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Drama "Spring Mountain Like a Laughter": Healing the Soul with Art

May 22, 2024 08:28 | Source: Guangming Daily
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Original title: Drama "Spring Mountain Like a Smile": Healing the Soul with Art

According to statistics, by 2022, the number of patients with depression in China will reach 95 million, and the incidence of depression will be younger. At the same time, we are also faced with a shortage of mental health talent reserves and the general public's lack of scientific understanding of depression. Depression patients have become a group that needs urgent social attention. The play "Spring Mountain Like a Smile" is just a work focusing on the group of patients with depression. It presents the plight of patients with depression to the audience in the form of art, guides more people to pay attention to and understand depression, appeals to the society to extend a helping hand to patients with depression, and shows the healing effect of art on the soul.

The drama Spring Mountain Like a Smile is a typical "social problem drama". The "social problem drama" is characterized by presenting one or several prominent social problems on the stage in an artistic way. Through the character characteristics, character relationships and changes, story plots and development of the role image, the audience can get ideas to improve the status quo when they are inspired, so as to achieve the goal of "intervening in life with art". "Social problem dramas" first refer to a series of dramas in which Norwegian dramatist Ibsen described real life in a realistic way. His works such as Doll's House and Social Pillar are considered to be the epitome of such plays, revealing the problems in morality, law, education and family relations at that time. In China, during the May 4th New Culture Movement, there was a peak of creating dramas about social problems, and many excellent works reflecting social problems with artistic images and "drawing the attention of the rescuers" emerged. Mr. Lu Xun also wrote the article "How will Nora go after she leaves?" in allusion to the role "Nora" in the Doll's House. Combining with the actual situation of China's society, he discussed women's liberation, family concepts and other issues. Promoting social change with literature and art became a social craze at that time. In the early days of reform and opening up, China also emerged a number of social problem dramas, such as Primrose, Dedication Score and The Call of the Future, which attracted wide attention.

The play "The Spring Mountains Are Like a Smile" tells the story of Xiong Chunying's life and treatment experience from health to depression, from refusing to admit her illness to hospital inspection, from receiving treatment to finally recovering. The narrative is complete, the rhythm is orderly, and the character character, character relations and their changes conform to both the logic of objective facts and the psychological logic of the characters. The play artistically evolves Chunying's course of disease, and presents the cognitive and emotional value of the play while completing the narrative loop - how to prevent, accompany and heal depression patients is the most noteworthy issue.

The play focuses on showing character changes through details. At the beginning, what was presented to the audience on the stage was the scene of a harmonious life of three people in a family. The courtyard, bedroom, bed, room layout and lighting, color, etc., fully showed that parents take care of their daughter's life in detail, and also showed that depression may appear in anyone who looks sunny and optimistic. The goldfish in Chunying's aquarium has obvious symbolic significance: although they are beautiful, they are all stuck in their limited world like Chunying. When her mother died, her love was frustrated, her workplace was frustrated, and her father was in the pain of widowhood and ignored her daughter, Chunying's negative emotions accumulated over time, and she had no place to vent, and fell into severe depression. "Others are worse than you, why are you depressed?" "Life is unfair, and you are too selfish!".

The "Smiling Mountains" innovatively designs the puppet "Emotional Black Dog", which, as an external manifestation of depression, represents the changes in the protagonist's heart and runs through the play. The change of "Emotional Black Dog"'s attitude towards Chunying and the intensity of its erosion promoted the development of the plot. For example, at the beginning, it just barked at Chunying, which made her sleep and eat uneasy. Later, with its growing physique, its attitude became worse and worse, and Chunying almost collapsed, which reflected the deterioration of Chunying's condition. As Chun Ying gradually recovers, the influence of the "emotional black dog" on her gradually decreases, until finally the normal appearance of the pet is restored, creating an artistic effect of "silence is better than sound". Under the interpretation of the actors, its role played to the extreme - it bullied the soft and feared the hard, and showed different attacks according to the change of Chunying's mood. Although it was just a doll, it felt not only alive, but also full of changes. This design allows abstract emotions to appear artistically in front of the audience, increasing the appreciation and deepening the description of the character's mood.

Spring Mountain Like a Smile tells about social problems in the limited stage space and time, analyzes the causes of the problems, provides solutions, and highlights humanistic care and social responsibility. In terms of characterization, the play did not deliberately express the personality characteristics of each character, but naturally completed the characterization of "typical characters in typical environments" in the development and change of the story. As a good girl at home, Chun Ying has her own independent house, but less independent thought space. When the "emotional black dog" barked at her, she did not know how to relax, nor did her relatives and colleagues know how to accompany, which led to the "emotional black dog" becoming larger and larger, and the spiritual pressure on her becoming more and more intense. In the process of rehabilitation, the patient's self-awareness, the attentive companionship of the surrounding people, and the professional knowledge of the medical staff are all important contents that the main creators try to tell the audience, and are also the key reasons for Chunying's recovery.

According to research, most patients with depression are self-discipline people, who have strong sense of rules, high requirements for themselves, and are unwilling to take the initiative to vent their negative emotions. From this point of view, the ideological and artistic value of "Spring Mountain Like a Smile" not only lies in shaping Xiong Chunying, a "typical character in a typical environment", but also provides the audience with a "good prescription" for how to help the patients around them recover: life care is important, but spiritual companionship, artistic intervention, and beauty discovery are also indispensable. (Author: Wang Yanxia, Professor, School of Art, Beijing Union University)

(Editor in charge: Mu Shengyu, Zhu Hongxia)

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