18th China Theater Festival opens in Hangzhou

BEIJING, Nov. 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from chinadaily.com.cn:

The 18th China Theater Festival, a biennial event that showcases the best of national drama creation, opened at the Grand Canal Theater in Gongshu district, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on the evening of Nov 8.

The festival, which will run until Nov 27, features 47 plays from 23 regions across China, covering 15 genres of opera, drama, musical, children's play, ballet and more.

Among them, 34 plays and one special invitation play will be performed in Hangzhou, and 12 plays will be performed in Wenzhou.

The China Theater Festival, founded in 1988, is a celebration of drama and the people. It has witnessed the emergence and performance of generations of drama celebrities and classic works, leaving countless memorable moments for drama fans.

Hangzhou, the host city of the 18th, 19th and 20th editions of the China Theater Festival, has a deep and long-lasting relationship with drama. Zhejiang, the province where Hangzhou is located, is a province with a rich tradition of drama and the birthplace of Nanxi Opera, the earliest form of Chinese opera.

The staged plays of this festival fully reflect the diversity of artistic categories. There are modern operas, traditional operas that have been revised and adapted, and newly-written historical dramas that make the excellent traditional culture shine with new brilliance in the new era.

The themes of the plays are also diverse. There are Red-themed dramas that featured on revolutionary history, music dramas that show the touching deeds of contemporary models, dramas that reflect the industrial construction and the rural reform in China, operas that dig into the local culture and show the regional characteristics, adaptations and reconstructions of classic works, and popular plays among children and teenagers.

In addition, a special invitation play, a Yueju Opera New Dragon Inn, was invited to be staged at the festival, to provide a reference for the traditional opera to go to the market and expand the development space.