At the end of May 1922, the famous Peking Opera artist Yang Xiaolou was invited to perform at the Shanghai Tianchan Stage.

On May 27, the 14th edition of "Shenbao" "Tianchan Stage Banquets Last Night": Tianchan Stage has now hired Mei Lanfang, Yang Xiaolou and Wang Fengqing to join forces to Shanghai from Beijing. The master of the Taiwan Strait, Xu Shaoqing, went north and came to the south.

This time, the stars are shining in the south. In addition to performing their own specialty plays, Yang and Mei also performed "Farewell My Concubine" for the first time in Shanghai, causing a sensation in Shanghai.

Lin Zixuan took his family to see the performance.

To be honest, Peking Opera is not his dish. He came to support him this time to meet Yang Xiaolou.

After the performance, we met Yang Xiaolou with the recommendation of Meng Xiaodong's father Meng Hongqun. The Meng family is also a family of Liyuan and has a prestigious trip to Shanghai Liyuan.

Lin Zixuan is here to choose the actors of Sun Wukong.

The protagonist of "The Great Trouble in Heaven" is Sun Wukong. As long as you find a suitable actor, it doesn't matter other supporting roles.

However, it is difficult to find Sun Wukong's actors. It takes several years or even decades to play the monkey vividly. In this way, he can only turn his attention to the Liyuan.

On the opera stage during the Republic of China period, Sun Wukong opera, commonly known as "monkey opera", was very popular.

Monkey opera is a special variety of Peking Opera martial arts dramas, with only one protagonist: Sun Wukong.

Drawing monkey faces and movements are also specially designed to imitate monkeys. In order to express Sun Wukong's monkey nature and magic power, there are also a large number of difficult movements and patterns, which are almost acrobatic and juggling.

It has its own genre, divided into Beijing School and Shanghai School.

The "Beijing Monkey Play" represented by Yang Xiaolou is mainly "An Tianhui", "Shui Curtain Cave", "Poyang Lake" and other shows, focusing on the work style and demeanor.

In Sun Wukong's appearance design and action performance, he paid great attention to grasping the character of this mythological character, striving to "similarity" and gradually reducing "similarity".

Cixi liked Yang Xiaolou's monkey dramas very much back then. Cixi once asked Yang Xiaolou how she could act so well. Yang Xiaolou replied that I treated monkeys as humans rather than humans as monkeys.

There are quite a lot of actors in "Shanghai Monkey Show".

This has been honed in the performance market where competition in Shanghai has been fiercely competitive for a long time, but there are not many real famous artists.

Only Gai Jiaotian’s monkey show can be compared with Yang Xiaolou.

Gai Jiaotian is a famous martial artist in the Southern School. He has solid basic skills and agile skills. He focuses on the beauty of shape and dynamic beauty in his performance. He also incorporates martial arts skills into martial arts performances, creating the "Zhang School Monkey Play".

The Shanghai monkey show represented by Zhang Paihou focuses on delicacy and dexterity.

He created "Journey to the West" on the Shanghai stage, from the birth of Wukong until he was crushed to the foot of the Five Elements Mountain.

Among them, he played double whips in "Water Curtain Cave", and won by surprise, and had a skillful skill.

The first person Lin Zixuan looked for was Gai Jiaotian. After all, everyone is in Shanghai, which is more convenient.

Gai Jiaotian was quite hesitant after reading the script.

If it is performed on stage and Lin Zixuan is filming below, it doesn't matter. He can perform well, but this time the movie is not performed on stage, but requires a life-like performance and a sound recording.

This made him difficult.

Lin Zixuan paid a high salary, but he was worried that he would not act well, which would ruin his reputation. For the sake of safety, he refused.

Lin Zixuan knew that these famous Peking Opera artists were all concerned about the art form of movies and were unwilling to take the risk of trying it.

But the sensational effect caused by inviting an unknown actor to play Sun Wukong is completely different when asking a famous Peking Opera actor to play Sun Wukong, so he would rather pay more than hire a famous person.

In particular, it also involves whether Sun Wukong can be played well, and the kung fu of famous actors is guaranteed.

It was unrealistic that he came to meet Yang Xiaolou to play Sun Wukong.

One is that Yang Xiaolou is from the north and cannot stay in Shanghai all the time.

It takes at least a few months to make a movie, and no one can afford it.

In addition, Yang Xiaolou is so famous that he is in his forties. It’s not that Lin Zixuan can’t afford to invite him, but that if something happens during the shooting process, he will be difficult to explain.

He wanted to ask Yang Xiaolou to introduce a monkey opera expert who should not be so famous, but he must have good skills in monkey opera.

It would be even better if it was Yang Xiaolou’s disciple. You can use this as a gimmick at that time, and I believe it will attract many audiences.

Yang Xiaolou is from Huaining, Anhui Province. He came from a family of Liyuan. His father, Yang Yuelou, is also a famous Peking Opera artist.

He, together with Mei Lanfang and Yu Shuyan, was known as the "Three Sages", and was a representative figure in the Peking Opera world, enjoyed the reputation of "Master of Martial Arts", and was the founder of Yang School Art.

He is quite kind and spent a lot of time reading the script of "Making a Fight in the Heavenly Palace" and listening to Lin Zixuan talking about shooting audio movies, showing a very interested appearance.

Lin Zixuan is really afraid that he will act by himself.

Shooting movies is different from stage performances, and there are certain dangers.

For example, those flying around may be just a gesture on the stage, but when shooting a movie, you need to hang it with a rope and sway in the air, which is easy to have accidents.

Fortunately, Yang Xiaolou did not make things difficult for Lin Zixuan, nor did he introduce his own disciple, but introduced another person.

This person is called Zheng Faxiang. Unlike other martial artists, he specializes in monkey plays.

Like Gai Jiaotian, who is called "Jiangnan Living Wu Song", shows that he played the best Wu Song, and the monkey play is just a cover.

Yang Xiaolou's best acting is "Changbanpo" and "Farewell My Concubine". He is also proficient in monkey dramas, but he is not a professional actor.

Only Zheng Faxiang has been acting as a monkey opera with his father since childhood. He played the role of a little monkey on the stage when he was eleven years old. Later, his father died and forced to make a living, he acted as a martial arts troupe in the Peking Opera troupe of Manchun Tea Garden, Hankou.

Lin Zixuan in Shanghai is not familiar with this person, but Yang Xiaolou is in the north and is a person in the circle, so he naturally knows Zheng Faxiang.

Zheng Faxiang was good at acting monkey opera and had unique performance skills, thus creating the "Zheng School" in the Shanghai Monkey Opera.

In later generations, Liu Xiaolingtong, who played Sun Wukong, was also a family of monkey operas. His father watched Zheng Faxiang's monkey opera when he was young and gradually became the Monkey King of the Southern School.

Therefore, the inheritance of monkey opera has lasted forever.

Lin Zixuan believes in Yang Xiaolou's recommendation. Zheng Faxiang is not very famous and has a relatively difficult life. Inviting him to film "The Great Trouble in the Heavenly Palace" should be the best choice.

With the candidate for the actor, Lin Zixuan started to think about props.

Some people say that without computers during the Republic of China, there was no way to achieve special effects, because they did not understand traditional opera.

In traditional opera, there is a type called mechanism set, which is characterized by expressing bizarre scenes and rapidly changing scenes. It is mostly used in detective dramas, martial arts dramas and magical dramas.

The first to use the institutional setting was the new stage in Shanghai, and the mythological drama "Living Buddha of Jigong" was staged.

If you may not have an intuitive impression of these, then take "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" as an example.

Qiu Qianren is known as a floating iron palm, but his brother Qiu Qianzhang does not have such skills, but he can still fool people.
Chapter completed!