A stage play featuring the journey of young dramatists to find
meaning in their creative work will premiere at Chang'an Grand
Theater on Thursday.
Entitled Look Over Our Happy Life, the new play reveals
the young drama devotees' ideals and their struggles in a stressful
and competitive modern life.
The story starts with Hu and Die's ambition to create a "real
artistic play with deep meaning." However, the producer Shan
persuades them to work on a commercial show to add glamour to the
New Year season.
When they begin to rehearse, weird things happen one after
another: a hurricane strikes the city, the theater closes down, a
gas explosion causes heavy casualties, a mysterious man joins the
crew and so on.
The crew then face further trials and tribulations as they have
to battle deceit, snobbishness and other bad traits of human
nature.
The story of Hu and Die mirrors that of Shi Zhan, director of
the new play, and his friends.
"Does entertainment mean everything to life? Is it the only
reason we create a play to amuse an audience? No. The play answers
such questions and we hope the audience can understand this," said
the young director Shi.
But it does not mean that Look Over Our Happy Life is a
heavy play. The show is filled with dark humor and makes fun of
headline news and public figures from last year such as the Super
Girls competitors and the famous controversial Internet figure
Sister Furong.
Three popular TV stars including Suo Ni, Gu Yang and Wang Fang
will give guest performances in the show, briefing the top-10
headlines of 2005 in an original way.
Look Over Our Happy Life is the first of the theatrical
shows in this year's Happy-New-Year theatrical programme, a
tradition that started four years ago to lure people out of their
homes.
The first ever Happy New Year drama was created by a group of
students at the Central Academy of Drama. The comedy, entitled
Cui Hua expands on the lyrics of a hit pop song in 2001
and enjoyed tremendous success as the play featured a couple of hot
topics from that year.
Ever since then, student productions have kick-started the Happy
New Year dramas. In the years following the start of the programme,
the same cast performed an updated version of Cui Hua,
alongside other similar comedies.
Very much like the festival movies, they are funny, rich in
holiday spirit and the performers make every effort to amuse their
audience.
However, the crew has decided to change the direction slightly
this year. "Since we have now all left school and have gained more
life experience, we have found that entertaining plays should be
more serious and deep with a greater emphasis on social problems,"
said Shi Zhan, who performed the first edition of Cui Hua
and worked as assistant director of the third edition.
(China Daily January 9, 2006)
