Staging a comeback

Beijing Fenglei Peking Opera Company was on the verge of extinction in 2001, but it has had a dramatic reversal of fortune thanks to its president

When Song Yan was offered the opportunity to become the president of Beijing Fenglei Peking Opera Company in 2001, he was about to leave the company.

"It was a tough decision to make," recalls Song. "The situation of Peking Opera was bad. Like many traditional art forms, it faced decline."

"We had few performances and struggled to survive," the 53-year-old says. "Everyone in the company tried to figure out other ways make a living, including me. But the opportunity of being the president of the company was too tempting. I have such a deep connection with the company and I didn't want to watch it die."

Having joined the company when he was 12, he felt he had to take the job. But on his first day as president of the company, he was forced to borrow 200,000 yuan ($29,632) from the local government to pay the company's debts. To change the opera company's fortunes, he led the actors in giving nearly 800 performances in 15 months.

Sixteen years later, the company has not only survived, it is also one of the best-known Peking Opera companies in the country, staging about 600 shows a year. It has also toured more than 20 countries, such as the United States, Japan and Australia.

But the ambitious president wasn't content to rest on his laurels, and he tried to think of ways to expand the company's audience. His original tragic drama, titled Wang Zi, was one of his most successful moves in recent years.

The show, which premiered in October 2015, tells the story of a father and his adoptive son against the backdrop of a Peking Opera troupe in Beijing from the 1930s. It has been staged nearly 50 times across China.

The title refers to a piece of cloth, which is tied around a Peking Opera performer's head before they put on the heavy head accessories.

"There is a department in Peking Opera troupes called kui xiang, and the people who work for that department who take care of all the head accessories and help the actors tie the piece of cloth around their heads before a performance are called xiang guan. It requires years of experiences because the piece of cloth has to be bound to the head very tightly so that the heavy head accessories won't fall off when performing. But it cannot be too tight because it would be really painful for the actors," says Song.

Song's father worked as a xiang guan his whole life and Song spent his childhood backstage with him.

"The audience just see the glamorous performances onstage, they rarely know what is involved behind the scenes. With this drama, I wanted to tell the stories of the people backstage," says Song.

Working with actors from the National Theater of China and the Central Academy of Drama, Song plays the leading role of Qiuzi, a broke and depressed businessman, who happens to find an abandoned baby while trying to commit suicide. There is a wang zi lying beside the baby, which makes the character guess that the baby comes from a Peking Opera troupe. Although he fails to find the baby's parents, he starts working in the kui xiang department of a troupe and the child is trained as a Peking Opera actor.

"It was an idea that had been lingering in my head for about three years before I finally wrote it down in 2015," says Song, who was born in Beijing and started learning Peking Opera performance at the age of 6. "What I wanted to do was introduce Peking Opera to young audiences in a way they could enjoy. Dramas in small theaters are now popular with young Chinese, which inspired me to combine Peking Opera with drama."

However, he knew nothing about drama and theater. It was his son, who had learned Peking Opera in his childhood and who was now a drama director, who became his teacher, helping him to interpret the traditional art form in a contemporary way.

"It was really challenging for me, a Peking Opera actor, to do drama. I spent months practicing how to walk and talk onstage since it's totally different from performing a Peking Opera role, which requires powerful and exaggerating movements and facial expressions," says Song.

"We had lots of discussions, even arguments, during the rehearsals. But my father is open-minded and he learned quickly," says his son, 26-year-old drama director Song Tianshuo, who graduated from the Central Academy of Drama with a major in directing.

Wang Zi, will be staged at Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center from July 31 to Aug 6 to mark the occasion of Beijing Fenglei Peking Opera Company's 80th birthday.

Formerly known as Min Le She, the company was founded by its first president Zhang Qi and Peking Opera actor Liang Yiming. It was renamed Fenglei Peking Opera Company in 1971.

After a successful tour of the drama in Taiwan in April 2016, Song Yan started preparing a second drama in what he plans to be a trilogy.

The drama titled Ke Si Jian Yi is about the people who rented costumes to Peking Opera troupes during the 1930s. It will make its debut on Nov 2 and 3 at Mei Lanfang Grand Theater in Beijing. He is now preparing the third drama, which about the life of a Peking Opera actor.

"The first drama is a tragedy and the second is a comedy. Both of them tell the backstage stories of Peking Opera. The third drama will focus on a Peking Opera actor who goes through many hardships but still fails to make it as a successful artist," says Song Yan. "There are many people in Peking Opera troupes hoping to become stars onstage but only a few can make it. But that doesn't mean those people, who don't become stars, are not good actors. I want to dedicate the third drama to these performers."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn