When the two old friends met, they exchanged a few pleasantries before Hou Xiling pointed at Jiang Se:
"This is Jiang Se, whom I told you about before. She is very smart and is planning to film the film "Beijing Events" that I wrote. You are my senior and my teacher in the field of acting. I hope you will take the trouble to give me some pointers."
He should have told Chang Yuhu about this matter in advance. After listening to him, Chang Yuhu's eyes fell on Jiang Se.
She dyed her hair black and had a dignified temperament. Perhaps because she had been in the film industry for many years, her manners were graceful.
With Hou Xiling's introduction, she stretched out her hand and shook hands with Jiang Se, and asked curiously:
"I heard from Lao Hou that you are also a student of the First University and graduated from here. You can do anything else in the future. Why do you suddenly want to enter this industry?"
Hou Xiling first invited the two to enter the courtyard. Jiang Se thought for a moment and replied:
“I think this line of work is interesting.”
"Oh?" Chang Yuhu and Hou Xiling looked at each other and then asked:
"What do you mean?"
"If one's life is a spiritual practice, then it is always very interesting to act in different movies and interpret different lives."
Her words made Chang Yuhu laugh, and he responded:
"I have to go back to the Imperial Capital Theater this afternoon to direct the rehearsal. You can come with me, little girl."
When Hou Xiling heard this, he asked:
"'Returning Home on a Snowy Night'?"
Chang Yuhu nodded and said, "If the little girl is brave enough, you can practice on the stage. It will be good for you."
After she finished speaking, she turned and looked at Jiang Se:
"The last time the Grand Theater performed Returning Home on a Snowy Night was more than ten years ago. I guess you haven't seen it."
Jiang Se was just a freshman in college. When "Returning Home on a Snowy Night" was released, she was still young and had only been born not long ago.
Before her rebirth, Jiang Se had never watched this drama, but she looked up Chang Yuhu's deeds on the Internet, so she knew that more than ten years ago, she played the heroine Yuchun in "Returning Home on a Snowy Night", which caused a sensation at the time.
"This time the theater intends to stage "Returning Home on a Snowy Night" again. Dong Chaoping of the theater is worried that several actors may not be performing well, so he asked me to go back and give some pointers. It's just a coincidence that you called me as well."
Hou Xiling responded, "It is indeed a coincidence. When this work was performed that year, it was performed four times in a row. The theater was always full, and newspapers and magazines even reported on it."
Jiang Se listened quietly to the two people talking. During the meal, Chang Yuhu looked at her from time to time and saw that she was neither in a hurry to show off nor intentionally expressing herself. Her occasional replies were polite but not dull, and her attitude towards Jiang Se was much closer.
Although Hou Xiling said he would treat them, when Jiang Se was ready to pay the bill after the meal, she was told that Hou Xiling had already paid the money when the meal was ordered.
Hou Xiling was originally interested and wanted to go to the Grand Theater to watch the rehearsal, but he was suddenly called away by a phone call.
Jiang Se followed Chang Yuhu into the Grand Theater. She had come here many times before to listen to music concerts and watch dramas, but this was the first time she came here outside of performances.
As soon as Chang Yuhu came in, there were already staff waiting. When they saw her leading people over, the theater staff looked at Jiang Se curiously, and then introduced the situation in the troupe to Chang Yuhu, and said a little embarrassedly at the end:
"The performance is almost here. This is the second time this work has been staged. With your outstanding performance, the seniors who have seen it before will inevitably compare it with others. So Brother Dong wants you to come back and give some pointers to the younger generation."
In the rehearsal room, the actors who were going to perform "Returning Home on a Snowy Night" had already arrived. As soon as Chang Yuhu came in, someone brought a chair over and asked her to sit down in the audience. Jiang Se stood beside her and listened to the people in the rehearsal room clapping their hands and shouting to the actors inside to perform once first so that Chang Yuhu could point out any shortcomings.
"Returning Home on a Snowy Night" originally came from a Tang Dynasty poem and was written as a play by the famous dramatist Mr. Wu based on the artistic conception of the poem.
When the music started, the people on the stage quickly found their seats.
The actors on the stage performed hard, and Chang Yuhu in the audience stared at the stage with a smile, while turning his head to talk to Jiang Se:
"In fact, they asked me to come back just to find a Bodhisattva to calm me down." She sighed, "Old Hou asked me to teach you, but I don't know what I can teach you in terms of acting. It's not that I want to hide my knowledge, but there are a thousand Hamlets in a person's heart."
She took the tea prepared by the theater staff and took a sip:
"You are a smart child. You should know that if it is as Lao Hou said, I will teach you every move, my words and expressions during my performance and make you strictly follow them. It is just me acting and you are playing me. You will not achieve anything great."
Jiang Se was thoughtful when he heard this.
"An acting master once said that actors should be artists, not craftsmen. The difference between the two lies in creativity. Craftsmen can only imitate and do what they are told. They have no ability to innovate, no understanding of the role they are playing, and cannot add their own ideas, so they can never make further progress."
The music on stage was wonderful, but Chang Yuhu was doing two things off stage:
"The actor shapes the role, but the role constrains the actor. After the character's personality unfolds in the plot, the actor can only be loyal to the character's emotions and actions and put himself into it." When she said this, she looked at Jiang Se meaningfully:
"It's just that many people tend to be too deeply emotionally invested and often find it difficult to extricate themselves, which forms a mental burden."
So this is also a contradiction. Good actors interpret many roles, but it is also difficult for them to get out of the role. Pressure forms over time, and the pain is unspeakable to outsiders.
"If you want to enter this industry, you have to learn to adjust yourself. Watch them perform once, and then you go on stage to play one of the roles. I will take a look at where you are most deficient, and then correct it. Try a few more times, withstand the pressure, and you will find the feeling, then acting will not be difficult."
After she finished speaking, she waved to the theater staff to come over and whispered a few words in their ears. The theater staff nodded frequently, then turned and left.
When he came back, he already had two scripts in his hands, which he handed to Chang Yuhu.
Chang Yuhu gestured to Jiang Se to read the plot in the script first, and he leaned back in his chair and watched attentively without saying a word.
The script is "Returning Home on a Snowy Night" which is being rehearsed on the stage. It tells the story of the Peking Opera male dan Liansheng and the fourth concubine Yuchun of the court president Su Hongji who fall in love, but are eventually separated.
Because Chang Yuhu told her to perform on stage later, she didn't specify which role Jiang Se would play, which made Jiang Se feel a little pressured, but also eager to try. While distractedly watching the performances of the people on the stage and watching their movements, she forced herself to remember the contents of the script in her mind. (To be continued)