The Artistic Tradition of Suzhou Pinghua

Suzhou Pinghua was formed at the latest in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties and reached its peak in the middle of Qing Dynasty, when a guild was established to organize Guangyu Society. During the reign of Xianfeng and Tongzhi, famous artists such as Yao appeared to comment on the Water Margin.

The artistic tradition of Suzhou Pinghua is very profound. In the performance, the third person is the tone of the storyteller to guide the narrative, and the first person is the language of the characters in the story to copy. Imitating the language behavior of the characters in the story is called "playing the role", the third person's speech and performance is called "table", and the first person's speech and performance is called "white". The confession is mainly prose, and some rhymes are also used, including praise, hanging mouth, introduction, rhyme and so on. The performance pays attention to creating comic gimmicks, and there is a saying that "Jue is the treasure of books". Because actors have different characteristics in language use and "playing roles", they have different styles and schools. If the speech is rigorous and the language expression is basically fixed, it is called "square mouth"; Improvise, have flowers at the root of the tongue, be good at improvising and change at any time to adapt to different audiences, which is called "living mouth"; Those who say predicative words like couplets are called "quick mouths" and those who speak slowly are called "slow mouths"; It is called "flattening theory" to say that you are good at expression and less role-playing. Its artistic development is rare for similar storytelling forms.