Laughter tinged with tears
“My master’s crosstalk originated in his environment from when he was small, and was a part of his life from very early on.” Wu had mastered the 13 basic skills of crosstalk from a very early age, spontaneously and naturally as part of his daily life.
“If we look at the Chinese word for crosstalk, xiangsheng, the first character, xiang, means ‘facial expression’ while the second, sheng, means ‘voice.’ But I feel that the voice is far more important than the face,” Liu explains. In the early days, when people heard crosstalk on the radio, there were no images, but listeners still got engrossed in it. “Therefore crosstalk is voice with facial expression, and facial expression within voice.” The audience must rely on their imaginations to completely visualize the world that the actors construct with their voices.
“When you first start out in crosstalk you have to train your breathing. Everything is taught by personal instruction and example.” There are things that require strict attention, such as the speed of response in dialogue, the pitch of the voice, the urgency or relaxedness of tone, the joy or sorrow in facial expressions, or the depth of feeling. Liu believes that there are no shortcuts—you simply have to buckle down and work hard.
“Speaking, imitation, teasing, and singing are the four basic skills of the crosstalk performer,” says Liu. Crosstalk is an oral art form, and is a composite form of performance. Verbal skill is the prime requirement for being a crosstalk actor. Many skits also involve mimicry, which is “imitation.” Besides needing all-embracing general knowledge, covering everything from astronomy to geography, and having to be able to speak all kinds of local dialects and pronounce foreign loan words, while on stage crosstalk performers may be called upon at any moment to sing a famous melody, or to improvise rhythmic storytelling in time with a clapper. “That’s why they say that a good crosstalk performer can perform anything else too.”
“Experienced crosstalk performers need only look into the eyes of the audience and they will know what to say and when.” Performers need a tenacious memory and quick-witted ad-libbing skills on stage to use their eloquence to steer the mood of the audience and captivate them. This is a craft that has to be honed over many years.
The show Thirty Years of Selected Works by Liu Zengkai was a retrospective on the 30-year career of Liu, who is director of the Wu Zhao Nan Xiang Sheng & Theater Association. During the show, Liu broke with his usual practice by performing dressed as a woman.