Chapter 5 Drama · Dance Drama · Epic Drama

The summer and autumn of 1967 was the golden season for the Red Guards in various colleges and universities in Beijing to start cultural activities.Several organizations in various universities have Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams to rehearse large-scale programs and perform in schools, institutions, factories and on the streets.For example: The "Long March" combat team and the "Red Flag" combat team of the Central Academy of Drama rehearsed three multi-act dramas successively: "Dare to Pull the Emperor Off His Horse", ① "Storm at the Harbor" and "Wind and Thunder on the Five Continents", once went south to Hangzhou , Guangzhou performance.

Jinggangshan, Tsinghua University rehearsed the large-scale song and dance drama "The Road to Jinggangshan" from August to September, and it will be performed on October 1.This play imitates the large-scale music and dance epic "The East Is Red".The whole play narrates the battle history of Tsinghua Jinggangshan, which has a distinct "local" color.There are 200-300 actors in the whole play. In addition to students from Tsinghua University, students from the Central University for Nationalities, the School of Geology, Beihang University (local organization), and the High School Affiliated to Tsinghua University participated in the show.The stage design and lighting set reached the highest level at that time. For example, the slide projection was able to show the light of Chairman Mao's head.There is such a dance: A student who was falsely accused of being a "scumbag" by the "theory of blood" insisted on wearing Chairman Mao's badge in spite of the oppression and humiliation of the old Red Guards who followed the bourgeois reactionary line. He was taken down by the old Red Guards, wore it in his underwear for the second time, was also found and taken away, and was beaten. For the third time, he resolutely pinned the badge on the skin and flesh of his chest. The old Red Guards of the route".The play was performed in various universities in Beijing at that time.

From May to June 1967, the Beijing Middle School Red Guards "Four and Three Factions" jointly rehearsed and performed a large-scale song and dance epic drama "Long Live the Victory of Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Line" (referred to as "Route"). This play was created to commemorate the first anniversary of the publication of the "First Marxist-Leninist Big-Character Poster" by Nie Yuanzi of Peking University and other seven people.Its main contents are: Prelude - "May 16 Notice"; Destroying the Four Olds; The "Cultural Revolution" is heart-to-heart; the resumption of classes creates a revolution (added later); carry the "Cultural Revolution" to the end!Wait a total of eight or nine games.

Main planning, editing and creation units: Red Guard organizations such as the High School Attached to Beijing Institute of Technology, the High School Attached to Tsinghua University (main body of creation), and 101 Middle School (main body of stage design and stage work).The main participants in the organization were more than a dozen middle school Red Guards from the above three middle schools. The schools participating in the performance are: High School Attached to Tsinghua University, Middle School Attached to Teachers College, Middle School Attached to Renmin University, Middle School Attached to Agricultural University, No. Architectural Engineering College), Industrial College (now Polytechnic College) Attached Middle School.

main creative staff.Dance: Hu Lian (female, high school attached to Tsinghua University), Shao Yuan (female, high school attached to Normal University), Yang Jun (fifth middle school), Nan × (101 middle school), Guo × (middle school attached to Agricultural University), Zhang × (female, high school attached to Tsinghua University) , Zhang XX (Jinggong High School) and so on. Music design: Chen ×× (No. 101), Yu ×× (No. 101), Wang Yutian, (composer, music teacher at Tsinghua High School, and the song "I want to make a revolution with Chairman Mao" in this dance drama is for him Spectrum).

Lead singer: Wang XX (female, a school in Fengtai District). Band: Ma × (101 Middle School), Zhu ×× (Tsinghua High School) Stage beauty: Gong XX (Jinggong Middle School). There are about five or six hundred performers in the whole play, and the scale is grand.Dance, chorus, and band each account for about 180 people.There are seventy or eighty dancers in the prologue alone.Later, the crew was downsized, and there were still two or three hundred people performing. The bands included folk bands from No. 5 Middle School (very famous at the time) and western bands from various schools.In addition to the music composed by Teacher Wang Yutian and Zhu X (female, middle school attached to Renmin University, the song "We and the Central 'Cultural Revolution' Heart to Heart" is composed in this play), the large-scale music and dance epic "Dongfanghong" is also used. Some revolutionary historical songs in the book, such as "Song of Peasants", were rewritten and used.The conductor is a middle school student from the High School Attached to Tsinghua University.

The creative material of this play is mainly from the typical deeds of Wu Qinghua, a girl from the "Four and Three School" in the High School Attached to Beijing University of Technology.The old Red Guards made her hang herself, and she said, "I still want to make revolution with Chairman Mao!" Taking this as an opportunity to create, the whole song and dance was composed.During the rehearsal, Wu Qinghua once went to the rehearsal field to tell about his experience of being persecuted and his resistance struggle, and encouraged everyone to make this play well (later, Wu became one of the main persons in charge of the middle school Red Congress).

Many actors in the film crew have been persecuted.Yang Aiyun (Middle School Affiliated to Tsinghua University) had good academic performance before the "Cultural Revolution" and was a class leader. At the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", he was labeled as a "revisionist black seedling", detained in the school and not allowed to go home.Unable to bear the humiliation, he ran to the railway to commit suicide, ran towards the train, and shouted "Long live Chairman Mao!" A student from Tsinghua University pulled him off the railway track, and the train passed by and knocked off Yang Aiyun's two fingers, and his face was bruised. It was scraped to pieces, and then the skin from the thigh was used for plastic surgery.

Cai X played the role of an old Red Guard thug in the play. He was once beaten badly because he did not agree with the "Couple" on bloodlines. Because everyone has a similar experience, the actors are very involved in rehearsal.In a fight against Wu Qinghua, Cai X used it for effect. For the sake of authenticity, he really used a belt to smack his own arm.Hu Lian had the gesture of being pushed and shoved on the ground. In order to look like it, she actually fell on the concrete floor.Some students had stiff arms and legs, couldn’t dance well, and wanted to retreat, so someone gave a speech with tears in their eyes: “We are not singing and dancing, we are fighting!” More than 30 actors slept on the bunks in a classroom, and they found their own clothes. Make props and help the kitchen cook.

Yang Jun, who participated in the performance and creation of this repertoire, introduced the rehearsal process of this large-scale dance drama.Yang Jun played the leading dancer of the "Dance of Seven" in "The Red Guards Miss Chairman Mao" in the first performance.It took less than a month for the whole play to start planning, rehearsal and official performance.All the staff gathered in the chemical engineering school, rehearsed in separate scenes at the same time, created while directing, and then assembled.During the rehearsal process, the "Four and Four Schools" of the Chemical Engineering School gathered dozens of people from the "Four and Four Schools" from other schools, all of whom were big and round, to attack the Chemical Engineering School. The two sides had a fight and even used the fire hydrants.So the whole crew moved to the Construction Engineering School to continue rehearsing.

Yang Jun and Hu Lian are the few people in the crew who have learned dance.Yang Jun is a member of the dance team of Shijingshan Children's Palace and the captain of the middle school dance team.Hu Lian also has the foundation of "children's skills".They became our teachers. The entire rehearsal schedule was very tight, with 500 people rehearsing day and night.On May 29th, less than a week before the performance, the "August 18 Interview" has not yet been scheduled. The creators gathered on the steps in front of the cafeteria to discuss, and finally decided to use a red chasing light. Shake to the front of the stage, and then shake from the right side of the stage to the left side of the stage.The red light symbolizes Chairman Mao, and all the Red Guards follow the light and cheer and jump, shouting: "Long live Chairman Mao!" A whole long scene is played by the "Red Guards" themselves (most of the actors have been inspected by Chairman Mao), accompanied by the Square recording and Dongfanghong's music have achieved a moving and ideal effect. On the day of the rehearsal in the large cafeteria of the Construction Engineering School, the entire cafeteria was filled with Red Guards from the "43 faction".The prologue was performed offstage because there were too many people, and the solo dance was performed on stage.The band and chorus took up half of the cafeteria.When Hu Lian threw the "hanging rope" sent by the old Red Guards to the ground and said: "Bah! I can't do it if you want me to die! I still want to make a revolution with Chairman Mao!", the audience applauded.The intermission recitations are performed by Zhong XX (Tsinghua High School) and Chen X (female, No. 101 Middle School). They are known as Xia Qing (announcer of China Central Radio) with male voice and Bai Huiwen (female announcer of "Dongfanghong"). ), the audience gave warm applause to the recitation.The atmosphere of the performance was very enthusiastic. On June 2, "Route" was performed at the theater of the Beijing Exhibition Hall. Five or six hundred actors and actresses walked from the School of Construction and Engineering to the Beijing Exhibition Theater after putting on make-up (the distance between the two places is 1.5 li).There is only one general supervisor of the stage, and each stage is in charge of each unit. One side goes on stage and one side goes off stage, and the scheduling of hundreds of people is not chaotic.The atmosphere in the theater was warm, and there was a chorus of voices on and off the stage, as well as applause and crying. "Route" became an instant hit, with more than 101 performances successively in the Capital Theater, the Working People's Cultural Center, the Beijing Military Region, and the Capital Iron and Steel Company. (At that time, the actors said that they had reached the number of 101.) "Route" has also been valued and praised by experts in the capital's literary and art circles.Zhong ×× of the National Ballet of China commented during the discussion: the performance is touching, the choreography and dance vocabulary are rich and original, and it is surprising after watching it.Many professionals gave special praise to Hu Lian, the main dancer in the play.In the large-scale song and dance drama "Sailing the Seas Rely on the Helmsman" later compiled by the Maritime Arts Troupe, the scene "Chairman Mao Comes to Our Warship" is an imitation of the performance of "chasing the light" that Chairman Mao received on "August 18" in "Route" The method shows the scene where the sailors meet Chairman Mao. After the performance of "Route", Wang Li, Guan Feng, and Qi Benyu, members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, watched the performance and put forward suggestions for revision.Some opinions were not listened to by the production crew, while others were listened to (for example: "Resume class to cause revolution" was added).The Central Cultural Revolution ordered the People's Liberation Army to be stationed in the crew, and since then the crew has become the "Route" propaganda team directly under the Capital Middle School Red Guard Congress. "Route" went to Zhengzhou City in Henan Province, Wuhan City in Hubei Province and Tianjin City in October.In Wuhan, when the crew (160 people) went to perform in Wuhan, they met the two factions of the "Million Heroes" and the "Workers Headquarters" to organize a fight. The train stopped at Xiaogan Station for several hours before finally entering Wuhan.During the performance in Zhengzhou City, the two factions fought in the theater. A rebel faction jumped onto the stage, and a spear flew up from below the stage, flew in through the gap between the actors and stabbed him, and fell into the orchestra pit. .After the actors were protected by a group and left the theater, they heard gunshots from the direction of the theater. On July 1, 1967, "Route" entered the "Radio Theater" and was broadcast live by CCTV. The song "Heart to Heart with the Central Cultural Revolution" was rebroadcast by China Central Radio Station many times. "Route" was performed until the end of 1967. From the winter of 1967 to the spring of 1968, the main creators of "Route" planned and created a large-scale song and dance drama "Song of the Anti-Japanese War".There are six scenes in this play: the prologue - the anti-Japanese war, crossing the blockade (from the Kuomintang-controlled area to Yan'an), large-scale production in the border area, learning Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong's works, Zaoyuan lighting, and going to the anti-Japanese front line. Participating creators are: Gong Nong (No. 101 Middle School), Chen ×× (No. 101 Middle School), He ×× (Tsinghua University High School), Peng ×× (Tsinghua High School), Teng ×× (Film Academy), Yang Aiyun (Tsinghua High School), Nan× (101 middle) etc. In the winter of 1967, four or five people, including Gong XX, Chen XX, Yang Jun, and Huang Dayi, started planning at Gong's house, and excitedly rushed to the house of Wang Yutian, a music teacher at the High School Attached to Tsinghua University. Wang Yutian expressed his support and agreed to be the compose.So it was decided that the screenwriter was written by Chen XX (101 middle), and the composer: Wang Yutian.Lyricists: Zhang × (Jing Gong High School), Huang Dayi (National People's University High School).Choreographers Hu Lian, Yang Jun and others, lead singer Yang Aiyun. The desk design of "Song of Anti-Japanese War" was completed in the spring of 1968, and it was quickly put into rehearsal and performed in June.The number of people participating in the performance was 140-150, which was later reduced to 100 people.During the five months, the performances were performed in various theaters in Haidian District, universities, auditoriums of ministries and commissions of the central government, and in Tianjin. There were 50 or 60 performances, which were well received and praised. In July and August 1968, middle school students began to be distributed in large numbers.When the propaganda team was about to be disbanded, the county magistrate of Xiaoyi County, Shanxi Province, who came to Beijing to recruit educated youth from the countryside, saw "Song of the Anti-Japanese War" by chance, and invited the propaganda team to join the team in Xiaoyi.At the end of October 1968, more than 30 members of the propaganda team (mainly students from Tsinghua High School, No. 101 Middle School, Renmin University High School, and Jinggong High School) decided to join the team in Xiaoyi, Shanxi.On December 18 of the same year, these 30 people sang the "Graduation Song of the Anti-Japanese University" and boarded the train to Shanxi to jump in line.