I was referred to a movie on Sichuan opera which, by all accounts, showcases the type of opera troupes I've been photographing over the course of the past 30 months. For my "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora" photo book, I eschewed documenting the glamorous well-funded troupes in Shanghai and Beijing in favor of the small impoverished 'hand-to-mouth' troupes that perform in Hong Kong, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and New York City's Chinatown.
The movie 'To Live To Sing' (活着唱着 Huo Zhe Chang Zhe) is directed by Johnny Ma, and is about Zhao Li, the manager of a small Sichuan Opera troupe, who lives and performs along her troupe in a rundown theatre located in the outskirts of Chengdu, China. When she receives the notice of demolition for the theatre, she hides the news from everyone, fearing that it would spell the end of her opera troupe, and the life of her “family”. As she struggles to find a new theatre for them to both sing and live in, the characters start to realize that soemthing is amiss.
The backdrop of the movie involves the Chinese push for modernization which hits the town of Chengdu, and it paints a stark picture of a country wresting with itself over its past and future. The cast includes members of a real-life Sichuan Opera troupe, whose real existence is threatened by urban redevelopment and dwindling audiences, as well as the easy money performers can make by reducing their art to magic stunts for the entertainment of tourists in cheap hot-pot restaurants.
It’s not really necessary to know anything about Sichuan Opera to appreciate an archetypal story about a troupe of traditional artists in the twilight years of their profession.
The story synopsis is as follows: the colorful troupe, seen initially touting for customers in full costume in the back of a motorbike pickup truck, lives and performs in a ramshackle, warehouse-like space in a run-down part of a Chinese city that is in the throes of modernization. Bulldozers have already begun smashing through surrounding houses and properties, and the theatre itself has been served with a demolition order which stern troupe owner and matriarch Zhao Li is determined to fight. It doesn’t help that the company’s young star, Zhao Li’s strong-willed niece Dan Dan, is secretly moonlighting as a sexy nightclub torch singer, nor that the audiences who shuffle in dutifully to see the troupe’s nightly performances are all well past retirement age.
The director and camera shower love on the costumes, make-up, traditional wooden instruments, rough signage and makeshift props of this shoestring-budget world on the verge of extinction – and along with that stirring finale, this tender analogue devotion goes some way to making up for a story that is as thin as a stage curtain versions of themselves.*
* Edited and redacted from various movie reviews.
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