"Rolling King" Liu Yang, Give up Perfection.
This summer, Liu Yang participated in two comedy competition shows, "The Wonderful Night of Comedians" and "The Stand-up Comedy King Solo Season". Before the recording of the former was completed, the competition of the latter had already begun, and one was in Beijing while the other was in Shanghai.
During that period, Liu Yang was as busy as a bee - Sometimes within a day, he had to give three open mic performances in a row, then go to record "The Wonderful Night of Comedians", then go to shoot a magazine, go to the gym, go home to pack his luggage and go to the airport, land in Shanghai and rush to the recording site, and then go on stage to perform stand-up comedy.
His efforts paid off.
At the Honor Night of "The Wonderful Night of Comedians", Liu Yang won the Best Comedy Screenwriter. In every stand-up comedy competition, he also consistently ranked in the top three. Luo Yonghao thinks, "This year, Priest Liu has finally made it in all aspects."
Of course, he is satisfied with this result. "Would anyone be dissatisfied with this result?" he asked rhetorically.
This recognized hard worker in the industry - the above schedule can well illustrate this point - has finally achieved the results that he himself recognizes.
Those colleagues who have worked with or competed with him, while acknowledging that he deserves it, also expressed their "pity" for him.
Luo Shengdeng, who once collaborated with Liu Yang in the second season of "The Annual Comedy Contest", said that he "feels sorry for his elder brother" and thinks that he is like a "person living on a train", always on the move. Yan Hexiang, who also participated in two shows, hopes that "he can adjust himself to be more relaxed and peaceful. I would rather see a peaceful, carefree, and happy Liu Yang".
Of course, he cannot completely "stop being a hard worker", but in fact, this person who has always been tense has learned some flexibility and softness in the past three years.
And the rewards he has received this year come from his tension as well as his flexibility.
In the final performance of "The Wonderful Night of Comedians", Liu Yang's comedy team "Nothing Is Impossible with Ten Times Effort" arranged a work presenting "out of control" - the stage was full of surprises, chaos, and numerous mistakes, but instead maximized the surprise of the performance.
He also brought this relaxation into the finals of the stand-up comedy show. He chose a joke that is not suitable for the online platform, but it is the one he "most wants to tell".
He has changed. "I allow myself to be imperfect and not to pursue victory," he told "The Post-wave Research Institute".
This is the most wonderful change in Liu Yang - a tense person who has experienced the joy of relaxation.
"Feeling Like I'm Going to Be Excluded from Comedy"
In 2021, Liu Yang was in a bad state. So bad that almost under every report about him, the same comment could be seen, saying that he was "too exhausted".
Before that, he stopped the one-year psychological counseling and tried to overcome the negative emotions in his heart by himself. The process was very painful, and he even had extreme thoughts for a time.
That year was the seventh year that Liu Yang had been doing stand-up comedy. He held special performances in various places, some were a great success while others were not. He received a lot of praise as well as a lot of criticism. Even if 990 out of 1000 audiences praised him, but the remaining 10 negative comments still made him suffer. "I've performed so well. I think I've completed my masterpiece. Why do I still receive 10 bad reviews?"
His life does not allow for any margin of error. Just like when he got the first place as a child, but the gap with the second place was not big, his parents, who are teachers, would tell him that this first place would not last long.
In the same year, "Rock and Roast" was broadcast, but he couldn't go due to contract issues. Later, the show became popular, and Zhou Qimo, who started at the same time as him, became more famous than him. He fell into a deeper round of self-doubt, doubting whether his jokes were liked by everyone, and even going into philosophy, doubting what the meaning of his remaining on the stage is?
Liu Yang doing stand-up comedy
At the end of that year, he and Liu Shou, who is also an initial member of Stand-up Comedy, jointly signed up for "The Annual Comedy Contest". Both of them were eliminated in the first round of the primary selection, but Liu Shou chose to stay as a screenwriter, while Liu Yang, who insisted on being on the stage, gave up.
He became an audience of this show. Once when watching the behind-the-scenes footage, he heard the instructor and the actors saying "Put a paint bucket to add an external fulcrum". Liu Yang didn't understand, "What is an external fulcrum? Is there an internal fulcrum?"
When the show ended, Liu Shou won the Best Comedy Screenwriter of the year. When he saw him and his colleagues returning to the company together, Liu Yang felt that they were like "villagers returning home with good news", while he himself was far away from them, "Feeling like I'm going to be excluded from comedy".
The next year, he signed up for the second season of "The Annual Comedy Contest" (hereinafter referred to as "The Second Season").
But it is not easy to switch from stand-up comedy to sketch (a form of comedy performance completed by actors in a fixed scene within a short period of time). There are huge differences in creative logic, performance methods, and audience habits. The most intuitive one is that there is only one person on the stand-up comedy stage, while there are a group of people on the sketch stage.
When Liu Yang first participated in the show, he didn't know how to work with a group of people. At that time, his impression was "very self-centered". He wrote the script by himself, polished the performance by himself, and during the rehearsal, he was like a "teaching director" who confiscated the actors' mobile phones.
Before the first performance of "The Second Season", Song Tianshuo, a member of the same group, found Liu Yang and said that he wanted to rehearse the lines before going on stage, "Ah, okay", and Liu Yang turned around and went to memorize the lines by himself.
Song Tianshuo thought there was something wrong with Liu Yang, "The entire operation and habit pattern is not this set (referring to sketch). He found Liu Yang, "We have to rehearse this play. I need to know how you are going to perform, and you need to know how I am going to perform in order to integrate the performance. It's not that you just memorize the lines and go on stage to perform directly."
But the previous working mode has made Liu Yang used to controlling everything by himself. When he finds that all the rhythms are not going as he expected, he will become urgent and panicked. Almost everyone who cooperates with him can feel his impatience.
The most obvious example is in the cooperative competition in the middle and later stages of "The Second Season". His team and Luo Shengdeng's team were assigned together. Luo Shengdeng is a newcomer and has not yet gained a good audience reputation. The previous work of Liu Yang's team was just quickly edited. Both teams were at a low point. More than a dozen actors gathered in the rehearsal hall, either lying down or distracted, and had no interest in creating at all.
No inspiration could be sparked, and the efficiency could not be improved. Wouldn't it be a complete failure if they went on stage like this? Liu Yang was anxious. He wanted to control the next direction in his own way.
During that period, every time Liu Yang came to the rehearsal hall, he would bring snacks and coffee, and then tell everyone "OK, none of us should play with our mobile phones today. I'll collect the phones first. When I go to write the script, I will give them back. Please think with me (game) first." Sometimes Song Tianshuo would deceive Liu Yang that he had handed in the phone, but he would still be found out. Song Tianshuo didn't understand, "Is it necessary to go to this extent?"
Song Tianshuo comes from a Peking Opera family, has directed dramas, and Luo Shengdeng is a freshly graduated student majoring in film and television performance. Liu Yang studied refrigeration and cryogenics in college, worked as a teacher at New Oriental after graduation, and then turned to be a stand-up comedian. Everyone has a different profession and working mode. Sometimes the actors' discussions about the script even evolve into discussions about comedy theory, and it is difficult to reach a conclusion. Liu Yang would be angry, "When can everyone come to a conclusion? Why are we still brainstorming?"
After becoming a cooperative competition, the number of characters in Liu Yang's works needs to increase from 3 to 6 or more. He has never written a script with so many characters. With more people, the stage is prone to chaos. He is most afraid of something going wrong, but he doesn't know how to balance the roles of each person.
Song Tianshuo can feel that Liu Yang is under a lot of pressure. He even found a pattern - the greater the pressure on Liu Yang, the later he arranges his own performance order. In the last work of "Hello Teacher" (the comedy team where Liu Yang is in) in "The Second Season", Liu Yang wrote three warm-up performances before arranging his own appearance.
Controlling One's Emotions and Desires
His stress is manifested in stand-up comedy as telling jokes quickly and loudly, like an explosive "da da da da da", leaving the stage barren. Because he is afraid of a cold response.
Before becoming a stand-up comedian, Liu Yang always won. He got the first place in middle school, the first place in his major in college, and the first place in the "Teaching Competition" when he was a teacher at New Oriental.
As a child of a teacher's family, the constantly increasing high expectations of his parents have made Liu Yang have an unrelenting sense of urgency since childhood. Even when he got the first place as a child, but the gap with the second place was not big, his parents would tell him that this first place would not last long. So Liu Yang is always working hard, "Efforts make me feel at ease," Liu Yang told "The Post-wave Research Institute".
Even during the worst period, he still wrote one and a half special shows. The chat records in WeChat's "File Transfer Assistant" are full of jokes he thought of, and he also has many notebooks with ideas written when inspiration strikes.
But he found that efforts do not necessarily lead to the desired results, and he may even receive bad reviews. He doesn't understand, "I have put in 120% effort. Why hasn't the result reached 120%? Even 80% is fine. Why is it 30%?" Maybe it is not actually 30%, but as long as it is not 120%, for Liu Yang, it is lacking.
Liu Yang on the stand-up comedy stage
Song Tianshuo thinks Liu Yang is a "diligent and unwilling person". Once he sees a strong person on the stage, he "will compare, work hard to get closer after comparison, and then reach the same level and surpass".
So at the beginning of 2022, before participating in "The Second Season", Liu Yang also took a 4-month acting class. This allowed him to meet the acting teacher Li Mei. In the first class, Li Mei asked everyone the purpose of learning acting. Liu Yang said it was to perform sketches. Li Mei was not satisfied, "Don't tell me you are learning to perform sketches. You can't just think that you can only perform sketches. You can perform other things. Maybe one day you can act in a movie."
At that time, Liu Yang didn't understand acting. He thought that acting was to liberate one's nature, "a group of people going crazy on the stage", but Li Mei told him that acting is control, "Control your body, control your emotions, control your mouth, control your thoughts".
But it is not so easy to control oneself. First, you have to be able to be aware of your own feelings, and then you can control them. But for a long time, Liu Yang's feelings were lost. The identity of a stand-up comedian makes him always have a God's perspective. Once he wants to be emotional, he will start to throw out jokes and habitually escape.
In order to help Liu Yang regain his feelings, Li Mei said a very stimulating paragraph in a class with the theme of "Tearing". "Many of the questions asked were very cruel and rather ruthless."
In that class, Li Mei asked Liu Yang to play Cheng Dieyi to accuse Duan Xiaolou. When it was time to cry, Liu Yang couldn't cry no matter what. Li Mei said, "Do you think you are talented? I don't think you are. In this era, there is no such thing as a talented person being overlooked. Talented people have already been noticed." Li Mei had seen Liu Yang's performance in "U Can U BB", and always felt that Liu Yang had a feeling of "unfulfilled desires". She knew that these words would hurt Liu Yang a lot, but she did it on purpose. She had to use such means to stimulate him.
Li Mei's verbal stimulation made Liu Yang burst into tears, "At that moment, the emotions regained their elasticity," he said. In the repeated acting practices, Liu Yang also slowly learned to control, "When it's time to cry, you should cry. When it's time to explode, you should explode. When it should be one, it should be one. When it should be one hundred, it should be one hundred."
This "control" has also become a key turning point for Liu Yang in his subsequent performances and even mentality. Some time ago, Liu Yang told a joke about involution on the stand-up comedy stage. The general content is that stand-up comedians are so involuted that even if they are hit by a car, they will ask someone to replace them to perform the open mic. He finished the words intermittently and performed on the spot how a person couldn't breathe due to pain after being hit by a car.
The speaking speed was very slow, but the audience kept laughing.
In this year's "The Wonderful Night of Comedians", Liu Yang has also long felt his control in the performance. In the work "The Summer of Prison Break", he played an ordinary person Er Gou who is about to be executed because of bad luck. When he thought that his cellmate Da Xia had abandoned him, but then brought rescuers to save him, he muttered weakly, "What's the use of calling the right name at this time?". According to his usual performance mode, he would definitely shout this sentence out loud, but this time, he repeatedly felt it and finally processed it into a powerless complaint after despair and rebirth. He felt that was right.
