Rebirth of a star - Chapter 8-2

“The content of our lecture today is ‘crying’.” Teacher Zhou spoke on the stage, “‘Crying’ is how to cry. If you think that crying means tears, that would be wrong. ‘Crying’ is divided into loud crying, whimpering, lump in the throat kind of crying, silently crying, sobbing, crying from sadness, crying with joy and so on.” Mr. Zhou began to show a group of slides called “Crying Angels”.

It was the way every child cries. Big eyes with tears, screaming and crying with terrified expressions.

“This one, you can see from this group of photos,” Zhou teacher pointed at the picture, “This is about releasing all kinds of emotions. Let’s take a look at this. It’s interesting. The child was crying and he looked terrified. Why does he look panicked? Use your imagination. What kind of scene is it? You can imitate it in front of the mirror and think about it. Crying is also related to everyone’s personality. And different personalities show different ways of crying, such as between a weak girl and a strong man there will be a significant difference. There are also differences between young girls and mature women and the older ones. In a nutshell, the emotional content of crying is very rich, and the states of people are different. Here, we have to grasp the principle that we must strive to control the investment in a specific role, not just crying for the sake of crying.”

“There is also the so-called sobbing, which is generally manifested in the extreme pain of the heart, but cannot be expressed. It’s like wanting to cry, but cannot cry. There are many more examples. We have seen many movies about oppressed women in the old society who often suffer from such a state. The performance of sobbing is generally not easy to master.”

“In the performance of crying, tears are also a relatively common thing, which is manifested in crying, or howling, such as displayed by the singer of “Little Cabbage”. And there is also the one which was recorded in Shanxi folk literature. All these belong to the genre of crying. It must be noted that crying, in fact, is more of a complaint. Complaint is the main thing, crying is a state. On this point, we should have a clear grasp.”

“There is also fake crying, which we can call “Howling”. Nowadays, many professional drummers in rural areas, in fact, are within the scope of howling. More specifically, it can be seen as loud thunder with rain or without it. 

In the past few years, director Liu Bingjian made a film called “The Weeping Woman” based on real social news, which tells the story of a woman who is a professional weeper for others. Women’s performance is typically fake crying and dry howling. The last is laugh conversion, like a broken smile. This happens when a person is suddenly infected by another emotion, resulting in such an effect. In the usual movies and TV dramas, we often see such a situation.The most typical one is the quarrel between the young couples. In fact, most of the women are spoiled, so they use ‘crying’ as a way to attract the attention of the other party. Once the objective was achieved, it would be easy to convey the message of a smile through tears. What we should pay attention to here is the nature of transformation; not too abrupt. These details require us to slowly explore and practice.” 

Teacher Zhou’s lecture entitled “Crying” lasted for a whole week. 

After a week, Teacher Zhou wanted to test them. 

“I believe that everyone in this week’s study has probably understood the meaning of crying.” Teacher Zhou smiled slightly, creeping out his pupils.

“So, I have three groups. A, B, and C. I won’t tell you the content of the topic first. You pick it yourself, whether it is A or B or C. I would count the whole class’ score. Try to average the number of people, then I’ll start to divide the topic.”

He waved a stack of paper in his hand, then found a chair in the corner and sat down, closing his eyes.

People looked at each other, completely unaware of the topics the teacher picked for them. How would they choose? They can only rely on luck.

“Oh, so soon? All right, then I’ll start the sub-topics.” Teacher Zhou’s exaggerated expression only made the students more nervous, because it was their first test.

Susu chose group A and divided it into a sheet of paper.

“Don’t discuss it.” Teacher Zhou stopped the two girls in Group B whispering, “The other group members can guess what they are performing after each of them has finished. I will give you half an hour, and then each of you will start a three-minute performance. Anyone ready with their performance can start immediately.”

There were a few simple lines on the paper.

Character: Mute person

Scene: A family member that didn’t return home for a long time, came and went in a hurry.

Requirement: Must involve crying

Want to support Rebirth of a star? Buy a Coffee!