The clear creating purport of "Guo Feng" produced by the Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre: finding the origin and creating source from fine traditional Chinese culture, tracing the culture root, telling historical stories, Chinese stories and demonstrating Chinese spirit and value. Based on this, it seeks for innovation driven by returning to tradition, guarantees artistic quality by quintessence consciousness and reflects the roaring characteristic by elegant stage aesthetics and expresses profound patriotism.
Kun Opera "Guo Feng" derives from "The Book of Songs". Delivering traditional culture spirit, "The Book of Songs" has become the national cultural root as a classical literature work. Most of the works in "The Book of Songs" are written by anonymous writers except for an exception "Yongfeng Zaichi" with the clear record of the author, Mrs. Xu Mu, who wherefore became the first female poet in history. Kun Opera "Guo Feng" brings this female who died at the age of 34 by the artistic form of Kun Opera and comes close to this character by the creating consciousness of historical drama, recovers the composing process of the famous political lyric poetry "Zaichi" and makes the female who lived 2700 years ago in "The Book of Songs" vivid.
"Guo Feng" is a work with clear literature pursuit, and another try of playwright Luo Huaizhen to seek theater aesthetics starting from literature. Though with a clear theme, the work doesn’t stop at the level of seeking for historical resources but pays more attention to demonstrate the unique sense during the Autumn and Spring period, an important period for the formation and development of Chinese civilization and a period when Chinese culture prospered. The creation of “Guo Feng” reflects Luo’s intention of tracing culture root and spirit through telling the stories of the Autumn and Spring period. He wanted to explore and show the origin of national spirit through recovering the good and rare qualities at that time.
Kun Opera "Guo Feng" shows Mrs. Xu Mu's life and emotion track completely and accurately, combines patriotism and personal emotions, and tells a story dominated by patriotism and love logics. The playwright Luo Huaizhen seeks for technological cooperation starting from the realities of Chinese operas. As always, Luo not only promotes the literature value of modern Chinese opera through theoretical development but guides the trend of Chinese opera through creating practices. This time, he once again returns to the original intention of returning back to tradition, makes value expression and red theme coexist and creates an unprecedented level of aesthetics.
The stage design of “Guo Feng” governs the whole stage through literature and is of characteristic aesthetic pursuit for theatre. The whole designs pay more attention to visual expression rather than setting and decoration. The lighting serves for the theater space and psychological space and completes the stage rhythm by accident. General director Cao Qijing and director Xu Chunlan's overall stage scheduling is based on the principle of "poetic", such as the use of "soul yarn" in the second compromise, the traditional "road" in the third compromise, and the screen and silhouette in the fourth compromise. The use of these forms shows the adherence to the traditional Kun Opera performance principles, and also reflects the intention of innovating original works.
All these means and forms together practice the important "drama poetry" concept of drama stage aesthetics and the aesthetic concept "artistic conception" in Chinese classical literature and build those encounters and departures on the stage with light and simple aesthetic feelings.This is the charm of this work.
Translator: SHI Meiling
Reviewer: ZHANG Ruochen
