Arms open to the new generation

For around 10 days each year, the water town of Wuzhen in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, which is known for its historical feel and tranquil, tree-shaded rivers, brims with vibrancy as it welcomes the Wuzhen Theatre Festival.

The organizers' goal is to create a dynamic, immersive extravaganza for visitors. Each year, the event hosts a variety of cutting-edge, contemporary and classic domestic and international theater productions. Visitors can attend forums and panel discussions, where creators share their interpretations and insights, while those who have simply come to Wuzhen for a holiday can still experience open-air performances and enjoy stilt-walking processions that take place in the town's nooks and crannies. With the markets, exhibitions and live music, the festival embraces visitors with a varied experience of culture and entertainment.

"I remember sharing my thoughts about what the festival would bring to Wuzhen, when we were planning for the inaugural edition a decade ago. I said that in about 10 years' time, Wuzhen would have an entirely different image, with or without the festival," says cofounder and chairman, Chen Xianghong.

"Since the festival was launched, it has changed Wuzhen's ambience somewhat, making it a more lively place. Today, many young people first learn about Wuzhen through the festival, and the festival has become a yearly getaway for people of different ages and backgrounds."

This year, the festival celebrates its 11th edition, which is scheduled to run from Oct 17 to 27 under the theme of "Solidity" and the slogan, "Spirit like a torch; faith like a great rock".

In the course of 11 days, 24 productions from 11 countries will be staged at 11 theater venues, with a total of 86 performances. Eleven productions are from China and 13 are from countries including the United Kingdom, France and Japan.

A wide range of genres will be featured, including classic dramas, magnum opus productions by veteran theater directors, avant-garde dramas, physical theater and dance dramas.

The festival will see the return of many familiar faces, including Italian theater director and author Eugenio Barba, who came in 2013 for the festival's first edition.

Along with his company, the Denmark-based Odin Teatret, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary, Barba will be mounting two productions, Hamlet's Clouds and An Ordinary Day in the Life of the Dancer Gregor Samsa.

Director Stan Lai, one of the festival's cofounders, will stage his 40th production, River/Cloud. Making its Chinese mainland premiere this year, after which it will go on tour, it is a spinoff of Lai's classic Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, and is about the poignant love story of the protagonists Yun Zhifan and Jiang Binliu.

Audiences will be able to watch screen actor Chang Chen as Jiang, while Hsiao Ai will reprise the role of Yun, which she played in 1991. Hu Defu, a pioneer of Taiwan folk music, better known as Ara Kimbo, will make a cameo appearance.

This year also introduces a public welfare performance, The Revised Future, by director Ma Yan and the Pleasure Troupe, an inclusive theater troupe, of which a majority of performers have disabilities.

"It won the best play award at this year's Nanjing Festival of New Theatre. It is such an extraordinary production, with people of diverse abilities telling their own stories onstage," Lai says.

The recurring section for young theater practitioners, the Emerging Theatre Artists' Competition, is making some changes this year, due to the growing number of submissions.

Each year, three of the festival's cofounders, Huang Lei, Lai and Meng Jinghui each come up with a topic which are then combined to create a theme. This year's is "pillow, sunshine, big dinosaur".

Participants exercise their imaginations to come up with a 30-minute stage production based on the theme, 18 of which are chosen to compete during the festival.

The call for entries is open until coming Tuesday. Huang estimates that the committee will receive around 700 submissions, and the panel will announce the selected 18 on Sept 22.

To ensure that excellence is recognized and to inject more diverse perspectives into the selection process, this year's jury has seven new judges, including Beijing People's Art Theatre actress Xu Fan, actor and director Chen Minghao, and young theater practitioners who established themselves during previous rounds of the competition, such as Ding Yiteng.

The Outdoor Carnival section, which is open for applications until Sept 13, will include a variety of outdoor performances, ranging from traditional opera and dance, to modern art and multimedia shows. The festival committee estimates that 1,600 to 1,800 shows will take place, ensuring that visitors enjoy live performances as they explore Wuzhen's streets and alleys.

"Lai, Meng, Chen and I have worked hard together for more than a decade to reach the 11th edition. I feel it is almost like the first edition. It's a new beginning," Huang says.

"We are working to involve more young people in the festival. Also, we are designing and planning more new elements and sections that offer more young people space for creative expression."

One new section this year, the Dream Granary, will be installed at the Wuzhen Granary, a renovated former grain storage facility that opened to the public in 2017. The space is a popular venue for exhibitions by artists from the China Academy of Art.

Headed by Yang Ting, theater director and a former judge of the Emerging Theatre Artists' Competition, the new section is designed to provide young theater practitioners with a platform to create, perform, and collaborate with artists from other creative fields.

"These practitioners and artists from the China Academy of Art may have come from different places, and followed different paths, but eventually, they meet at the granary," Huang says.

Although their journeys have varied, for now they have ended up at the same place, coming together at the granary, a place that once sustained material needs, to create a spiritual home, Huang says.