There are different types of love in Lai’s play “Thirteen Angle Relationship”, “Let Me Hold Your Hand…” Meet Literature Meet Love
According to Hangzhou Daily, there are tens of millions of people, and thirteen corners of relationships. As the second stop out of only three stops of this year’s tour, from 10th to 11th November, the famous director Lai Shengchuan returned to the Hangzhou Grand Theater with a new version of the play “Thirteen Corner Relationships”. The “absurd” plot, the dense laughter, the power to penetrate people’s hearts… During the almost two and a half hours, the audience was not only laughing out loud following the “bags” of the actors, but also following the stories and the complex relationships of the characters, Watch your own life.
Last weekend, “Relationships Thirteen Corner”, which interprets love and freedom, ended perfectly. This weekend, “Let Me Hold Your Hand…” starring Huang Shengyi and Zhao Xiaosu will continue to talk about love and romance with Hangzhou audiences.
Last Friday afternoon, Lai Shengchuan walked into Westlake University’s Yungu Campus for the first time, and had a dialogue with Zhang Deming, professor of Westlake University’s General Education Center, and together with theater fans, “encountered love in the 19th. century and appreciates the charm of drama and literature”.
“For more than 30 years, Chekhov, the great Russian literary master and playwright, has had a profound effect on my creative career. He is one of my favorite authors, and he is also ‘confident in the soul’. ” Lai Shengchuan Come to think of it, Chekhov’s works are not like the plays you usually see. His way of telling stories is gentle and slow, as if something is happening, but nothing is happening. “All the intensity will be attributed to a kind of simplicity. I saw a kind of compassion in his writing. Chekhov’s characters are all about flawed and imperfect people… This is not a problem with the characters, it is human problem of beings, and Chekhov has such a compassionate heart. The great and the ordinary are together, and different tastes are reconciled with each other. All kinds of moving pictures create life, which hiding the complexity and depth of human nature.”
In 2014, Lai Shengchuan adapted “Let Me Hold Your Hand…” written by the American Chekhov researcher Dr. Carlo Rocamora, based on over 800 love letters between Chekhov and his wife Olga It is natural to enter the world of the soul of this great Russian writer.
Introducing Chekhovian humour, he takes an example from “Let Me Take Your Hand…” In his last years, Chekhov suffered from illness. In a letter, he wrote that human beings are incredible. They cannot eat anything in their stomachs, but they still have to go to the dentist. “What a cruel sentence, right? But we all laughed.” When Lai Shengchuan said this, the audience also laughed.
So, how to turn more than 800 letters between Chekhov and his wife Olga into a poetic dialogue of theater love in the last century? “A director I like very much, Peter Brook, a master of world drama, once directed this play. But compared to him, I accidentally made the story more complicated.” Lai Shengchuan introduced Chekhov played by Zhao Xiaosu and played by Huang Shengyi Olga, in the process of reading each other’s letters, incorporates scenes from Chekhov’s five classic works. “As soon as the bell rings, they will incarnate as different characters, from “Seagull”, “Three Sisters” to “Uncle Vanya”, allowing communications and plots to be scattered and nested on stage. “
From Hu Ge who stars in “A Dream Like a Dream” to Huang Shengyi who stars in “Let Me Hold Your Hand…”, Lai Shengchuan’s works over the years are full of “star”. Lai Shengchuan said that at present, stars are useful for theater culture and can attract more people to the theater. “Stars will not interfere with my creation, and many good actors will provide a lot of new inspiration.”
Speaking about creative inspiration, Lai Shengchuan said that his motivation and opportunity to create each drama is different. Sometimes it is simply an idea, and sometimes it is inspired by the influence of the current situation. “Dream Like a Dream” was when I was teaching at Taipei University, the school hoped I could create such a work, and it became an eight-hour play when I wrote it; “Yaoyao Dongba” was my work in Hangzhou. It took me three days to write it. Xixi Wetland is like my backyard, a place where I can focus on my creation.”
The French writer Flaubert said: “Art and science always part at the foot of the mountain, and finally meet again at the top of the mountain.” This afternoon at West Lake University’s Yungu Campus, the “flower of art” and the “flower of science” realized a two-way rush to. As Lai Shengchuan said, for those who study science in the ivory tower, what they usually look up to is the high-tech outer space. Chekhov’s works may be an inspiration, allowing for them to discover more in ordinary life moved.
It is reported that in July this year Hangzhou Performing Arts Group and Westlake University signed a strategic cooperation agreement, and Westlake University’s Yungu Campus Academic Hall officially joined the Hangzhou Performing Arts Theater Alliance. Next, the Hangzhou Performing Arts Group will also bring a series of high-quality performances and sharing sessions by famous artists to West Lake University, so that science and art will collide with each other to create a new spark.
