Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, during the Ching Ming Festival in 1976, a spontaneous "April Fifth Movement" broke out in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to mourn Premier Zhou Enlai and denounce the Gang of Four. "The movement was frantically attacked by the Gang of Four. The movement was frantically suppressed by the Gang of Four and characterized as a "counter-revolutionary event". At the time when the "April Fifth Movement" had not yet been vindicated, Zong Fuxian, an amateur writer from the Shanghai Workers' Cultural Palace, wrote a play entitled "In the Silence", which reflected the struggle from one side and expressed the people's voice of justice, with his strong indignation against the Gang of Four and his sensitivity to the changes of the times.
The play "In the Silence" was premiered in Shanghai in 1978 by the amateur drama team of the Shanghai Cultural Palace.
"The heart is vast and vast, and the thunder is heard in the silence". This is a true portrayal of the national mentality in a special historical period. The story of the play begins in the early summer of 1976. Mei Lin, an old cadre who has been persecuted and is suffering from a disease, goes with her son Ouyang Ping to visit his old comrade He Fei Fei on his way to Beijing for treatment. To her surprise, this old comrade is the very person who framed him in the past, and for his own selfish interests, he has long since defected to the henchmen of the "Gang of Four" in Shanghai. At this moment, He's daughter, public security officer He Yun was ordered to arrest the key criminals, is his own son Ouyang Ping, who participated in the "April 5th Movement". As a result, the two families and the six characters, within a short period of nine hours, engage in a fierce ideological struggle. Mei Lin's frankness and Ouyang Ping's righteousness finally make He Yun make an accurate judgment of justice and evil, and He Fei Fei's wife, out of righteous indignation, exposes her husband's despicable and sinister intention of selling his friends for honor. At the end of the play, although history has not yet come out of that dark journey, but the direction of people's hearts has shown the historical tendency that justice will prevail. The play, in terms of its artistic value, may not be much revelation in the eyes of future generations, but its emergence, the significance of its ideological precursor is particularly worthy of recognition.
Susan Langer argues that art is "a form of life". The ten years of turmoil brought a deep disaster to the Chinese people, however, without the experience of the past, there would be no realistic form of drama in the new period. Just as at the beginning of the new period, the political and ideological field raised the banner of "practice is the only criterion for testing the truth" to reacquaint itself with the so-called "truth" in all its forms, the field of drama raised the banner of "writing the truth" to realize the reality of drama in all its forms. "
These are the first time I've ever seen a movie in the world, and I've never seen a movie in the world where I've never seen a movie in the world, and I've never seen a movie in the world where I've never seen a movie in the world.
Cui Dezhi's play "Spring Flower" was premiered by Liaoning People's Art Theater in Shenyang. The significance of this play has shifted from the revelation of local social problems to the criticism of the extreme "left" line. In the play, the textile worker Bai Jie kind-hearted, conscientious work, in their posts, creating tens of thousands of meters of faultless cloth excellent results. However, honor and love have always kept her away, simply because she is a young person with a bad background. In the new historical period of reorganization, the factory director Li Jian adhere to the policy of seeking truth from facts, to elect Bai Jie as a model worker. This move caused an uproar, and the extreme "left" forces in the factory stubbornly insisted on the feudal theory of descent, intending to continue to suppress and crack down on Bai Jie. In the end, the spring breeze of reform dispersed the dark clouds of the past, and history finally returned justice to Bai Jie.
Leader-themed dramas are a hotspot in the new era of drama. This is not only in the "Cultural Revolution" period is never possible, that is, in the seventeen years after the founding of the country in the development of drama, but also has not been revealed. Leaders into the play, written in the hearts of ordinary people, is from a side reflecting the achievements of China's ideological emancipation, but also reflects the people of **** and the founders of the country's feelings of remembrance.
If "The Xi'an Incident" (written by Cheng Shirong and Zheng Chong), created in 1978, "Chen Yi's Journey to the Mountain" (written by Ding Yisan), created in 1979, and "Chen Yi's Mayor" (written by Sha Yixin), created in 1980, have realized a change from the "conceptualization" of the leading figures of the drama to the "realization", then it's a great opportunity for the Chinese people to realize the "conceptualization" and "realization" of the leading figures of the drama. If the transformation from "conceptualization" to "realization" was achieved, then the two plays that appeared in 1983, "Marx in Exile in London" (written by Zhao Huan) and "The Secret History of Marx" (written by Sha Yixin), which took Marx's life as the object of expression, realized the return of the leader's character to the flesh and blood of the common man and to the real state of existence of the individual life. These two plays are quite similar in their intention, i.e., both playwrights did not sing praises to Marx's icons and immortal achievements, but used their own life experience to understand Marx as a human being, his hunger and hardship, his painful struggle, his incomparably strong will and lofty ambitions, as well as his inescapable difficulties and sorrows in life. When the play was published, it caused a big uproar in the critics' circle, and some people even wanted to kill it with the stick of "anti-Marx". But no matter what shortcomings and deficiencies exist in the play itself, there is one thing that deserves special recognition, that is, the playwright wants to restore the feeling of life to Marx, so that he becomes a living human being, not a god on the shrine. The new breakthrough in the portrayal of the leader's character shows the end of the Cultural Revolution mode of literature and art, and also heralds the beginning of the exploration of Chinese drama to get rid of the stereotypes of high stage indoctrination and explore its own way forward. The so-called exploratory drama, i.e., the drama that is dissatisfied with the existing set of drama modes, and boldly introduces new drama expression methods and conducts new attempts and experiments, has gained some benefits in terms of formal innovation. Exploratory drama in the form of innovation has gained, so that the drama of the "loose culture" and "narrative components" increased, the realization of the drama of the free conversion of space and time, and symbols, metaphors, absurd distortion and other techniques are widely used to strengthen the stage of the comprehensive.
In the early 1980s, a series of plays such as The Station, The Savages, WM, and A Dead Man's Visit to the Living formed the trend of exploratory theater. And in the late 80s and 90s, "Nirvana of the Dog", "Mulberry Ping Chronicle", "Chinese Dream", "Birdman", "Shang Yang", etc., showed the important achievements of exploratory theater after a period of groping.
In 1986, the Beijing People's Art Theater staged a play, "Nirvana of the Dog Master" (written by Liu Jinyun and directed by Lin Zhaohua). The play shows a hard-working and simple farmer who has traveled a bumpy road through the stormy history of more than 30 years after the founding of the country. The peasant, Master Dog Er, has the traditional spirit of hard work and endurance as well as the ambition to become rich and prosperous in the countryside. His dream of happiness is in the same vein as the landowner's dream, so he acquired a lot of land at the beginning of the liberation, and fell into obsession after the land was returned to the collective; after the land contract in the new era, he had mixed feelings of sadness and joy. He felt that the landlord dream could be realized, but his son wanted to destroy his high gatehouse, build roads and open mines. He feels that there is nothing he can do about it, so he has to burn the high gatehouse to the ground. The play reveals the complexity of the peasant's psychology and the helplessness of individual life in the changing times. In terms of dramatic structure, the play adopts the method of stream of consciousness and flashback to arrange the plot, and the method of psychological externalization to highlight the subconsciousness of the characters. The play is regarded as a successful work of exploratory theater.
In 1988, the teachers and students of the Central Academy of Drama staged the play "The Chronicle of Sangshuping" (written by Zhu Xiaoping and directed by Xu Xiaozhong), which was written about the story of Sangshuping, a small village in the remote northwest of China. Poverty and the "leftist" ideology have distorted the villagers' simple hearts; their survival instincts have made them cold and cunning, and they are willing to beat a foreigner to death just to occupy a broken kiln. The fate of the woman in the subordinate position is exceptionally miserable. Behind the incident of exchanging relatives is the tragedy of two women; and the widow's remarriage attracts the insults and beatings of the whole village. The bloody mutual tearing and fighting make Mulberry Ping in the 20th century still stay in the shadow of the dark feudal system. Xu Xiaozhong, the director of this play, with an open vision, adopts an absorbing attitude towards modern theatrical expressions, skillfully blending love and reason, dance and song team, writing and realism, expression and reproduction, achieving great dramatic effects and bringing a new reputation to the quest play.