From September 29^th to October 4^th, the NCPA’s new drama production Crows and Sparrows will captivate audiences with its premiere at the NCPA Theatre. As the NCPA’s second adaptation of a Chinese film classic, the drama Crows and Sparrows, directed by HUANG Ying, a theatre director invited with tremendous effort for the adaptation, features a creative team of members including playwright PENG Zeling, set designer ZHANG Kunpeng, lighting designer HAN Dong and video projection designer HE Sisi. Staged by the NCPA Drama Ensemble, the drama will unfold in a dual-line narrative approach, with this film, shot before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, interpreted in a dramatic language, and with the power of “sparks” ignited in the filmdom of that time, represented by Shanghai Kunlun Pictures, demonstrated faithfully. On the 75^th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, this work will pay homage to the classic and provide a stunning new look. That’s a way to hold high the spiritual torch passed down from the literary and art predecessors.

Before the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, Kunlun Pictures, the most important progressive film base in Shanghai, which had launched films including Spring River Flows East, Eight Thousand Li of Cloud and Moon, etc., gathered CHEN Baichen, SHEN Fu, ZHAO Dan, WANG Lingu and XU Tao together to write a compelling script, which was transformed into a spoof comedy, Crows and Sparrows, by director ZHENG Junli. The film Crows and Sparrows, as its name suggests, takes advantage of trivia to explain major principles. The film is all about a civil life that people lead in Shikumen, Old Shanghai. Exquisitely designed with family-nation integration as its core, the film visualises the true features of people in all stations of life of that time, the Kuomintang’s struggle against downfall and the masses’ cries of despair. The criticism is amazing in terms of both intensity and depth. After the Founding of the PRC, the film Crows and Sparrows won the First Prize for Excellent Feature Film by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China. The adaptation is also owed to the original copyright owners - CHEN Hong, ZHAO Zuo, XU Weiguang and ZHENG Dali, among others.

The year 2024 marks the 75^th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China and the Tenth Anniversary of General Secretary XI Jinping’s exhilirating speech at the Forum on Literature and Art. It makes great sense for the NCPA, which remains devoted to adapting old classic films into dramas for the sake of inheritance, to select this work, which is both highly critical and artistic. The drama specially retains the correspondence to Chairman MAO Zedong’s Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society.

Skillfully, two storylines, one in the drama and the other out, have been designed for Crows and Sparrows. They will unfold in two dimensions - vertically and horizontally. Facing the old society, which is just on the point of collapse, the filmmakers, who are longing for the dawn, and the vivid characters in their camera lenses, videoed in Shimumen, make up dots of “sparks” in the torrent of the times. Crowding together, the sparks turn into a prairie fire, and this is the theme of the adaptation. Powered by the satire and criticism, the “sparks” converge into a united force that is blown up into a prairie fire.

The drama Crows and Sparrows is the second adaptation of a Chinese film classic to be produced by the NCPA, as a follow-up to the drama Crossroads. At the beginning of the drama are a group of far-sighted personages gathering at Kunlun Pictures to criticise the current malpractice and discuss how to write a script. Gradually, there emerges a story outline, i.e., Crow and Sparrow. Strongly typical of the civil life, Crows and Sparrows has a profound meaning, which is hidden in the depiction of the everyday civic life - These lodgers, differing from one another, correspond to different social classes, while the building layout of Shikumen serves as a metaphor for the relationships between these classes of that time.

The Crows and Sparrows will be premiered by the NCPA Drama Ensemble. Multiple residential spaces will be built on stage and a structural design will be made for inside each space. When the story unfolds in a certain lodger’s space, the audience could see other lodgers. Furthermore, the drama will showcase real-time shooting carried out alongside motion picture projection and stage narration to explore how to realise the fusion of film montage and stage presentation, in order to deepen the “spark” of the adaptation, hoping to create a stage vision that is both aesthetically valuable and philosophically reasonable.