Sun Shuyue is talking about is Japanese playwright Jung Yoshinobu's "Almonds and Tofu Heart," a small theater play for two that takes place on the last night of a couple who are about to break up **** in a room. "He told me bluntly, 'You don't love this man at all.' I was blindsided, and that statement negated all my performances." It was the premiere of the piece, and after hearing the criticism, Sun Shuyue contacted his partner that night and asked him to come to the theater early the next day to "find the feeling," where they sat on the set, back to back in the darkness, holding hands, and doing tacit understanding training. "After a few rounds, the friend came to see it again, and he said he saw love this time. We were both especially happy."

In this back-and-forth, the actors forged a special warm bond. Late last year, Sun Shuyue's co-star in "Almond Tofu Heart" signed an agent's contract to take a break from the stage and launch a career as a movie and TV actor. "Great, I now hope that he will hurry to fire, make more money, and later act in his favorite roles."

In fact, the drama actors almost all do not exclude the participation of film and television performances, many people compare themselves to sponges, hoping to absorb more from the rich form of performance. But they did not really embark on the road of film and television, mostly because of film and television "is not addictive", "the stage is very clean, because the performance of the time belongs only to you and the role, no cell phone, no real life.

When she first started as an actress, Sun Shuyue's ideal was to "get busy", and she hoped to fill her life with work, and to have plays all the time. Now really living such a life, she is very uneasy, "play after play, not good, not conducive to the creation of the role of irresponsible". Sun Shuyue brought up a documentary she had seen, in which an old European actor proudly said to the camera, "I have had a rewarding life, enough to have acted in five plays!"

Touring

The unrepeatable nature of theater dictates that once an actor starts a role, he or she has to deal with a schedule of performances that can come up at any time, and a play that sells well can make it hard to find time for another production for a year or even years. The process of touring is like falling in love, as the actor is able to perfect his character through the accumulation of performances, while at the same time fighting off the occasional onslaught of boredom with the character.

When I interviewed Sun Shuyue, she was preparing for a performance in Yulin that evening. A few days earlier, the same production had been performed in Chengdu, and the cast had experienced a hilarious "theft".

"We lost all our props and sets." The director wanted the production to present an everyday family atmosphere, so the choreographer designed a lot of small daily objects, along with furniture, the crew put a living room on stage. The next day when the stage was removed, many props disappeared, "I later found the slippers I wore on stage in the cleaning aunt's dormitory. Our props are so lifelike that they are treated as waste.

In theater productions, especially tours, actors often need to manage their own costumes and props, and often go out with two large boxes, one for the character's luggage, and one for their own. Many theater practitioners regard touring as an adventurous journey in which anything can happen, and everyone has developed the ability to deal with changes in their long "nomadic" lives. Together, they have solved many difficulties and become brothers and sisters, understanding each other's habits. On overseas tours, when there is not enough manpower, the actors even need to climb ladders to hang lights and distribute leaflets on the streets themselves. "Drama actors this occupation for a long time, really become a million dollars, but also quite good, are observing life."

Chinese theater audiences are concentrated in first-tier cities, where theater is just beginning to take off, and actors often have to deal with dismal attendance and, worse, unprofessional collaborators.

In the West, there is no distinction between actors in theater and actors in film and television - it's all about the "actors", and they're all treated the same. "I hope we can have such a day, and the whole ecology can change for the better."

Sun Shuyue's fans like to call her "Xiaomei", which is the screen name she gave herself, because when she first became an actress, there was a character named Sun Xiaomei in the very popular game Monopoly, which she thought sounded good. Fans of theater actors always have a high degree of stickiness, and many actors have a group of "as long as you perform, I will buy tickets and run with you on tour" loyal audience. But the industry's ecological restrictions on the development of young actors is very cruel, even if the small theater works have been traveled throughout the country with a certain box office appeal, Sun Shuyue still do not have the opportunity to play the main role in the large theater productions, those roles are for the stars or senior actors ready. At the other end of the spectrum, there are always actors and actresses who have been active on the theater stage who quietly leave to play in film or television, or change careers to something else. Performing year after year, Sun Shuyue has also reached a stage that seems quite awkward to outsiders. "I'm in a pretty good frame of mind, no matter what happens in the future, as long as I don't leave this theater thing in my life." She paused for a moment, looking like she was longing for the future, "I hope I'll get old soon, a lot of good roles have to be played when I'm older!"

When that show in Ice Cream and the Sound of Rain was called off, the 29-year-old heroine childishly shouted to the theater manager, "We're a little universe of different personalities!" People in the theater are more or less "middle-aged", they are labeled as idealistic, and they run their own universe in a Buddhist way, spending a kaleidoscopic life with their characters.