Beijing Film Academy to train crosstalk performers

The Beijing News
February 22, 2010

The Beijing Film Academy is currently recruiting students for the country’s first academic concentration in crosstalk (相声).

The Beijing News reported today that Feng Gong, a well-known performer of the traditional form of stand-up comedy, will serve as an “examiner,” but no other information relating to the actual course of study has been released.

According to a report in Saturday’s Mirror, the crosstalk major was put in place for the good of the country:

With comic actors and crosstalk performers like Xiao Shen Yang and Guo Degang red-hot at the moment, is BFA jumping on a bandwagon with its new major? Lu Hua, director of the school’s party committee publicity office, said that it was only responding to the needs of the country.

Luo then sent over recruitment materials that included this description of the major (in full): “As a traditional Chinese art form, crosstalk has been registered as an intangible heritage. In order to protect and develop traditional Chinese arts, according to the spirit of SARFT‘s instructions, the Beijing Film Academy and the China Broadcasting Performing Arts Troupe have jointly launched majors in crosstalk and comedy performance. Their mission is train creative, accomplished, and talented crosstalk and comic performance artists to meet the needs of society. Based on the film performance curriculum, and will provide training in creative comedy as well as the traditional crosstalk art form.

According to a report in the Mirror on Saturday, crosstalk is just one of five new majors at the Academy this year: it is also adding a Film and TV Production major in the Department of Photography, a Cinema Management major in the Department of Management, a Media Video Production major in the Photographic Institute, and a Film Creativity and Design major in the Department of Literature.

The five new concentrations will charge between 6,000 and 10,000 yuan in annual tuition, with crosstalk topping the list.

The crosstalk major is seeking to recruit twenty students, but just ten signed up yesterday morning when registration opened, and a number of those applied hoping that it would boost their chances of acceptance into BFA. However, crosstalk enthusiasts were not entirely absent: according to The Beijing News, one student from Handan applied to study crosstalk without letting her mother know.

Reports in the English-language Global Times put an international spin on the story. Sunday’s article led off not with Guo Degang, Feng Gong, or Jiang Kun, but with non-Chinese crosstalk performers:

The Beijing Film Academy intends to cultivate average students to become crosstalk stars like Mark Rowswell, who is better known as Dashan, and Jullien Gaudfroy who are professional performers.

BFA is not recruiting foreign students for the crosstalk major at this time.