How is burlesque established as a kind of drama?

The burlesque is a popular comedy produced in the process of urbanization after the opening of Shanghai port, and it is a wonderful flower of Shanghai culture. Throughout the 20th century, the times witnessed the whole process from its birth to its development and prosperity.

In the late 1920s, there were five famous monologues in Shanghai. They are Wang He and Qian Wulian, Jiang Xiaoxiao and Bao Lele, He Shengdai, Lu Qiqi and Lu Xixi, Ding Guai and Zhao Xixi, and they are named Tuan.

With its strong lineup, Five Blessingg Troupe has put together more dialects, folk tunes, short stories and even various beggars' performances, and produced a new one-man show. Their combination has pushed the individual performing arts to a new stage of development.

By absorbing all kinds of artistic styles loved by the audience at that time, such as Peking Opera, Pingtan, folk rap, Sutan, cross talk, movies, interesting dramas, civilized dramas and other musical and dramatic techniques, the monologue actors greatly enriched their artistic skills, formed a performance system with speaking, learning, doing and singing as the main means, and soon formed a large number of mature reserve programs.

However, in 1930s, due to the prosperity of Tang Hui opera, Five Blessingg Group did not exist for a long time. However, the common experience of the actors is of great significance in the history of funny drama, because it is an attempt to unite a strong one-man show.

It makes the original scattered and fragmented monologue actors' reserved jokes and many secret housekeeping skills spread publicly in Five Blessingg Group. More importantly, the merger of Five Blessingg Group virtually created the necessary conditions for the formation of another art consortium and a burlesque troupe that was not controlled by the amusement park owners.

On the one hand, the birth of monologue shows that it is inextricably linked with folk rap. The funny trio is directly influenced by urban folk actors, and folk rap such as telling news and dizzy in the street is the artistic source of this folk art form.

On the other hand, monologues are directly bred in civilized dramas. Most of the early monologues were former civilized performers, and some jokes mentioned in monologues were also adapted from funny dramas of civilized dramas.

As Ou Yangyuqian, the founder of China's drama, said:

Jiang Xiaoxiao, Wang, Zhang, Lu Xiaowu, Yi and other actors in Shanghai's one-man show are all actors in the new drama, so burlesque can be said to be in the same strain in the performance of the new drama.

From 1930 to 1940, the development of one-man show entered its heyday. Not only the ranks of comedians are constantly expanding, but also the performance form has developed from single person to double-file and multi-file When they performed in major amusement parks and radio stations in Shanghai, the number of actors reached 100.

There are other monologues in this period, such as Bao Lele, Zhao Xixi and Lu Qiqi. Followed by the second generation of one-man show, such as Zhu, Cheng Xiaoting, Xiao Mimi,,,,, Wen Binbin and so on. Many of these people later became famous actors in burlesque.

In the early 1940s, the monologue turned into a farce. Some monologues and civilized performers organized comic troupes and gradually replaced the declining civilized operas.

At that time, Jiang Xiaoxiao, praised by later generations as one of the three funnies, joined hands with comedians such as Bao Lele, Yang Tianxiao and Zhao Baoshan. It absorbs the scriptwriting methods of different scenes of civilized dramas and strengthens the characterization. A bowl of rice, performed in Suzhou in the form of a series of press conferences, was adapted into the first funny drama and auditioned in Suzhou.

The play satirizes the boss who hoards rice, sympathizes with the hungry and has achieved good performance results. This is the first drama that developed from funny to burlesque, and burlesque began its rather tortuous development process.

A bowl of rice, a farce, is an anti-feudal drama. Later, Yang Tianxiao, Zhao Baoshan and others listed Tianbao Troupe with rice bowls and continued to perform in cities on the Shanghai-Nanjing line.

Two years later, Jiang Xiaoxiao and his partner Bao Lele returned to Shanghai, and organized a Xiaoxiao Troupe, which successively performed a new play "Wild Tang Dynasty" and "Blind Man Borrows an Umbrella" and "Baked Tofu Shop" adapted from the traditional one-man show, and gradually gained a firm foothold in Shanghai. In this way, the status of burlesque as a kind of drama began to be established.

After the establishment of Xiaoxiao Troupe, burlesque gained a large audience and many actors organized groups. At this time, the civilized drama declined further, and those actors who were good at performing short comedies, some of them chose the best actors to form comic troupes, and some put their skills and plays into comic troupes, which formed a great confluence of talents and plays. The new farce has inherited quite a lot of heritage from the civilized drama and greatly enriched itself.

In the 1940s, besides Xiaoxiao Troupe and Tianbao Troupe, a number of funny troupes appeared, such as Huating Troupe and Shinohara Happy Troupe. However, most of the troupes are loosely combined, and the actors are highly mobile and unstable. Nevertheless, burlesque has gradually grown.

Although burlesque developed from one-man show, it is different from one-man show. Because monologue is a rap art based on language, it belongs to the category of Quyi. However, burlesque is an action-oriented stage art, which belongs to the category of drama from Quyi to formal independent drama.

Early burlesque was rarely sung. For example, Jiang Xiaoxiao and Bao Lele are good at kung fu, and there are no aria in the play, which is very similar to dialect drama.

Besides Jiang Xiaoxiao and Bao Lele, other monologues are Bao Yifei, Cheng,. Their burlesque performances in radio stations, auditoriums and amusement parks, such as Fang Qing meets a girl and Meng Jiangnu goes through customs, all have some arias, and the tunes are ready-made pop songs or various operas.

At that time, the farce was mostly in the act system, and there were no lyrics in the rehearsal book, but the director designated additional songs. Usually the director sings not because of the plot, but because the actors sing well. In addition, there are no full-time lyricists in burlesque, but actors write or sing casually. This situation has been going on for quite some time.