Shaoxing Opera "Beautiful Home"

On November 19, at the closing ceremony of the 14th Zhejiang Drama Festival, Shaoxing Opera Modern Drama Beautiful Home won the New Repertoire Award. Sun Xiaoyan, the director of the drama, won the Outstanding Director Award. Shi Jiejing and Zhang Jingang, the leading roles, earned the Outstanding Performance Award. The festival lasted nearly four months and finally 4 Special Awards, 10 New Repertoire Awards and 34 Individual Awards were honored.


Director Sun Xiaoyan is a national first-class director of Zhejiang Kunqu Opera Troupe and a student of Shaoxing Opera Class 1980, who is well aware of Shaoxing Opera and has feelings for it. Beautiful Home is the second drama directed by SunXiaoyan of the Shaoxing Opera Theater, which continues her delicate focuses on the expression of emotions and lively style of directing. The drama presents a relaxed and smooth rhythm and was embraced  with hints of laughter and tears. The artists’ performance is full of personalities, and even the small potatoes’ performance is brilliant.


Shi Jiejing, also the winner of the Plum Blossom Award, stars Mei Yuting in the drama. This is a challenge for her to get involved in modern dramafor the first time and there is no model to be learned from, so she studied some similar TV dramas over and over again. And under the inspiration of the director, she found the feelings of the role, went with the rhythm of the drama, pondered the character and made adjustments over and over again. And finally, she succeeded in her performance.


The leading role Zhang Jingang, who won the Magnolia Award twice (the 29th Supporting Role Award and the 27th Leading Role Nomination Award), plays Shen Shuifa in the drama. The role of Shen Shuifa is an honest and humorous man who was grown in Shaoxing and it was the very first time that this kind of character appeared on the opera stage. Zhang Jingang made this character lifelike with his mellow singing and honest performance.


The creation and performance process:

Shaoxing Opera is a type of drama with both civil and martial art and is co-performedby males and females. It has a good foundation of modern drama, of which there is a lack of reflections of the present. For this reason, the staff in Shaoxing Opera Theatre began to plan the creation and rehearsal of the modern drama Beautiful Home in April 2018, which received the attention of the leaders from the Propaganda Department of the Provincial CPC Committee and the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and the support of experts. In October 2018, the creative idea and thescreenwriters and director were determined. Chen Weilong,famous local director in Shaoxing, and Xia Qiang, first-class screenwriter of the HangzhouFederation of Literary and Art Circles, worked together as screenwriters, and first-class director Sun Xiaoyanwas selected as the director. In March 2019, the script was finalized and actors and actresses went into rehearsal on April 3. During the rehearsal on May 15, experts from Beijing, Shanghai and Shaoxing watched the drama and put forward many valuable suggestions. The rehearsal afterward was promoted according to the opinions of these experts and the drama premiered at Shaoxing Opera Art Center on June 25. In mid-July, this drama was listed in the key theme support project for stage art creation of 2019 in Zhejiang Province, and the script was amended again according to the opinions of experts. On October 12, the drama Beautiful Homestaged in the excellent stage works exhibition in Zhejiang Province to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China at the Great Hall of the People in Zhejiang Province. At the end of October, the drama was revisedfor the third time according to the opinions of experts and audiences.


The drama Beautiful Home connects seamlessly with the real life in Shaoxing. By depicting the joys and sorrows of ordinary people, Beautiful Home reflects that the lives of ordinary people are getting better and better during the decisive period of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way.