Hunan Opera Furen Rujian
ballet dance Legend of the White Snake
Qinqiang Zhaojun Xing
Festival
By Fang Jingyi
The 18th China Theatre Festival is set to kick off on Nov 8 in Hangzhou.
The 1988 started biennial festival is an important national theatre industry platform for outstanding and original theatrical works. It is also considered the top level theater event in China.
This year's festival features 34 selected plays and a specially invited play, covering 15 kinds of traditional Chinese opera, such as Peking Opera, Qinqiang, Yueju, and Huangmeixi. There are also dramas, musicals, children's dramas, ballets, and so on. In addition, there will be another twelve plays on stage in Wenzhou, including Tian Suo, Lighthouse in the Mist, A Journey of One, The Choice, and a musical Blooming.
There are also plays themed in China's industrial construction and rural reform and development, such as Fire Illuminating Heaven and Earth, the Yueju opera The First Sunlight, the Taizhou free-style narrative My Fanglin Village. Some other performances about local culture and regional characteristics, such as the Peking opera Yan Yi Tang, the Huaguxi (or Flower Drum opera) Confucius, the popular shows for children including The Blank-minded and the Unhappy and Shakespeare's Mysterious Journey, will also be on stage.
Among others, the adapted and revised classics are highly appealing. Selected performances such as Thunderstorm and Lu Zhen, the ballet dance Legend of the White Snake, and the musical Home have been either adapted or re-written, presenting the timeless charm of these classics in different artistic forms.
Approximately 36,000 tickets will be on sale. Prices span from 50 yuan to 480 yuan. Over 20,000 tickets are sold at 100 yuan or lower, nearly 10,000 of which are priced at 50 yuan.