MUSICALS LOOK TO SCALE NEW HEIGHTS

Chinese market 'has great potential'

He is not a pop idol, but his shows sell out fast, and exuberant fans scream his name while waiting in line outside theaters.

Zheng Yunlong, 29, a singer who has made a name for himself in musicals, is one of the hottest stars on China's entertainment stage.

He rose to fame after winning the popular 12-episode reality show Super Vocal, produced by Hunan Satellite TV, which premiered on Nov 2.

The show, which has received more than 700 million views online, saw 36 classically trained young Chinese singers compete for six spots. It is aimed at introducing Western opera and contemporary musicals to a wider audience.

"I have been waiting for this moment for 10 years. Thank you," Zheng wrote on his Sina Weibo account on Jan 4 after learning that one of his shows had sold out within a minute.

He said he initially declined to take part in the reality show because he did not want the "unnecessary attention".

"However, it is a way to communicate with a broader audience, and this is what I should do as an actor in musicals to promote their development in China," Zheng said.

He was introduced to the theater as a child by his mother, a Peking Opera actress, and graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy in 2013 with a degree in musical performance.

On Super Vocal, Zheng performed 14 songs from popular musicals, including A Whole New World from the Tony Award-winning show Aladdin and The Music of the Night from Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.

Since the reality show aired, he has had a hectic schedule - performing with other winners on Hunan Satellite TV's show Singer and touring nationwide. He also made his debut in a Chinese play, The Poetic Age, on May 2 and 3.

Zheng has achieved his goal, as the shows he has appeared in have fueled interest among audiences in musicals, a Western art form that arrived in China about 30 years ago and initially only appealed to a minority.

Zhang Xiaoqun, dean of the musical performance department at the Beijing Dance Academy, who taught Zheng when he studied there from 2009 to 2013, said: "The market for musicals in China has great potential. The shows give audiences, especially those who have never seen musicals before, an easy start in getting to know all about them."

Another Super Vocal winner, the singer Ayanga, an ethnic Mongolian who was born and raised in Erdos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was Zheng's classmate at the academy.

Zhang said: "With their good looks and solid techniques as singers, they (Ayanga and Zheng) have shone onstage ever since they were students. They work very hard and are always passionate about musicals, even though the market was initially limited and incomes were not very good."

Students taking the academy's musical performance major started to appear in shows there. Ten years ago, for each performance they were only paid about 500 yuan (just over $73 at today's rates).

"The success achieved by Zheng and Ayanga also gives confidence to students who are passionate about musicals," Zhang added.

'Everything thrilled me'

Yan Zhongjie will graduate from the academy with a musical performance degree this summer.

She decided to become a musical actress after watching the Chinese adaptation of the Broadway show Rent performed by students at the Beijing Dance Academy, including Zheng and Ayanga, in 2012. This convinced her to pursue musicals as a career.

"It was the first time that I had seen a musical stage show. Before that, I had only watched movies. The music, the actors and the story - everything about the show - thrilled me. I wanted to perform just like them onstage," Yan said.

In summer 2015, after failing for two years, Yan, with the highest score, stood out among thousands of candidates and was admitted to study for the academy's musical performance major, for which only 26 students were enrolled that year.

Born in Chongqing and raised in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Yan started to learn traditional Chinese dance at a local art school when she was 11. Three years later, she trained as a singer at the school.

She has appeared in musicals staged in both Chinese and English since the beginning of her sophomore year at university.

Now, 23, Yan is touring nationwide in the lead role in the Chinese adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Cinderella. The show, produced by Seven Ages, one of China's leading musical production companies, premiered in Shanghai in May last year and has been staged more than 100 times.

"I rehearsed for eight hours a day for more than a month. It was exhausting but enjoyable," Yan said.

"Many fans told me that they became interested in musicals after watching Super Vocal. I have also met some loyal fans of musicals during the tour," she added.

Seven Ages was founded in 2012 by Yang Jiamin, who graduated from Peking University with a degree in English. Yang sensed the market for musicals in China was on the rise.

Yang studied theatrical performance with Joseph Graves, a veteran actor and director from the United States, who has lived in China since 2002.

Before she graduated, Yan signed a contract with Yang's company and became a professional actress appearing in stage musicals.

In 1995, the Beijing Dance Academy was one of the first universities in China to launch a major in musical performance.

Zhang said that back then musicals were a new art form in China and few people knew about them.

But students had to abandon the major because of limited career opportunities at the time. Some of them became pop singers, while others chose acting as a profession.

Actor Huang Xuan graduated from the academy with a degree in musical performance in 2008 and rose to fame with roles in movies such as Youth, directed by Feng Xiaogang, and Legend of the Demon Cat, directed by Chen Kaige.

Japan's Shiki Theatre Company, which visited Beijing in 1995 to help with rehearsals by the 30 students majoring in musical performance at the Central Academy of Drama, was an early influence in training Chinese talent for musicals.

The company was founded by dramatist Asari Keita in 1953.

In 1996, Central Academy of Drama students performed the Chinese version of the company's classic musical The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man.

The show, one of the Shiki Theatre Company's most popular musicals, has been staged more than 2,000 times in Japan.

The musical, based on the children's novel of the same name by late US writer Lloyd Alexander, was staged more than 40 times in 1996 at the Central Academy of Drama. The Beijing troupe also visited Japan later that year for three shows staged by the Shiki Theatre Company.

Zhao Yongbin, one of the 30 musical performance students at the Central Academy of Drama who appeared in the 1995 performance, said: "For us, the musical was an art form that we had never seen in Chinese theaters. It laid a solid foundation for us." Zhao is now a teacher at the academy and a director.

When the Chinese version of the musical toured nationwide in 2017, Zhao was one of the actors, along with some of those who performed in the 1996 version as well as young Chinese performers.

The market in China for original Western musicals emerged in 2002, when the Shanghai Grand Theatre staged 21 performances of Les Miserables.

Before the premiere, only 30 percent of the tickets had been sold. However, after the first performance, tickets sold fast, with the 21 performances grossing a total of about 12 million yuan.

In 2004, the Phantom of the Opera played to full houses in Shanghai.

Chinese producers have also attempted to widen their reach by staging Mandarin productions of popular Western shows.

In 2011, the Mandarin version of Mamma Mia! was launched. With more than 400 performances in 24 cities across China, it had attracted audiences of more than 600,000 as of last year.

Zheng, the Super Vocal winner, played the lead role in the Mandarin adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, based on Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's story of a doctor in the 19th century.

In 2015, the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, a major venue for musicals, opened in Beijing.

Covering more than 16,000 square meters, it has four theaters - the biggest with a capacity of 1,600 - and the smaller auditoriums seating about 300.

The opening show at the center was The Phantom of the Opera, which was also staged in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, later that year.

Growing appetite

Zhang Li, the center's general manager, said The Phantom of the Opera had a total of 104 sold-out performances in Beijing and Guangzhou, generating more than 110 million yuan.

He added that from November 2015 to October last year, there had been 2,298 performances of 549 shows at the center, attracting audiences of more than 1.3 million. There have been 364 performances of 48 musicals, which have been watched by more than 365,000 people.

Zhang Li said: "With the country's appetite for Western musicals growing, more venues have been built for them in China, reducing the cost of touring a production. As more shows come to China, an increasing number of people are getting to know about them and want to see performances."

Chinese artists and companies are also showing great interest in producing musicals.

On Nov 30, the world premiere of an English-language version of Gone With the Wind was staged in Beijing before touring other cities, including Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, and Shanghai.

It is based on the original French version of the musical, entitled Autant emporte le Vent, in which both the lyrics and music were written by Gerard Presgurvic, and which premiered in Paris in 2003. The new version of Gone With the Wind is a collaboration between Presgurvic and the Beijing company Joyway, which brought Presgurvic's musical Romeo and Juliet to China in 2016.

Zhang Ligang, founder and president of Joyway, and his wife Qiao Jing, producer of the English-language version of the musical, flew to Seoul, the Republic of Korea capital, in 2015 to meet Presgurvic, when the Korean version of the show was staged. The Chinese company, along with Presgurvic, collaborated on global casting.

Qiao said, "It was much more challenging to make an English version of Gone With the Wind than to bring in the original French version. But we wanted to give it a try, and the experience enabled us to better understand how a musical is produced."

She added that younger Chinese are very good at trying new things, so the musical as an art form which combines acting, singing and dancing, should appeal to them.

However, compared with the West, the Chinese market for musicals is still in its infancy. Problems such as a lack of professional musical talent - including actors, composers and scriptwriters - the shortage of high-quality original Chinese works, licensing deals and copyright protection, are still issues facing the rising market.

On April 20, news that Chinese singer-actress Han Xue used a recording at a live performance of a musical triggered controversy online.

The show, Into the White Night, based on Japanese writer Keigo Higashino's novel of the same name, was staged in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

Although Han apologized and explained that she had inflamed vocal chords that night, her post still drew criticism online and her professionalism as a musical actress was questioned by netizens.

Zhang Xiaoqun, the Beijing Dance Academy musical performance department dean, said: "We are looking forward to an original Mandarin musical, which will have the longest run and can become a milestone. It will happen, but it takes time."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 05/22/2019 page2)