The Artistic Features of Zhao Benshan's Comedy Art

Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches have the following outstanding features.

First of all, most of Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches are ideological. Guided by the idea of entertaining, he dared to criticize the shortcomings of the times, lashed out at the ugly phenomena in society, and also mocked and admonished the shortcomings, weaknesses and bad habits of ordinary people in good faith. In the process of showing the lives of little people, some works publicize the wit, optimism and self-improvement spirit of ordinary people and praise their beautiful hearts. The most familiar work is "1 x 1=?" And "Mahjong Tofu". A township head ate ten chickens from a professional chicken farmer without paying. For such ordinary life materials, Zhao Benshan and others are unique. They refused to let the township head go to the stage to be tried by the moral court, and enjoyed his embarrassment and embarrassment with pleasure during the trial. Instead, the township head was pushed behind the scenes, and the couple who raised chickens tortured themselves at home, wondering whether they should take the chicken money, and took turns to play the township head and the debt collector, rehearsing the debt collection scene. This alone is enough to criticize the bad phenomena in the party style and social atmosphere. In the "duet" when the hero demonstrated the debtor, a strong feeling of sadness and helplessness strongly impacted the audience and was unforgettable for a long time. But Zhao Benshan was generous, and he grasped a more accurate and appropriate boundary in the process of criticism. Although the whole work is crucial, it finally leaves room for people who may abandon the old and build a new one, so that the voice of the township has long been heard behind the scenes. This should not be regarded as a forced "bright tail", but should be said to reflect the real life in which our party style and social atmosphere are improving. Of course, it is also an eager expectation and call for further improvement of the party style and social atmosphere. In my opinion, this warm ending will play a more positive role in awakening people's hearts and keeping the world consistent. Some commentators pointed out that it would be more meaningful and rich if only the voice of the township head sounded at the end without explaining the purpose of the night visit. This design is also very reasonable. Artistic expressions should be rich and colorful.

Mahjong tofu is a sketch satirizing farmers who are infected with gambling habits. For many cities and rural areas where gambling is on the rise, this sketch is a very targeted sketch. The sketch shows the serious consequences of gambling in the form of comedy, which has a strong warning significance. Associated with some sketches and burlesque, Zhao Benshan's sketches are excellent in the unity of content and form, because they are either satisfied with the whole story and lack meaning, or their ideas are straightforward and unobstructed. It should also be pointed out that Zhao Benshan's creation, although a comedy that cannot escape satire, can amuse but not abuse. His weakness for ordinary people is that he is friendly to others, praising their wit and intelligence for the disabled and showing their hardships and joys in life, instead of deliberately satirizing their physical defects for fun.

Secondly, Zhao Benshan tried to personalize the characters in his performance, making his works unique. Comedy can be a comedy of characters and plots, or a comedy of character. Generally speaking, the latter is more difficult for actors. Like what we usually call comedy sketches, the time is only ten minutes, so most of them are melodramas. But in Zhao Benshan's works, a character is created as soon as possible. There is no trace of affectation in this role, as if it had just come up from the audience in real life. Afraid of wolves before, afraid of tigers behind, expert households who are timid, addicted to playing mahjong, and owners of tofu shops who have no face and no skin are all shining with the brilliance of personality. Even the clever and cunning blind man who sells thirteen incense newspapers left a deep impression on people. A short sketch of more than ten minutes may make the plot clear and reflect the comedy effect, even if the goal is achieved. Zhao Benshan is not satisfied with this. He made great efforts to study the script, found the characters from the plot of the script, then grasped the characters, shaped them, looked for feelings, honed his language, and finally showed the plot in the movement track of the specific character of the characters. The characters at this time are not only symbolic carriers in a play, but living "this one"; The comedy plot at this time is no longer the plot in the original script, but the unique "behavior" of this unique role. This is the reason why Zhao Benshan plays unparalleled. Play the mystery of a living person.

Thirdly, Zhao Benshan's performance is full of life. Natural, stretched, leisurely, tepid, like running water. The blind man he plays is almost beyond the reach of others. The other characters he plays are also different in appearance and characteristics. This is largely due to his mature acting skills, but it is not without a track. First, Zhao Benshan has lived among the grassroots for a long time, and he has carefully observed and accumulated life, which makes him master his role with ease. Secondly, he strictly respects the "qualitative stipulation" of specific characters' personalities and captures their feelings, so he can "do whatever he wants without crossing the line". Even the arrangement of aria is doing what should be done, stopping at what should be done and moving freely. Thirdly, he absorbed some performance skills of the clowns in Errenzhuan and other local operas, and was able to communicate with the audience skillfully and directly. This constant contact with the audience has brought him a unique advantage, enabling him to attract the audience and create comedy effects with him. For example 1 10 1=? In the plot in which professional chicken farmers ponder the wording when simulating the debt demand, the characters directly discuss with the audience how to greet the township head. This seemingly soliloquize line has played a very effective role in reflecting the characters' psychology, shaping their character and shortening the psychological distance from the audience. This kind of "zero-mouth" work in duet, which seems to be out of the plot, can often receive unexpected comedy effects, which should not be underestimated.

Finally, Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches have distinctive local characteristics. Zhao Benshan is a comedian who grew up in the black land of Northeast China, so his creation and performance are full of the unique cheerful and open-minded sense of humor of the Northeast people. The language of his comedy sketches is northeast, and so is his lyric way. This simple, vigorous and fiery northeast atmosphere gives people a sense of reality and intimacy, which will infect and conquer the audience at a deeper level. At this point, the comic sketches in Northeast China have unique conditions, which not only retain the local flavor of the original raw soup, but also can be accepted by the broad audience in China because of its accent close to Mandarin. In contrast, the farce in Shanghai and Zhejiang is limited by dialects, and the loss of comedy information seriously affects the comedy effect when translated into Mandarin. As far as comedy is concerned, the language and expression with local characteristics have unique penetrating power, which plays a wonderful and indescribable role in setting off the atmosphere, shaping the characters and even forming the comedy effect. So I think the northeast flavor of Zhao Benshan's sketches is also a reason that can't be ignored.

The achievement and influence of Zhao Benshan's comedy art is an indisputable fact, so it is necessary to study and explore the successful factors on his creative path. The growth of Zhao Benshan has benefited from at least the following four aspects.

First of all, Zhao Benshan's comedy performance art widely draws lessons from and inherits the comedy tradition in China culture. From comedy consciousness to comedy expression, he studied with an open mind and devoted himself to it. More importantly, he is not restricted by law. He is talented, energetic and courageous, and can exert his artistic personality and create his own artistic world. In recent years, China's drama sketches are unprecedentedly prosperous, and comedy sketches are especially favored by the audience. Some commentators wondered: Why did the sketches of drama academies and drama troupes, as teaching tools and assessment methods, quickly become popular and swept the country? In fact, this is only one aspect of the origin of the sketch, that is, the channel introduced from western drama; However, I didn't see that sketch is an art with a long history and the most traditional art in the history of China's drama and Quyi. Not to mention the pre-Qin period, the "joining the army" in the Tang Dynasty is also a drama sketch and a comedy sketch. Although the drama of joining the army gradually matured in the Tang Dynasty, it actually began in the Sixteen Kingdoms period. After Zhao was corrupted by an official who joined the army, an impromptu organizer performed a "live newspaper drama", which is the origin of "joining the army drama". Interestingly, from the moment it came out, Joining the Army Drama satirized and criticized the corruption among officials at that time. It can be seen that the "road-carrying function" and "critical function" of comedy sketches also have their ancient traditions. "Joining the army" has been divided into roles. The teased character is called "joining the army" and the teased character is called "Canggu". One master and one follower, one village and one harmony, one wisdom and one stupidity, one subject and one discipline, and tacit cooperation. "Zaju" in Song Dynasty is a farce, which can be regarded as the inheritance and development of "joining the army" in Tang Dynasty. "Song Zaju" is not mature enough as a drama, but it is more than enough as a sketch. It connects geisha such as singing, dancing, rap and juggling in the form of comedy, and gradually forms a stable structure: Yan Duan, Zheng Zaju and San Duan. The style of "Song Zaju" is a three-stage structure, and the performance means are basically the same as those of Northeast local operas. We can't help but see the tenacious vitality of traditional excellent national culture and art in the historical development. Opera sketches characterized by "joining the army" and "Song Zaju" have been inherited and developed to varying degrees in local operas and some folk operas. The comedy factor in Sichuan Opera is particularly obvious. In folk operas, many plays are closer to sketches. The street drama "Put Down Your Whip" during the Anti-Japanese War and "Brother and Sister Land Reclamation" during the mass production movement in the liberated areas can also be said to be sketches. In this sense, our actors and audiences are no strangers to different forms of sketches. Zhao Benshan is familiar with the performance of duet in Northeast local operas, which has laid a solid foundation for his later comedy sketch creation and performance. In fact, the distance from duet to sketch is not far. Some duet jokes are good sketches as long as the performance is slightly changed and some are sung into dramatic actions and lines. Of course, for Zhao Benshan, learning is multi-channel and multi-faceted. Errenzhuan's comic consciousness and comic performance skills are only one aspect he has learned, especially in his comic sketches.

Muse, the goddess of art, often makes new tricks. He not only compared an original humble work of art to the audience in China, but also made it popular all over the country in just a few years. This art is a comedy sketch. It is impossible to explain it clearly to the audience if there are not a few wonderful comedy sketches at the TV party on holidays every year. Speaking of comedy sketches, people will immediately think of Zhao Benshan and his wonderful and skillful comedy performances. The symposium on comedy held in Zhao Benshan shows that Zhao Benshan has made admirable achievements in comedy performance.

Second, Zhao Benshan's success stems from his deep roots in the black soil of Northeast China. Comedy theorists and some viewers have noticed that comedy has an indissoluble bond with the northeast black land culture centered on Shenyang. In recent years, popular and influential comedy sketches and comedians are mostly in Liaoning area. Images such as Zhao Benshan, Pan Changjiang and Gong Hanlin are familiar to people. Tian Lianyuan, Yuan Kuocheng, Liu Lanfang and other famous Quyi actors are also active in Liaoning. People still remember that when the Gang of Four was just smashed, a cross talk craze swept across the country, and several wonderful jokes such as special life, short dream and fake sky left a deep impression on the national audience. These crosstalk also originated in Shenyang. The connection between the regional culture of Black Land and comedy can no longer be regarded as an accidental phenomenon. In fact, people only know that Northeasters are bold and provocative, but their unique sense of humor has not attracted people's attention, let alone research. Northeast China is desolate in a long historical period, and farmers in Shandong, Henan and Hebei have no choice but to leave their homes and run around in the face of great famine. The adventurous and pioneering spirit cultivated in making a living has made the spirit of the Northeast people form its own characteristics. Most of the strugglers who made the journey to Guandong were successful, and found their own position and rights on the black land. The winner's self-confidence and self-esteem are the best basis and conditions for a sense of humor. The works of northeast art, such as duet, storytelling, drama collection and storytelling, are permeated with the nutrition of comedy and full of humorous brilliance. It is in this black land that Zhao Benshan took root, flourished and produced fruitful results. The way of life, living habits, ways of doing things, communication customs, language characteristics and optimistic outlook on life of Lotte know life in Northeast China have all played a catalytic role in Zhao Benshan's sense of humor. The growth of Zhao Benshan was obviously influenced by this black land and its Kanto men.

Thirdly, Zhao Benshan has a profound understanding of life through the hardships of life, which is an important ideological basis for his stable and solid comedy style and generosity. Looking back at the comedic artists who have made great achievements at home and abroad, we can find a regular phenomenon: they have either experienced hardships and experienced the ups and downs of the world, or they have a deep understanding and experience of the lives of ordinary working people, so they know how to love and hate, love life and love ordinary people; Hate ugly forces, hate ugly phenomena. It is precisely because of Zhao Benshan's profound experience of ordinary people's lives that he can shine brilliantly in artistic creation. His conditions are also very good. Some elders in the family have some attainments in folk art to enlighten themselves. This is life's preference for Zhao Benshan, and it is also an advantage that we have to consider when studying the growth of a comedy artist.

Fourthly, the long-term close cooperation of comedy sketch creation groups with Zhao Benshan as the front desk and Zhang and Zhang as the behind-the-scenes writers and directors is also an important factor for the success of Zhao Benshan's comedy sketch. These stable collaborators in "Zhao Benshan" not only went to the countryside, but also received a higher literary education, which ensured the quality of their scripts. In addition, they have a deep understanding of Zhao Benshan, which can create conditions for Zhao Benshan to play its own advantages in script creation. Although Zhao Benshan's education level is not high, he has a good understanding and a solid foundation in life, and he can transform the script into stage art calmly and naturally. The successful cooperation of this creative group provides valuable inspiration for artistic creation.

So, is the creation and performance of Zhao Benshan's comedy sketch perfect? Of course not. In my opinion, there are two problems in Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches that need to be improved and improved:

The first aspect is that the ideological realm and aesthetic taste need to be improved, and efforts should be made to achieve elegant style and appeal to both refined and popular tastes. The content, technique and language of comedy works should be popular. However, the popularization of content and form should not affect the elegance of style and the profundity of thought. Fashion and vulgarity must not be confused. We use an easy-to-understand form as an aesthetic intermediary to ferry the audience to the other side of truth, goodness and beauty, instead of catering to the low tastes of a few low-level audiences with vulgar performances. It is not too difficult for a comedian to try his best to please a part of the audience. The difficult thing is to make people laugh gracefully, healthily and spiritually, and it also causes thinking after laughing. Our comedy should purify people's minds by mocking ugly phenomena, thus becoming a lamp to improve people's ideological quality and guide people towards truth, goodness and beauty.

There are two problems in the language and materials of Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches. One is that the actor himself and the actor enjoy each other by derogating from each other in language The other is that they take the life of the disabled as the background, and compare the physical defects and living habits of the disabled with those of ordinary people as the seasoning of comedy. The former problem is not very prominent in Zhao Benshan's creation, but it is also worthy of attention. For example, in his comedy sketch Thirteen Incense, there are things that complement each other and lack aesthetic feeling. In real life, proper self-mockery can often effectively shorten and eliminate the distance from the audience and improve their image. Lincoln's self-mockery in the parliamentary debate is a typical example. In comedy performances, it is permissible and common to use self-deprecating techniques. In crosstalk performances, actors and roles are often combined, split in two, mixed together, made a fool of themselves, and found burdens on themselves. Successful use of this self-deprecating technique can achieve a good comedy effect, but we should pay attention to the discretion and not go too far. Once exaggerated, ugly, deformed, or even devoted to the physical defects of several generations, it will lose its aesthetic feeling, which is beyond the moral and psychological tolerance of the audience and cannot make good people laugh. Even if there is laughter, it is not a very interesting reaction. A noteworthy problem is that comedy is based on the physical defects of disabled people and ordinary people. Can comedies and other dramas be based on people's physical defects? The answer is yes. We can easily find some bad guys such as spies, bandits and running dogs like the lame and cyclops from TV, movies, plays and other works. The audience has never raised any objection to the modeling design of this role. This physical design further uglifies the image of the villain, and also meets the appreciation needs of ordinary audiences to punish and retaliate against the wicked psychologically. In comedy works, people are also easy to accept the physical defects of those who act as representatives of bad atmosphere. Shi's cross talk "Little Shoemaker" was recognized by the audience. In the play, Ouyang, the child of an unscrupulous cadre, is portrayed as a stutterer. The "uncle" in Pan Changjiang's comedy sketch is also accepted by people. Can you show the physical defects of ordinary people? It is also possible, because people's physical defects are an unavoidable part of people's real life, and works of art cannot and should not avoid this reality. The misfortunes and struggles of ordinary people, as well as the spirit of disabled and determined heroes, are fully manifested through physical defects. Kong Yiji, whom we are familiar with in Lu Xun's works, finally became a paralytic who walked on his hands, while Ah Q had a scar. Because they all serve the author's overall aesthetic concept well, they have a strong aesthetic effect. Not long ago, I saw a sketch "Backlight" on TV, which reflected Lu Yu of two blind people. Because I can't see each other, I have a little misunderstanding, which is very human and describes the hearts of ordinary people beautifully. The blind man selling newspapers in Thirteen Incense by Zhao Benshan shows the optimistic, humorous and witty character of an ordinary disabled person, and also has certain aesthetic significance. But it is quite another matter to regard the physical defects of ordinary people as the jokes of comedy. This is an extremely old problem. According to Liu Xiang's Biography of Women, since Xia Jie's time, people in China have played tricks on people with dwarfs. Since then, it has been repeatedly recorded in Zuozhuan, Guoyu and Shiji, which is simply a history book. Coincidentally, some dwarfs are often used in the courts of some western dynasties to amuse emperors and ministers. This cruel phenomenon of class oppression and abuse, which uses physical ugliness to gain the happiness of rulers, still occupies a certain position in the initial aesthetic research. From the analysis of the course of comedy aesthetics, this is a kind of funny consciousness that laughs at human defects on the basis of imitating nature and showing human superiority. Comedy, as a comedy category, began to treat human beings like nature. This is, of course, the further maturity of human self-consciousness, which shows that people have begun to intuitively produce aesthetic judgments on beauty and ugliness from physical health and deformity. Although it is a shallow aesthetic consciousness born in the physiological sense, it is an important starting point. From then on, we will go deep into the spiritual world of human beings from the outside to the inside, and complete the self-observation of human beings, so as to find the defects of human psychological wisdom and courage in the increasingly strengthened society of ethics and morality, and complete the funny aesthetic category at a higher level. China advocated Excellence in ancient times. In the early days, he won the favor of his master with his ugliness, achieved "Excellence" and was able to "remonstrate". It has developed for a long time, and it is always a few witty and brave outstanding elements who can protest. Throughout history, it seems that there are many people who can remonstrate, because these people are handed down from generation to generation because of their profound thoughts and clever language, while a large number of people who advocate Excellence with clowns as their mission have no wonderful events to remember, and their deeds can only be erased. Here, we can also draw an important lesson: if our comedy works are only satisfied with vivid imitation in form and ridiculous in action, but lack profound ideological connotation, then we can't meet the audience's higher aesthetic needs, and we can't occupy a place in comedy aesthetics, let alone pass it on.

Looking through the ancient books, we can find that the Short Story of Kwasrini annas written by the Greeks in the 10th century A.D., that is, the Outline of Comedy, also lists "banter and ridicule people's mental and physical defects" as a part of comedy. However, congreve, an English comedian in the17th century, explicitly opposed to "laughing at natural disability, accidental sensory errors and old age and infirmity". He thinks it is "despicable in nature, and the audience is also so, so he wants to please people through disability or deafness or blindness, and hopes to make people happy by relying on what should actually be sympathetic." These opinions are undoubtedly correct. Aristotle believes that comity is ugliness that will not cause painful harm. The display of physical defects may not only hurt the kind hearts of disabled people. In addition, this practice also violates the original intention of comedy aesthetics. The irony of ugliness in comedy is to make people hate ugliness, avoid ugliness and seek beauty, get rid of ugliness and stop doing stupid things that have been satirized on the stage. Mocking about physical defects can't do this. The display of these natural defects can only make people flinch. It can't make the lame grow healthy legs again, nor can it make the blind see again. The laughter it caused was cruel and unclean.

The shallow phenomenon of winning laughter by showing the deformity or ugliness of the body has never stopped since ancient times, because there are always a large number of performers and appreciators of comedy art who stay at a lower aesthetic level. This kind of physical gaffe, which is difficult to perform and has obvious effect, makes some performers enjoy it. Comedy art, as a branch of socialist literature and art, shoulders the heavy responsibility of uniting, educating and improving the people. Facing the vast audience who have lived in socialist spiritual civilization education for 40 years, if they can't innovate in content, form, technique and ideological realm, they will inevitably be ignored and despised by the times and the people. The history of the rise and fall of cross talk in China is a mirror of great reference. In the old society, crosstalk was mainly performed in teahouses and stalls, and the cultural quality of actors and audiences was limited, so it was difficult to improve the style of crosstalk. Many cross talk jokes are quite vulgar, and there are even so-called "swearing" jokes. After liberation, many crosstalk performers felt difficult to adapt and confused under the new situation. At this time, under the leadership of the Party, eleven people, including Hou, Sun Yukui and Chang, initiated the establishment of the Crosstalk Improvement Group on June 1950. With the help of language masters such as Lao She and Luo Changpei, they sorted out old crosstalk and created new crosstalk, which changed the mental outlook of the actors and also innovated the image of crosstalk, thus making crosstalk an "elegant hall" and an art appreciated by the whole country. I think comedy artists can get a lot of inspiration from the reform history of cross talk. In terms of improving the ideological connotation and style of comedy sketches, I think it is very important to improve the writers and actors' philosophical, aesthetic and literary qualities and enhance their aesthetic ability. It should be noted here that the problem of Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches in this respect is not serious. I specially emphasize this issue because it is universal in comedy creation and performance and deserves attention.

The second aspect that needs to be improved and improved is the extensiveness of subject matter and the richness and diversity of expression methods, and we should strive for innovation and breakthrough.

Today's comedy sketches and other kinds of drama sketches are still monotonous in theme and expression. There are few original and wonderful sketches, and there are many generalizations and group imitations. By contrast, Zhao Benshan's sketches are much better. However, narrow themes and outdated techniques in his creation are constantly emerging. Now a prominent contradiction is that the audience's expectations for comedy sketches are getting higher and higher, and the requirements are getting more and more critical, while the good scripts of comedy sketches are few and far between. If a large number of comedians can be mobilized nationwide to write scripts in an appropriate way, so that comedians have more choices in scripts, then the prosperity of comedy sketches will gradually take shape. The "Ha Ha Ji" comedy sketch contest held by comrades in Guangxi, Tianjin and Shenzhen made a good start. If this momentum continues, it will certainly promote the creation of comedy sketches.

In addition to the theme, the richness and development of expression also need attention. The comic elements in many comic sketches are too thin and light, and the actors are busy running around the stage, eager to explain the plot. As a result, the audience saw through the "small conspiracy" of the whole play at the beginning of the sketch, and the rest of the time was spent commenting and finding fault. There are not many cases that can calmly bring the audience into the prescribed situation and successfully induce them to fall for it, thus causing strong laughter. There is a problem of acting, but if there is innovation in the expression method (including the way of sketch structure, the use of scenery props, the reference and transplantation of other artistic techniques), good works that make the audience feel refreshed will continue to be introduced. We can see that there has been a great breakthrough in the expression of drama. The success of sketch today is due to the extensive digestion and absorption of the means of expression in drama, local drama and many folk arts, and the development of sketch can not be separated from the study and reference of sister art. I think it is particularly important to learn from drama and cross talk. For Zhao Benshan, storytelling, duet, and even the Ji Opera developed from duet are still inexhaustible, which should be continued to be developed and utilized. Crosstalk art and comedy sketch are two very close categories. One of their common characteristics is that they must amuse the audience in a short time. Therefore, the structure, performance methods and skills of cross talk, and even the language of cross talk, are worthy of serious study in the choreography and performance of comedy sketches.

To sum up, Zhao Benshan's comedy sketches have made great achievements. His creation has brought great joy to the audience's life, and the audience's requirements for him are getting higher and higher. This situation presents Zhao Benshan with new and more arduous tasks. We hope he can make further progress and occupy a new artistic highland.