An artistic journey brings a Kunqu master
Print Edition
ZHANG Jun is thrilled to return to the newly renovated Shanghai Theater after his last visit more than 20 years ago.
This time, rather than as a member of the audience, the 43-year-old Kunqu Opera artist will present his 2017 Future Contemporary Kunqu Art Week here, celebrating the theater’s rebirth and the revival of Kunqu Opera.
With the Shanghai Traditional Opera School nearby, the new Shanghai Theater — the former Shanghai Cinema — is where Zhang spent most of his leisure time as a teenager.
“Those were the hardest times in my life with lots of tough training every day and an unpromising future ahead,” says Zhang.
As part of the opening season for the new Shanghai Theater, 2017 Future Contemporary Kunqu Art Week will present five Kunqu programs as well as two related lectures on April 7-16.
That includes four themed performances with highlights from classic operas featuring young men and women and clown’s roles, as well as Zhang’s original Kunqu Opera “I, Hamlet,” which premiered last year.
“There is quite a rich variety among the selected highlights, as we hope to present a more comprehensive beauty of the art,” he says.
Zhang says audiences will see elegant performances featuring young romance, as well as a story of two experienced beggars teaching a poor scholar how to beg.
Although widely recognized as the Prince of Kunqu Opera and a member of UNESCO Artists for Peace, Zhang had no idea of his career at a time when few people appreciated old stage arts 20 years ago.
“Just imagine how it feels to see only three people in the audience sitting there when the curtain raised,” says Zhang.
And that’s exactly what happened in the first few years after he joined the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe following his graduation. Disappointed, he spent four years singing for a pop band, which surprisingly swept Shanghai and won many fans.
Pop earned him more fame than Kunqu, and Zhang was unsure when representatives of a record company and the Kunqu Opera Troupe both apporached him.
“I cannot cut Kunqu out of my life,” he says. “It already became rooted in me after I started at 12,” says Zhang.
To popularize the art he loves, Zhang started a program of lectures and performances throughout Shanghai campuses and communities in 1998.
But universities did not respond actively at the beginning.
“The one-in-charge at one university said ‘please don’t come, as it would embarrass us both if nobody comes to watch’,” says Zhang.
Yet he persisted.
He gave more than 300 lectures on Kunqu Opera on campuses at home and abroad. He pioneered in crossover Kunqu works with different artists including Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun, violinist Charlie Siem and jazz master Bobby McFerrin, and thus expanded the audiences of the traditional art.
“I am so proud that about 60-70 percent of the audiences today are young people, even though Kunqu is an over 600-year-old stage art,” says Zhang.
While he needed to attract a new audience by first arranging interactive gesture imitation games in his lectures, audiences today can mostly follow his more in-depth explanations of the art such as the poetic lyrics, music and related allusions.
“The beauty of the Chinese language is deep inside all of us who take it as our mother tongue,” says Zhang.
“It can be awakened by poems just like the high-profile TV show Chinese Poetry Conference, and it can also be awakened by Kunqu originated from ancient poetry.”
In 2009, Zhang resigned from Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe and founded his own Kunqu art center in his name to pursue his dream of contemporary Kunqu Opera.
Apart from presenting classic Kunqu Opera plays, the center initiated a series of original works, including “The Peony Pavillion” in an ancient garden in Zhujiajiao watertown in suburban Qingpu District.
There was also the “Kunplug” concert combining Kunqu with elements of New Age electronic music, jazz and rock, as well as Kunqu Opera, such as “Blossoms on a Spring Moonlit Night” and “I, Hamlet” which address traditional Chinese values about life and death. Tickets for both shows sold out quickly.
As he grew with Kunqu, Zhang found a new calmness and ease with himself and his audiences.
“If somebody told me that Kunqu was so hypnotic 10 years ago, I would have been in a panic and eager to change. But if that happened today, I would calmly say that if you want to sleep, just sleep,” says Zhang, “Kunqu is rooted in the cultivated pleasure of a leisurely life. I feel satisfied if my art can help restore such a leisurely mood to the busy audiences of today.”
Date: April 7-16
Venue: Shanghai Theater, 1186 Fuxing Rd M.
Tickets: 380 yuan
Tel: 6418-7870
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