Chapter 471: People in Ming Dynasty Can Appreciate Drama?
After the meeting, Zhu Youjian did not ask these senior generals to return to the war zone immediately. Instead, he invited them to the newly-built Grand Theater to watch the premiere of the drama "The Past at Fengyu Tower" to let them relax! Anyway, the army's
The deployment had already started two months ago. The generals were not in such a hurry to get there, so a delay of a day or two would not have much impact.
After preparing for more than half a year, the final script of "Once Upon a Time in the Wind and Rain Tower" has finally been finalized, the final filming and training has been completed, and it is time to meet the audience. It is quite laborious to make this drama. The script alone has been revised more than a dozen drafts and rehearsed.
It’s been waiting in line for more than six months.
A big drama is a big drama. Over the past six months, about 300 people have been working on it. There are more than 60 actors on stage alone. A lot of effort has also been spent on props and scene layout. The whole play is more than two hours long.
At the same time, the big scene had to be changed four times, and there were four or five small scene changes in between. This scale of preparation should be unprecedented in the history of Chinese drama.
In order to justify this effort and the amount of money spent, the level of the premiere was unprecedented. The Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and the top military and political officials were basically all present, which made the actors and actresses who were preparing backstage extremely nervous.
"Masters, Chief Editor Shen, I ask you to keep an eye on the backstage. You must perform the play well. His Majesty, the important ministers and generals are all watching in the audience, and there must be no mistakes." Ruan Dacheng said before the performance started.
He ran to the backstage to make the final explanation. As the chief director of the play, he was originally required to personally direct and coordinate the premiere backstage. But the emperor came to watch and his wife was watching from the audience, so she had no choice but to let Shen Menggen
He and Shi Yuwei shared his work.
To be honest, Lao Ruan was really worried about putting aside all this stuff and running to the auditorium to be an audience member. Although in actual practice, Shi Yuwei is the executive director, the problem is that Shi Yuwei has to play Qian Qi on stage most of the time,
He couldn't focus all his energy on backstage scheduling, so the actual director became the chief screenwriter, Shen Menggeng. Can a screenwriter do the work of a director? Ruan Dacheng didn't know what to do.
Zhu Youjian was sitting in the first row of the theater, next to him were Zhou Yanru, Huang Degong, a group of civil and military officials and relatives of the emperor, and behind him were hundreds of civil and military officials. With such a large formation, the entire theater was extremely solemn.
The curtain opened, and when the actors first entered the stage, they saw the extremely solemn and heavyweight audience below. Suddenly they forgot what they were going to do and froze on the stage!
After waiting for a long time, Zhu Youjian saw that several actors on the stage were still stunned, so he realized that they were out of touch. He quickly took the lead in applauding in the audience, encouraging the actors to continue acting. Encouraged by the applause, the actor finally came to his senses,
Let the drama begin!
A play lasted more than two hours before it ended. While watching the play, Zhu Youjian paid special attention to the audience's reaction, wanting to see whether the stage play form of drama could be accepted by the people of the Ming Dynasty.
Needless to say, after the play had been performed for a while, Zhu Youjian saw that the audience watching the play actually watched the play with gusto. Many of them were even fascinated by the plot in the play. Not so much.
Pay attention to image! It seems that this drama is well-organized.
"Once Upon a Time in the Wind and Rain Tower" is a drama with a very obvious value orientation. This kind of drama with strong value output is prone to boring content. This is what Zhu Youjian is most worried about. After seeing the reaction of the audience at the premiere
, he gave up half of his mental arithmetic, at least the premiere audience liked the play. The audience responded very well throughout the whole process, and the premiere was considered quite successful.
"President Ruan, I think the premiere of this play was a success. My dear friends and I watched it with gusto and were deeply moved. Later, you will accompany me and the Grand Master to the backstage to see the actors and tell them that the premiere was a success.
Congratulations. Next, I suggest that you take advantage of the success of the premiere to hold a five-day ticketed performance in Beijing, so that this play can meet more people and see their true reactions, so that you can truly know this.
Whether this drama can be recognized by the people, and what content needs to be adjusted, in order to continue to polish the drama and make it more mature."
The reaction of the civil and military officials does not represent the people. These guys may be pretending to cater to the emperor's taste. Whether a drama is successful depends on whether the audience is willing to spend money for it.
After condolences to the actors, Zhu Youjian called Ruan Dacheng again and once again gave instructions about the next ticket sales performance. He specifically explained that during the ticket sales period, anyone who comes to watch the show must spend money to buy a ticket, even important officials of the court! After the performance!
Finally, we need to make a real statistics on the ticket sales to see if this drama is popular with the people.
"I Have a Picture Book of Ghosts and Gods"
"Hey, Brother Deyi, have you bought a ticket to Fengyu Tower?" In a teahouse in the capital, a middle-aged man entered the teahouse and asked his friend if he had got a ticket to Fengyu Tower.
"I didn't get it! I rushed there early in the morning and queued up to buy tickets, but it was crowded with people! The tickets were sold out before I even got there."
"Oops! It's so damn hard to get tickets now. Tomorrow is the last day of ticket sales. I don't know if I can buy tickets to catch the last show. I heard people say that the show Feng Yu Lou is much more interesting than other shows.
, if you don’t watch one, you’ll miss out on the excitement.”
That's right, the old and young men in the capital these days are all talking about the play Feng Yu Lou. They can't buy tickets to watch a show, and they can't chat with anyone. There is no common topic. The Grand Theater can only buy six tickets at a time.
Seven hundred tickets were simply in short supply. The show became more and more popular day by day for five consecutive days. On the last day, people queuing up to buy tickets almost overwhelmed the theater's ticket window. As a last resort, the New Folk Drama Society had to make temporary adjustments.
Three days of encores!
Zhu Youjian was a little surprised that the play had such a good market response. After five performances in a row, the ticket price alone was more than a thousand taels of silver dollars. The people were still unsatisfied and wanted to perform a few more performances before giving up. According to this rhythm
, dramas can survive purely by relying on the market!
In fact, Zhu Youjian's ideas were influenced by inherent thinking. He thought that the Chinese people did not like to watch dramas in the time and space of later generations, not in the current time and space. The reason why there is no market for dramas in later generations is because they spread to China
It was relatively late. When it was introduced, more convenient entertainment methods such as movies and broadcasts had already appeared. Compared with these, the advantages of drama were not great. But in the absence of movies and other carriers, drama was not necessarily
There is no domestic market, but at least in terms of performance, it has more advantages than traditional dramas.
Compared with traditional dramas, dramas are more visually stimulating to the audience and have greater content. They are very attractive to the people of the Ming Dynasty who lack entertainment.