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BEIJING, Oct. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Single-oar skiffs ply the quiet waters of Wuzhen, but its streets are thronged with actors embodying a playwright's words. Welcome to the Wuzhen Theater Festival which has just opened in this ancient water town in east China's Zhejiang Province.
'All Wuzhen's a stage', to paraphrase Shakespeare, 'and all the courts and alleys full of players'. This 1300-year-old water town is putting on a show of shows, turning the place into a dreamland for theater aficionados from all around the globe.
The third Wuzhen Theater Festival opens with "The Physicists", presented by Schauspielhaus Zürich from Switzerland.
It is the first time for the play's director, Herbert Fritsch, to bring his work to China, and the countdown to the play's opening all the more thrilling for that.
"The problem the play is discussing is kind of obsolete, because it talks about the atom bomb and the problem of the atom bomb that you know we have no solution for it. So these people get crazy because there is no solution. This is how the actors behave, and this is the way they use their bodies. There are two ways to talk about the physicists. It's the way of physical acting, and it's a way of being a physicist. Both these things getting together make you crazy, frantic," he said.
Opening the festival alongside "The Physicists" is "A Man Who Flies Up to the Sky", an avant-garde piece brought by Chinese director, Li Jianjun.
The festival's artistic director, Meng Jinghui, has, along with his co-founders, created a theatrical melting pot of different styles and languages from around the world.
"The double opening demonstrates both our international vision and local character," Meng said.
Now in its third year, Wuzhen has grown to become one of the most prestigious theater festivals in China.
"When we had the first Wuzhen Theater Festival, many friends from abroad would ask where Wuzhen was and told me they would consider it. No one knew about Wuzhen and about how was it to hold a theater festival here. But things turned quite different when the second festival took place. Now it is in its third year. When they hear that we are inviting, they'll definitely come," said Stan Lai, co-founder of Wuzhen Theater Festival.
The festival includes a Young Theatre Artists Competition as it goes all out to cultivate young talents for the future.
"We have added new sections to the festival. One is a special award as part of the Young Artist competition. The winner will be sent to Avignon or Edinburgh or Berlin to experience the theater festival there. Another is the master classes, taught by masters from all over the world. And the fees will be used to support the trip abroad of the winner of the special award," said Huang Lei, co-founder of Wuzhen Theater Festival.
Along with the Young Theatre Artists Competition and master classes, the ten-day event – running through October the 24th – includes Specially Invited Plays and Wuzhen Dialogues. All in all, an immersive spectacle of theater arts.
(Source: CNTV.cn)
