Original link: https://onojyun.com/2022/12/03/8171/
△ 337｜A first-person tragic story
During the period until the end of the year, people will always involuntarily enter into a “summary” atmosphere. I think this is the most traditional “function” left in human consciousness, because “summary” has two main meanings: one is to really summarize and make plans for next year’s life; It is to bid farewell to those leftover problems and leave them to the future self to deal with.
I wrote another article on “Tragedy Stories” before, which is “Tragedy Stories Not in the First Person” , but I still left a part of it at that time. There is also a kind of tragic story, even if it is someone else’s, after the person has heard it, he will automatically bring himself into it, and it becomes a kind of “similar to a first-person tragic story”.
The first class in a screenwriting class, or when you are introduced to tragedy, often starts with a similar question: What is the function of tragedy?
When I was acting as a substitute for the public class of the drama club, I used teacher Li Guoxiu ‘s “tragedy theory” to let the members of the drama club experience the method of using tragic emotions to drive the direction of the plot. This is the so-called “Three Files of Crying Drama”: the text file , that is, the text itself touches the hearts of the performers, and the performer is deeply moved; The role of the performer is himself, or his close relatives who encountered the tragic plot, and shed tears; and the experience archives , which have nothing to do with the text, are the performers’ need to cry at the moment, and call some painful and tragic experiences deep in their hearts, so as to This provocative performance tears viscerally at the moment.
Every member of the drama club will use these three methods to perform a “tragedy” again, so as to try to find the most suitable method for themselves that can quickly call up the sadness at the moment. After trying to “cry through the cookbook,” they tried another round, reading Macbeth’s classic monologue in Act V of Macbeth, when he learns of his wife’s suicide in a “nihilistic monologue”. This time, I did not explain the background of this monologue and the state of mind in which Macbeth said this monologue. It is up to everyone to feel the emotions hidden in the text.
The few people who have rehearsed “Macbeth” certainly know the background of this story, but they did not have too much emotion in that monologue, and appropriately expressed a kind of despair that is almost “sense of suddenness”. Desperation is the fact that the person involved knows that nothing can be changed, but he has to continue his struggle and choice, so this monologue is more like a transition, and there is even a kind of “relieved” disordered emotion, because Macbeth has nothing to worry about— —Of course, this is my understanding of this monologue, because everyone will have a completely different understanding when performing this monologue, and even the same person will have different understandings under the emotions of different real personalities.
And those students who have not participated in “Macbeth” are open classes after all, not only watched by members, but also by a bunch of outsiders. Their performances are also as I expected, and they start to have a completely different plot. towards. Of course, the “plot” that is often seen in tragic stories will be staged – can’t get out. I don’t know when this kind of bad acting became popular. When a person plays a tragic role, there will be some “redundant” continuation performances, that is, he is trapped in the role, and the tragic scenes he performs are more tragic than The story itself is more complex and diverse.
Therefore, after reading this monologue affectionately, some members began to cry bitterly, knelt down and wailed, unable to get out of the so-called “role” for a long time, exuding a sense of “despair” and trying hard to tell everyone ” You see, I can play a role so well, I am really suitable for acting.” As long as there is the first such performer, there will be more and more such performances in the future, because they seem to start to roll in, mistakenly thinking that this “can’t get out” performance form is the highest evaluation of performance.
After all, I have not embarked on the path of an actor, so it is not good to make arbitrary judgments here. In the case of writing, I’ve also gotten myself stuck in writing tragic stories. But at this time, I can understand those actors who have trapped themselves in the plot because of the presentation of a character-of course it does not refer to those “redundant performances” that need to make others feel that they are good at acting through introversion.
So, I also began to think about a question, these tragic stories are obviously not my personal experience, why do I really feel sadness and pain because of them, and even get stuck in them and cannot extricate myself?
An actor often bursts out an emotion that does not belong to him during the performance of a certain scene, such as anger, pain, and sadness, and these emotions can be evaluated intuitively by the audience ——His anger in the performance turned out to be real, not a formulaic performance—how did he do it?
Obviously, at that time, he used his real “emotions” in his heart. He was so angry that the veins on the top of his head were exposed, or sad that his tears and snot were uncontrollable, and even a character fell into a completely inextricable depression. During that period of time, I used to think about everything with the character’s values and outlook on life, so as to bring into a certain role.
But “emotions” will not appear for no reason, nor will they disappear for no reason.
Anger can be performed, but the anger that tricks the brain into real release requires a “skill cooling”. So if you have a chance, you will find that after the actors who participated in the drama finished a storyboard with an emotional outburst, the on-site staff would be very “indifferent” to arrange the scene of the next storyboard, adjust the lighting, etc., And ignore the actor’s “follow-up”, because he needs to get out of the sudden emotion just now, and it takes time and “hedging emotions” to balance.
I can understand this process very well. The tragic story will not appear for no reason, nor will it stop abruptly at a certain point-unless it has successfully conveyed this despair to the readers, otherwise this emotion will not dissipate. . Even if the story ends abruptly, the writer will be deeply trapped in this pain and cannot extricate himself, thus forming a “first-person tragic story-like” experience, because this emotion has not been released.
Therefore, this is why in Chinese-style scripts, a “close” is often added after “starting, inheriting and turning”, because sudden and turning emotions need to have a good ending, otherwise, this kind of emotion becomes a kind of An exasperating “literary misdemeanor”.
Well, after talking about a lot of reasons why actors and creators can’t get out of the tragic stories they participated in or wrote, let’s go back to answer the question at the beginning: What is the role of tragedy?
The general answer is “make people appreciate the beauty of reality more”. This answer is correct, and of course it is not correct. Because the process from understanding tragedy to appreciating the beauty of reality is very long and complicated. Sometimes it takes several years of experience, or even at the last moment of life, because recalling a knot that has never been untied, can understand the meaning of the tragedy at that moment -for example, a person who will never treat his children Parents who say sorry, at the last moment before they die, will say the sentence “I’m sorry” that a girl wants to hear most in her life, but does he really want to say “I’m sorry”, or does he just want to use this kind of idealistic The way to make his “funeral affairs” not so bleak, and get temporary forgiveness from his children.
The “tragedy” I understand is a sudden emotion. Those tragedies in life that do not belong to readers and audiences have become their “first-person tragic stories” because of emotional infection. They also need to make “choices” in these tragic plots, and even curse the creators , why not let all this stop, but continue to continue the tragedy again and again.
When this sudden emotion arises, it needs another “hedging emotion” as a balance. They begin to accept their own imperfection, because they have seen a more incomplete life; they begin to accept a certain sad experience of their own, because the people in the story who are more miserable than themselves still insist on their “readers expect a good start and a good end”. “Life; they will even use the simplest way, close the book, turn off the TV, let it be stopped at the moment before the tragedy comes completely, they are gods, manipulating the progress of the tragedy – because their life is also like this Escaping, avoiding those tragedies from happening…
These sudden emotions will eventually be eliminated, and the way to eliminate them is to allow these “similarly experienced tragedies” people to rediscover the forgotten comedy in their lives.
Yes, this is the answer I think- tragedy is essentially the epitome of comedy, but it only tells half of the story, and the ending of those comedies has to be found by the readers themselves from the real experience. For a moment, or for a lifetime.
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