If you walked into Hangzhou Grand Theater on November 25th, you would notice that all the seats were taken and so was the next day. The Graduation performance “Thunderstorm” from the performing major students of  ZUMC, was warmly welcomed and well received by the audience. It obviously achieved another great success, along with two former years’ works “Both my son” and “Sending the Imperial Jade in the dream”, which were also performed at the theater.

Many administrators of ZUMC, namely, Party Secretary Yang Liping, Vice-President Yao Zheng and Zhang Liang and others attended the premiere on November 25th. Well known stage performing experts Wu Yanling, Song Yingqiu, Wang xiaohong, as well as  famous composer and stage art de-signer Zhu Ling also watched the performance. After watching the performance, they all generously gave students their professional advice and guidance.

As a classic drama written by celebrated Chinese playwright Cao Yu, “Thunderstorm” has been well-known because of its complex relationships and the plot with quirky twist. This full-length modern drama features a large, wealthy family which is full of decadent rules. In this family, Zhou Puyuan, the host of family, try to control all the family members, but as the love story between the eldest son and one maid comes up, more and more buried old affairs were brought to light, and an irreparable tragedy begins. All the family’s disintegration actually reflects the morbidity and corruption in old China. 

 “It’s mostly difficult for them to totally go into their roles, ” one of the director said, “because students are still young, and because of their limits of experience, young actors sometimes can’t perfectly play those kind of time-beaten characters, but to our surprise, they did a good job.” It’s glad to see that all 8 young actors totally sink to their characters, fully expressed all the emotional things and made it attractive and moving, even a small action can convey plenty of things inside. “It’s just like they are those characters, people who came from years,” one of the audience commented, “It’s really touching something inside me, when the actors cry on the stage, it really made me want to cry with them too.”

It is understood that the play “Thunderstorm” officially began its rehearsal in September this year. Because the two months’ time was too tight, it was actually a huge challenge for all the people involved, and every cast member was facing lots of stress. Wang Sijie, who plays Fan Yi in the show, said she and her classmates pushed away all their work at hand, just to eliminate all the distractions and wholeheartedly put themselves into the rehearsal. “I really think Fan Yi’s the character I treated most seriously among my four years’ study,” Sijie said with a smile, “in order to bring audience a perfect play, I really did lots of work, read the script, study her personalities and try to analyze her actions, I want to ‘be’ her, not just act like her.” She also said that this whole progress, including her own preparation for this character, is a meaningful experience which let her learn a lot.

Liang Guoqing, national level one actor, the school’s guest professor, spoke highly of those students’ performance. Due to the situation that the enrollment number is growing higher and higher each year and the fundamental abilities are significantly different between students, so he was really glad to see they have made huge progress after just two months’ rehearsal, especially some students who lacked control over details at the beginning. He also emphasized the importance and necessity for a play to come directly to the audience. “If a play do not actually perform at the theatre, meet the audience and listen to their comments, then it is just a normal homework with less values rather than a real art workpiece.”      

Li Wei, one of the teachers of the students, states his opinion about rearranging and performing the well-known plays domestic and overseas, “It’s a good chance for us to evaluate students’ professional abilities, like how to shape their characters, and also a helpful way to enhance their professional standard.”