As the first revolutionary red drama group in Shandong, the Hai-O Drama Club has made important contributions to the theater industry in Shandong and even in China. Its contribution to artistic innovation is still a positive reference for our cultural work today. The most typical example is the adaptation of the play "Drop Your Whip" into the street square play "On the Hunger Line", which was performed in dialect in the countryside and achieved good results.
The play by the Seagull Theater Company, which was performed in Beiping by Cui Wei and Zhang Ruifang, caused a sensation and touched the hearts of audiences all over China, and it became one of the plays with the widest impact and the largest number of performances throughout China at the beginning of the war of resistance against Japanese aggression.
The Seagull Drama Club was founded in 1930 at Qingdao University, where the outbreak of the September 18th Incident in 1931 led to unprecedented national conflicts. Under the leadership of the underground party, the National Qingdao University organized a 179-member student petition group, which went south to Nanjing, the seat of the Kuomintang, to petition for anti-Japanese resistance. The Seagull Drama Club was a peripheral organization of the C***. After the failure of the petition, the underground party again used the Seagull Drama Club, a form of literature and art, to carry out activities to arouse the public and propagandize for anti-Japanese resistance. The society was headed by Wang Lin (Wang Tao) and Huang Jing (Yu Qiwei), members of the C*** underground party, and consisted of a dozen or so people, including Wang Dongsheng, Cui Wei, Zhang Fuhua and Li Yunhe (i.e., Jiang Qing). The main members of the society became writers, dramatists and senior Party cadres after the founding of the PRC. At that time, the Shanghai Literary News under the leadership of China **** called the Seagull Theater Club of Qingdao University "the seagull that forecasts storms". Huang Jing (Yu Qiwei) became one of the leaders of the student movement in the "12-9" movement, and was the secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee and the mayor of Tianjin in the early period of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and later served as the first minister of the State Department of First Machine Tools and the director of the State Economic Commission; Wang Lin was a famous writer, and served as the vice-chairman of the Tianjin Federation of Literary Associations after the liberation of the Communist Party of China (TFEC); and Cui Wei, the talented student from the Experimental Theatre of Shandong, was the director and the main actor of the troupe. Cui Wei, a highly talented student of Shandong Experimental Theater, was the director and main actor of the troupe, and grew up to be a famous movie artist and playwright after liberation, having starred in "The Spectrum of the Red Flag", and directed such movies as "Song of Youth and Spring" and "Soul of the Sea"; and Li Yunhe, who was the movie star of the Shanghai period, Lan Ping, and Jiang Qing of the Yan'an period. Among the actors of the troupe were Wang Dongsheng and Du Jiandi, who were students of Shandong Experimental Theatre, etc. On June 30, 1932, Literature and Art News, the organ of the left-wing Writers' Union under the leadership of the C*** at that time, enthusiastically reported and praised the performance under the title of Seagulls Forecasting the Storm. The activities of the Seagull Theater Club were so successful that it was called "the seagull that forecasted the storm" by Literary News.
In the Spring Festival of 1933, the wind was howling from the north and the land was frozen. In a village square at the foot of Laoshan Mountain in Qingdao, men, women, and children were gathered around. An old man selling art, hand holding a whip, to the daughter fainted on the ground due to hunger -. People were outraged at this sight. At that moment, a worker ran up and snatched the whip from the old man's hand and said angrily, "This child is about to starve to death, why do you still want to beat her." The old man said with tears in his eyes, "Folks! Our father and daughter depend on singing to eat ah--." People in the audience were outraged - this was a scene from the street play "Drop Your Whip" performed by the Qingdao "Seagull Theater Company" in Laoshan. The old man is the famous Cui Wei, the girl is Li Yunhe (Jiang Qing), and the young man is Huang Jing (Yu Qiwei). Adapting the play into a street play and performing it in the countryside began in the winter of 1932, when Chen Li Ting's play "Lower Your Whip", a play reflecting the anti-Japanese ideology of the masses, arrived in Qingdao from Shanghai. Huang Jing, the leader of the theater company, proposed to go to the countryside to perform for the peasants and propagandize the anti-Japanese. He thought: to go to Laoshan Mountain, both to perform for the peasants, and then to check the terrain, but also to establish anti-Japanese armed forces in the mountains. In order to adapt to the needs of rural performances, the theater decided to adapt the play. The task of adaptation fell on Cui Wei's shoulders. After reading the play several times, he adapted it into a form suitable for rural street performances and named it "Square Drama". The language was also reformed to use the local dialect instead of the dramatic accent, and the title of the play was changed to "On the Hunger Line". During the Spring Festival, Huang Jing, together with Cui Wei, Li Yunhe, Du Jiandi, Zhao Xinghuo, Liang Guishan and Li Xiuying, went deep into the Laoshan countryside with simple costumes and props, and performed for the peasants in the local dialect. Cui Wei himself directed and participated in the performance.
After the July 7 Incident, Cui Wei took the play and performed it all over the country, doing his duty as a Chinese child to publicize the resistance against the Japanese. Adapting drama into street theater and performing for peasants in the vernacular was groundbreaking in the history of theater in Qingdao, Shandong and even the whole country, and had an extremely far-reaching impact.
Since then, the Seagull Drama Club has performed the plays "Unanimity", "Messy Clock", "SOS", and "Infant's Murder" to publicize the anti-Japanese and national salvation. Adapting dramas into street plays and performing them in the countryside was not only to perform for the peasants, but also to propagandize the anti-Japanese so as to establish anti-Japanese armed forces in the mountains. Fearing the awakening of the people, the KMT authorities regarded the Seagull Theater Society as a thorn in their side and wanted to kill them as soon as possible.
In the summer of 1933, the Qingdao Municipal Committee was sabotaged and Huang Jing was arrested. Cui Wei, Yang Luokun and others left Qingdao to take refuge after hearing the news, and the Seagull Theater Society was forced to stop its activities, but her revolutionary spirit inspired people to fight for the independence of the country and the wealth and strength of the nation.
The wheel of history rolls forward, in the mid-80s, the great cause of reform and opening up, socialist construction has given birth to the rebirth of the Seagull Theater Club.