What is crosstalk?

Crosstalk originated in Beijing and is popular all over the country. It is generally believed that it was formed during the reign of Xianfeng and Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty. It is a form of Quyi performance with a long history, wide spread and deep mass foundation. In Beijing dialect, there are also "dialect crosstalk" in local dialects. In the process of the formation of cross talk, we have extensively absorbed the artistic strengths of ventriloquism and storytelling, combined Zhuang with harmony, expressed truth, goodness and beauty with satirical jokes, made people laugh as artistic features, and took "speaking, learning, teasing and singing" as the main artistic means. There are three forms of performance: stand-alone, counterpart and group mouth. Stand-up performance by an actor, telling jokes; The counterpart is asked and answered by two actors, and there are usually two categories: "one head is heavy" and "one mother is heavy"; Group talk is also called "group live", which is performed by more than three actors. The traditional repertoire mainly satirizes all kinds of ugly phenomena in the old society and reflects all kinds of life phenomena through humorous narration. After liberation, besides continuing to carry forward the satirical tradition, there are also works that praise new people and new things. Traditional songs include Guan Gong's Battle against Qin Qiong, Drama and Dialect, Jia Xingjia, and Stripping the Jacket, with a total number of more than 2. The works that reflect real life have great influence, such as Nightwalk, Buying Monkeys, Yesterday and Hat Factory.

● Crosstalk knowledge

Speaking, learning and teasing

Quyi terminology. Four basic artistic means of cross talk tradition. "Say" is to tell jokes and playing riddles, tongue twisters, etc. "Learning" is to imitate all kinds of birds and animals' calls, hawking, singing, various characters' styles and languages, etc. "Teasing" means grabbing at each other to make you laugh; "Singing" means making up funny words and singing them in various tunes, or exaggerating some opera lyrics and tunes to make people laugh. In cross talk, there are often programs that emphasize one or two of them, such as "Changing careers", "Drama and Dialect" emphasize "learning" and "singing", while "Eight Fan Screen" and "Spring Lantern riddle" focus on "telling and teasing". Actors often form different styles because they are good at using some means.

pad words

quyi nouns. The opening remarks of crosstalk performers before they appear on the stage to perform a formal program are sometimes a small program to attract the audience's attention or point out the content of the formal program.

live

Quyi terminology. Refers to a piece of content used to introduce pad words into the topic during cross talk performance, which has the function of connecting the preceding with the following.

Bao Yu

Quyi terminology. Refers to the method of organizing jokes in cross talk, one-man show, Shandong fast book and other genres. When a joke is brewed and organized, it is called "tying the burden", while generate calls it "shaking the burden". It is customary to call jokes "baggage".

three turns and four shakes

Quyi terminology. Crosstalk is one of the means to organize the burden. Refers to the cross talk performance, after repeated bedding and foil, the story of the characters is rendered or the atmosphere is created, and then the baggage is shaken off to produce jokes.

one-headed sinking

Quyi terminology. One of the expressions of cross talk. When two actors are performing, one is the main narrator, that is, teasing; The other uses dialogue to help narrative, that is, bang. Because the narrative story is mainly funny, it is called.

mother and son

Quyi terminology. One of the expressions of cross talk. Refers to the cross talk performance, the tasks undertaken by two actors (teasing and cheering) are basically the same, such as organizing the burden by arguing with each other.

grasping

Quyi terminology. Funny content inserted into the program during performances such as cross talk and storytelling to make the audience laugh. Actors often grab the interjected theme on the spot and combine the program content to achieve good results.

Doukuang

Quyi nouns. An actor who mainly tells the story when performing cross talk or cross talk is usually called "A" now. In the cross talk, the joke and the joke cooperate with each other, and through the foil and bedding of the joke, the narrative gradually forms a burden and produces jokes. Adding "mud seam" to group cross talk is basically the same as "bang".

bang

quyi nouns. An actor who narrates the story with "humor" during a cross talk performance is usually called "B" now.

mud seam

Quyi terms. The actor who narrates the story with "humor" during the cross talk performance is usually called "C" now.

what is cross talk? This is a question that is both easy and difficult to answer. It is easy to answer because its answer has long been made public and well known. The first sentence of many crosstalk performers after they came to power was: "Crosstalk is the art of language." This answer is undoubtedly correct. Unfortunately, many people just ignore this definition.

In recent years, in order to change the depressed situation of cross talk creation and performance, various forms of cross talk reform came into being. Guitar crosstalk, disco crosstalk, song-and-dance crosstalk, even male-female crosstalk and dwarf crosstalk, have tried many ways and spent a lot of effort but neglected the fundamental proposition that "crosstalk is the art of language", so they are bound to fail. Ignoring the importance of language in the art of cross talk deviates from the aesthetic characteristics of cross talk.

However, the definition of "cross talk is the art of language" is not accurate enough, and its extension is too broad, which can't well divide the boundary between cross talk and other arts. In Quyi art, storytelling and quick writing are also language arts, while singing Quyi is nothing more than the combination of language arts and music arts. There are elements of language art in drama art, film art and vocal music art, and even Lian Wenxue is a language art in written form. If we can't draw a clear line between crosstalk art and other arts, it will be difficult for us to further understand the essential characteristics of crosstalk art.

In fact, as long as we carefully analyze it, we will find that the social life content and its artistic expression form reflected by cross talk are quite unique. Quyi is a general term for all kinds of rap arts, and most of them, whether they are storytelling, storytelling, fast writing, singing or singing, or talking and singing drums and playing lyrics, are all about telling a story, with the exception of a few genres represented by cross talk (such as Shanghai's one-man show, Minnan and Taiwan Province's answer drum).

As one of the comic art forms, cross talk does not reflect life mainly by narration and description as in narrative art such as novels and storytelling, nor does it reflect life vividly by actors' body movements as in comprehensive art such as drama and movies, but mainly through dialogue and discussion.

Crosstalk, as an art of dialogue, has different characteristics from various narrative arts and performing arts, which are described as follows:

1. Crosstalk is a language art with dialogue as its main form, and its main content is to reflect the dialogues of various characters in real life. In narrative art, the dialogue of characters can not be separated from the constraints of plot, while in cross talk, the role of plot is far less important than in narrative art. In cross talk, the plot serves to organize the baggage, and the baggage is composed of dialogue. It is incomprehensible and therefore not allowed to tell a story without talking about the object and topic in conversation. On the contrary, the plot in cross talk can be intermittent, intermittent or even absent.

In some cross talks, even the plot is not needed at all, and only the charm of the dialogue can be used to organize the burden, directly expose the contradictions and express the theme. Accordingly, the audience is not addicted to the complexity and twists of the plot when listening to cross talk, but should understand the positions, viewpoints and opinions of the performers on issues and events. These views and opinions are mainly expressed through dialogue.

The characters in cross talk don't demand completeness and fullness, but often only describe their words, which directly reflect the characters' ideology, standpoint and temperament. The characters in cross talk, like the plot, are tools to organize the burden, so the characters often come at the call and go away. Characters' personalities are often incomplete, exaggerated and distorted in many cross talks, and do not present a complete and true image. In some cross talks, there are no characters.

The internal structure of cross talk is relatively loose. Sometimes there is no close connection between "pad talk", "living" and "saving the bottom" in the plot, but it is maintained by a broader theme. In cross talk, the change of content is often not reflected in the promotion of the plot, but in the transformation of the topic.

In a word, neither the characters nor the plot structure, which are very important in narrative art, play an important role in crosstalk art.. Crosstalk pays the most attention to baggage, and baggage is composed of dialogue. Just open a comic dialogue and you can see a lot of dialogues. These dialogues vividly reflect people's words in real life. Of course, these dialogues are copied from life, but have been carefully artistic processed.

second, the burden of cross talk is mainly in the form of dialogue. When talking about the basic concept of crosstalk, Ma Ji, a famous crosstalk artist, pointed out: "(crosstalk) is the art of making people laugh by organizing a series of unique' baggage', in which the baggage is the baggage of language art, and the language here is the language of the baggage art, language, baggage and laughter, which can be said to be the three major elements of crosstalk art and are indispensable." (Quoted from Ma Ji's "Looking Back in 3 Years" in Quyi, No.2, 1987) Among the three elements he listed, language and laughter are also possessed by other comic arts, and only the burden is unique to the cross talk art. Baggage is in the most important position in the art of crosstalk. Therefore, the analysis of the content and form of baggage is the key to our study of cross talk art.

The word "Bao Yu" is a figurative word, which actually refers to the process of the brewing and development of comic contradictions in cross talk. The so-called "three turns and four shakes" is a structure often used in cross talk baggage. Among them, "three turns" refers to the repeated rendering and emphasis of contradictions and illusions; "Four Shakes" refers to revealing the truth of contradictions after "three turns".

As we know, the characteristic of comedy contradiction is to "cover up one's own essence with another illusion of essence." (Quoted from Marx's <; Criticism of Hegel's Philosophy of Right >: Introduction contains the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 1, page 5). Therefore, in comedy contradictions, there are many illusions. Illusion is actually a phenomenon, which is characterized by the fact that it can lift the water with the opposite (or opposite) appearance to its essence. However, illusion reflects the essence in its unique way. Therefore, the real comedy contradiction has unexpected and reasonable characteristics. In cross talk, the two sides of comedy contradiction-burden (phenomenon and essence, etc.) are held by the two sides respectively, and the contradiction is gradually exposed through dialogue. Comedy techniques (such as exaggeration, misunderstanding, coincidence, etc.) are widely used in various comedy arts, not unique to cross talk. However, crosstalk has its own characteristics when using these techniques. For example, many dramas and movies use visual images to form misunderstandings (the films "The Great Dictator" and "black tulip" all have two cool-looking people), while crosstalk mostly relies on dialogue when using misunderstanding techniques. For example, in "Changing careers", it is said that Liu Baoquan, an artist, switched to selling vegetables. He put a load on his shoulder and touched his shoulder. This hurts! He remembered the title of "Meeting the Queen":' Alas, what a pain!' Hearing this, the old lady said,' Oh! Cucumber is bitter, don't want it.' "Obviously, this baggage adopts misunderstanding, which is caused by the dialogue between the characters. Without the two sides of the dialogue, there can be no misunderstanding.

Organizing baggage through character dialogue is the most widely used and important method in cross talk. This is true not only in the "mother-daughter" type of cross talk, but also in the "one-headed" type of cross talk. This is true not only in cross talk, but also in stand-up cross talk. For example, in the stand-up comic dialogue "Pearl Jade White Jade Soup", the bottom-saving burden is composed of the dialogue between Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang and his ministers. This kind of burden formed by dialogue can be found everywhere in comic dialogue works, and the list is endless.

Dialogue is not only reflected in the organization method of baggage, but also in the use of various cross talk artistic means. "Talking about learning and singing" are the four basic artistic means of cross talk. "Speaking" means telling jokes and tongue twisters. "Learning" means imitating the language of various vendors, vocals and characters. "Teasing" means making up some funny words and singing them in various tunes. The use of these artistic means is only in line with the artistic law of cross talk creation if it is included in the scope of dialogue. Crosstalk performance can't learn for learning, but sing for singing. What crosstalk performers say in dialect still needs to achieve the purpose of dialogue; The songs and operas sung are either used as arguments in the dialogue, or the contents of the dialogue are expressed by changing the lyrics. At present, some "Liuhua" crosstalk performances (that is, crosstalk based on learning to sing songs and operas) have actually turned into concerts with audience singing. Although it can also achieve theater effect, it violates the essence of crosstalk as a dialogue art. This creative tendency of "singing for the sake of singing" is not desirable.

Third, crosstalk performers perform as interlocutors. Crosstalk actors neither perform as narrators like storytelling and other folk art actors, nor as actors in drama, but as interlocutors. The language used by crosstalk performers is not narrative language, but conversational (that is, question-and-answer language). This is more obvious in the cross talk between the mother and the son. In fact, in a heavy type of cross talk, the actors who tease and cheer are also having a dialogue. Although the words of funny actors do have narrative elements in content, they are still expressed as dialogues with eye-catching actors in form; Here, the narrative content can only be said as an answer, and can not be separated from the specific dialogue environment to tell the story.

A crosstalk performer is always an interlocutor, not an actor (the word "actor" in English can also be translated as "actor"). Crosstalk actors mainly rely on dialogue to shape characters, rather than relying on external images and body movements. The external image of crosstalk performers is "changing with the constant", which is closely related to the special aesthetic way of crosstalk. Some researchers think that the cross talk performance is to a great extent a kind of "I play myself" performance (see Lu Changwang's Thoughts on Quyi Performance, page 76 of the ninth series of Quyi Art Essays), while others think it is a virtual performance. (See Xue Baokun's The Art of Laughter, pp. 64-65) But in any case, the body movements of crosstalk performers are only auxiliary means to make the dialogue more vivid, and these movements are not as important and complete as those in drama.

In a heavy type of cross talk, although there are not many words to praise the actors, they should play the role of making the finishing point. The importance and necessity of supporting actors can be used as a witness to the proposition that cross talk is the art of dialogue.

Among several types of cross talk, group cross talk is further developed and evolved on the basis of cross talk, which transforms bilateral dialogue in cross talk into multilateral dialogue. And it has some dramatic elements.

the situation of stand-up crosstalk is quite special. Stand-up crosstalk is developed and evolved from folk stories and jokes. It has both the artistic characteristics of stories and jokes. In this regard, experts have expressed incisive opinions.

Feng Bu-yi proposed; "Among the many kinds of Quyi, there is a kind of performance form of ridiculous stories in single-person speeches, which is called stand-up crosstalk ... (Stand-up crosstalk) But