What is a drama sketch?

Dramatic sketch is a kind of drama, and it is a new dramatic art form that rose in China in the early 1980s. It is short and pithy, lively, close to life, flexible in performance, and deeply loved by the audience. Nowadays, with the changes of the times, it has become an important part of popular culture. It not only has traditional stage and performance, but also has the characteristics of modern interest, popularity and flexibility. To this end, we discuss its modernization trend from the following two aspects.

First, the modern development of drama sketches

The history of China's plays can be traced back to songs and dances that reflect the production of agriculture and animal husbandry in primitive society. It experienced the "Nuo You" in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the "Hundred Dramas" in the Han Dynasty, the "Leader" and "Joining the Army" in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the "Joining the Army" in the Tang Dynasty, the scripts in the Song Dynasty and the zaju in the Yuan Dynasty. The appearance of Yuan Zaju marked the beginning of the glory of China traditional opera. It is a form of expression that organically combines songs, guest songs, dances and performances, and makes some provisions on the connotation of today's drama. On this basis, people tried drama, opera and dance drama, and combined western drama with eastern drama, thus resulting in a modern understanding of drama: drama is a comprehensive art centered on performance, which combines artistic factors such as literature, art, music and dance. Dramatic sketches are developed from the "element training" of training actors. The "drama sketch" mentioned by stanislavski, a Soviet dramatist, is also a training method to cultivate the psychological quality and imagination of actors. Later, its dramatic factors were strengthened, its social implications were expanded, and its formal skills were constantly enriched, which became today's "drama sketch".

From 1984 Spring Festival Evening "Eating Noodles", China drama sketches ushered in a prosperous period. As a result, many excellent sketches such as Eating Chicken, Selling Mutton kebabs, Investigating Actors, Super Guerrilla, Blind Date and Under the Lotus Tree have entered people's lives. Today's drama sketches such as shoeshine, so loading, crossing the river, red sorghum model team, yesterday, today and tomorrow, kidnapping, selling cars, kung fu and so on. It has become the label of the times, which makes people feel embarrassed. For example, the language in these sketches: "Idle arms are uncomfortable" and "force me to be rough"; "In fact, they are all grabbing cabbage!" ; "You have nothing to eat or drink, and you still stink"; "What are those smelly layers doing? Who reported the train ticket when you came? " ; "Big head and thick neck, not rich." ; "This is an anti-fraud hotline" and so on. It can be seen that the development of drama sketches is closely related to the content of social life. The appeal, popularity and flexibility of drama sketches are reflected in the popularization and visualization of these languages.

The modern taste of drama sketches makes drama sketches intercept a fragment, a moment, a scene, a joke and even an action of life, and see the big picture from the small and reflect profound content. As mentioned above, any sketch is like this. "Eating Noodles" reveals that people who eat more and occupy more in violation of regulations can only eat their own fruit. Common sense of life is the truth of life; "Super Guerrilla" reproduces the sad life of the traditional thought of preferring sons to daughters, reminding people how stupid it is not to pay attention to their quality of life; "Blind Date" and "Under the Lotus Tree" reflect the social problems of the elderly longing for sunset love and praise the new social trends; Shoe Shining and Packaging in this way seize the new social fashion and warn people what is true, good and beautiful and what is false, evil and ugly in a humorous and ironic way. The model teams of "Crossing the River" and "Red Sorghum" yesterday, today and tomorrow reproduce the new concept of love, aesthetics and concern for state affairs of contemporary new farmers. A series of sketches, such as Kidnapping, Selling Cars and Kung Fu, reveal the loss of humanity in the spiritual field since the reform and opening up with magical language. In a word, these sketches are short and pithy, with profound connotations, inspiring and interesting.

The popularity and flexibility of drama sketches make the spatial form of their performances closer to life. It is meticulous about the requirements of performance conditions, and the fields, street communities and military camps are all its stages. This flexible performance form combined with vivid and profound content makes people not only have fun, but also have fun. Its centrality, timeliness and sociality make drama sketches a popular fast food culture and an important part of China people's Spring Festival, thus giving them some characteristics of "big culture". As the famous historian Qian Mu said: "Culture refers to the synthesis of human life in many aspects" [1] (P29) Drama sketch is a part of this "synthesis" and can not be ignored in contemporary drama literature.

Second, the modern form and creative tendency of drama sketches

With the development of drama, its forms are also different. From the content, nature and aesthetic category, there can be tragedy, comedy, drama, farce and so on; From the size of capacity and the complexity of structure, there can be whole drama and one-act drama; From the time division of theme reflection, there can be historical dramas and modern dramas; From the form of artistic expression, there can be drama, opera, ballet, opera sketches and so on.

China's drama sketches can be divided into drama sketches, drama sketches, drama sketches and so on. Opera sketch is a traditional opera in China characterized by the trinity of song, dance and drama. For example, Su written by Yuan (satire and humor, August 20, 2002). Drama sketch is a kind of drama sketch with dialogue as the main part and action as the auxiliary part. This is the most popular style of drama sketch at present. Such as Zhao Benshan and others' essays "Happy New Year" and "Kidnapping". Opera sketches are mainly based on singing, accompanied by dialogue and narration. Such as "Crossing the River" performed by Pan Changjiang; Judging from the artistic effect of drama sketches, there are mainly comedy sketches, tragedy sketches and tragicomedy sketches in China. Comic sketches such as Super Guerrilla. Tragedy and comedy sketches such as Under the Lotus Tree. Tragic sketches are not mature at present, and there are no typical representative works; Judging from the combination of drama sketches and other art forms, China's drama sketches mainly include mime sketches, cross talk sketches, TV sketches, children's sketches and puppet sketches. Pantomime sketches such as Eat Chicken. Crosstalk sketches such as "Idea Company" performed by Feng Gong and Niu Niu. TV sketches shot and performed by Peisi Chen, such as The Apprentice of Music. Children's sketches, such as Ceng Tao's Wonderful Decision. Puppet dramas, such as Monkey Training written by Huang Xijun, and Sketch of Divine Drama, etc. The creation of drama sketches has matured in these different practical forms, and its creative tendency can be summarized as follows:

First, focus on the hot spots of life, and see the big from the small.

French writer Hugo once said: "Drama should be a mirror that gathers images ... turning dim light into light and light into light." [2] (P372) This is the key to the success of writing drama sketches. At present, Zhao Benshan's sketches "Selling a Kidnapper", "Selling a Car" and "Kung Fu" capture trivial things that people are often unconsciously cheated in their lives, but they reflect many problems: for example, people's self-protection consciousness; People's own quality; The way of human existence; The weakness of laziness, selfishness and credulity in human nature; People's communication principles and other issues. The deeper content involves politics, economy, culture, morality, religion, philosophy and so on.

Second, the ingenious structure is unexpected.

Generally speaking, there are two structural forms of drama sketches: open and closed.

The open structure is to let the drama unfold step by step in chronological order, such as the blind date played by Zhao Benshan and Huang Xiaojuan; The closed structure is to write only the climax and ending, and show the most wonderful part of the event, that is, to show the "most pregnant moment" [3] (P 163). For example, the shoe-shining performance performed by Huang Hong and Wei Jian shows what happened at this important moment of the day, unexpectedly reflects the "two-faced life" of modern people, that is, the contradiction between the "I" with makeup and the "true self" without makeup, and reveals the life essence of "never changing from the beginning".

Third, grasp the language with distinctive personality.

The key to the success of drama sketches is the novel and profound theme, and the most important thing is the sketch language. Because of the short length of drama sketches and short performance time, the characters are generally about 30 minutes, or even 15 minutes. The characters are few and the background is simple, which requires the language of drama sketches to be colloquial, personalized and powerful.

Spoken language has two meanings: one is Mandarin that ordinary people can understand. The second is to speak a language with local characteristics. At present, the colloquialism of drama sketches is mainly based on local characteristics. The language styles of Southern Opera sketches and Northern Opera sketches are quite different, but they can arouse universal resonance, and the oral beauty of their sketches plays a considerable role.

Individualization means that the language of characters in drama sketches should have individuality, which is a special language in generality and cannot be imitated in life, such as "I miss Zhao Zhongxiang so much!" Yesterday, today and tomorrow. And "who reported the train tickets?" Our language has become a hint. Another example is "pull an egg, pull an egg, it comes from here!" " "I have learned all this knowledge!" And so on have become an "alternative" fashion language and spread widely.

Nowadays, the language of characters in drama sketches has penetrated into people's spiritual field and become a certain stereotype: the image of the blind, the language of the blind; The language of social idlers; God talks nonsense about the language of liars; The language of peasant entrepreneurs; The language of bureaucratic corrupt elements; The language of middle-aged and elderly people in love; The language of the elderly with modern consciousness; Social alternative youth language and so on. , can be seen in drama sketches.

In short, the modern development of drama sketches is getting richer and richer. Whether it is content, structure or performance form, it has the characteristics of quickness, conciseness, concentration and beauty that keep pace with modern society. It requires creators to go deep into life and seize the bright spots; Excavate the material and sublimate the theme; Mastering new expression methods and artistically reappearing that "point" in life, in Kafka's words, is: "In drama, when unrealistic things are realized in real time, they have the strongest influence on the audience. At this time, the stage becomes a periscope of the soul, illuminating reality from the inside. " [4] (P228) Then, dramatic sketches can make people truly "taste" the infinite meaning in the book, which is an image worthy of popular culture.