Backstage

This piece presented The Drunken Beauty — one of the most famous masterpieces of Mei Lanfang, the founder of the Mei Style of Beijing Opera performance. The story is about Lady Yang Yuhuan, a rare beauty and the Emperor’s favorite concubine. Neglected one day by the Emperor despite that they had an appointment at the Flower Pavilion, the Beauty drank a lot by herself with an attempt to ignore the doomed future that she eventually had to face.

The girls in white shirts were top students selected from drama school. They were sent here, accompanied by their instructor, to learn from a Peking opera master. The master woke up late in the afternoon and they arrived early, sitting together then chatting with another pupil, the girl in red, who was enrolled in drama school afterwards. 

Unlike the drama school students wearing the nice uniforms, there was no shuttle service for boys from the old-type opera school after performance. Exhausted and tired, they met on the road and began wrangling with another.

Here shows the protagonist at the Peking opera Leopard excerpt from the Journey to the West. The highlight , also the most challenging part of the show is “tooth play”, an old and unique skill in Peking opera, like “ face-turning “ in Sichuan opera. 

The last piece of the interior illustration package of Time on Stage ( 八臂哪吒)—- Farewell to the stage. Chunsheng left the opera school due to a big mistake he made on the show. That night, he was in charge of helping Yun Chi bound his left arm to the back, who’s playing a soldier lost his left arm. However Chunsheng bound the wrong side thus the crowd laughed them off the stage. Here in the backstage, Chunsheng re-bound the arm, realizing it will be their last time sharing a stage.