Festival theater for the family

SHINE

SIX excellent Chinese theater produc-tions will be staged every Friday and Saturday throughout September and October at Pudong New Stage as part of the 2017 theater series at the Pudong Culture & Art Festival.

“The Four Ministers of Ming Dynasty,” produced by Shanghai Theater Academy, will open the series on September 1. This 2015 National Art Fund project is adapted from the novel “Biography of Xu Jie, the celebrated minister in the Ming Dynasty” by Shen Aoda and Shen Yiyun, which reveals the political struggle be-tween the two ministers Xu Jie and Yan Song.

In the upcoming weeks, “My Father’s Father” is a theater production that will warm everyone’s heart with a fam-ily story. It was created by Taiwanese director Lin Wei Yan and has been pre-sented in Taiwan, Shenzhen, Nanchong, Taizhou and Shanghai.

Ma Yuan, the Shanghai director who is rehearsing the show for the festival, noted that “My Father’s Father” is cen-tered on the relationship among the three generations.

“It’s a simple and pure story about family and kinship,” he said.

Other theater productions to be staged include: urban thriller “Luoka Town,” inspirational story “Innocence of Child-hood Friends: The Face on the School Table,” absurd play “The Second Person” and love drama “Sadness, Encounter.”

The tickets are priced from 30 to 150 yuan (US$4.5-22.5), and the series will also host a free performance unit with new creative shows by amateur theater clubs.

Ma is also one of the organizers of this year’s theater series, and he said quality is the first thing to consider when select-ing the products for the festival.

“It’s not a typical, popular theater festival, but definitely one of the most warm-hearted ones. We are giving space to more different, diverse productions and the dialogues will encourage more people to participate in the theater and learn about the art form,” he said.

The 2017 Pudong Culture & Art Festi-val officially kicked off on July 21 and will last through October 31. More than 600 cultural and art events will be pre-sented in the three months.