The fourth Wuzhen Drama Festival will be held from October 13 to 22, 2016, and the theme of the festival is "Overlook", which is based on the classics, and looks into the future. In the 10-day festival, there are 22 plays from 13 countries and regions, including Germany, France, Russia, Spain, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, Australia, Lithuania, Romania, Chile and the Netherlands, and nearly 80 theater performances, which is the most ever.
1. This year's Wuzhen Drama Festival has invited Lin Zhaohua, a master playwright and director who opened a new era of experimental theater in China, to be the honorary chairman. Meanwhile, Lin Zhaohua's new work "Dr. Godot or Six Men in Search of the Eighteenth Camel" will be premiered globally during the Wuzhen Drama Festival. And the whole invited performance unit consists of four major sections, which are Contemporary New Classics Series, Commemorative Shakespeare Series, Space and Body Series, and Discovery Series.
2. In order to provide a richer and more diversified theater performance space, Wuzhen also constructed a new comprehensive performance space "Net Theater" this year. In order to realize the artistic innovation of domestic and foreign troupes, Wuzhen will hold special venues for performances in the Prologue Hall of Wuzhen Grand Theater and Pillow Water Sculpture Hall this year, and will continue the outdoor performances of the 2015 Wuzhen Drama Festival by opening the Water Theater, Poetry Field Square, and Sun and Moon Square. The festival will also hold theater activities such as youth competition, carnival performances, town conversations, theater workshops, and theater long street banquets, as in previous years.
(1) Opening play invites German contemporary theater master's masterpiece "The Gambler"
The eight plays in the Contemporary Classics series all interpret theater classics from a contemporary perspective. Among them, the highlight is the opening play, the masterpiece "The Gambler" by director Frank Castorf, a contemporary theater master from Germany. Frank Castorf has been the artistic director and general director of the Berlin People's Theater for 25 years since 1992, and has influenced the development of European theater aesthetics for nearly a quarter of a century with his deep and profound theater creation skills, highly innovative stage expressions, and sparing no effort in supporting and cultivating the younger generation of the theater. Many viewers still remember the opening play of last year's Wuzhen Theatre Festival, "The Physicist", whose director Fritz was once Kasdorf's royal star, and with Kasdorf's support, Fritz took to the stage of Berlin's People's Theatre in the capacity of a director.
The play "The Gambler" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Russian literary giant Dostoevsky, and combines multimedia visual imagery, literature, stagecraft, and theater performance into one. The 280-minute play gives Dostoevsky's legendary work a strong contemporary meaning: "Under complete loss of control, wickedness, indulgence, and mania, everything is possible, or rather, nothing makes sense."
(2) Enemy of the People
Jan Klata, from the Old Theater in Krakow, Poland, is a popular and pioneering theater director in Poland today. With his unique artistic personality and outstanding creative style, he has been called the "bad boy" of the Polish theater industry, in contrast to the tradition of Polish theater's seriousness of discourse. He is known as the "bad boy" of Polish theater. His play "Enemy of the People" will be staged at the Wuzhen Theater Festival.
(3) French "existentialist" master Camus' masterpiece "Caligula"
Lithuania's popular new generation director Vidas Bareikis will present the French "existentialist" masterpiece "Caligula". VIDAS BAREIKIS brings the masterpiece "Caligula" by French "existentialism" master Albert Camus. The play will be staged at the Pillow Water Carved Flower Hall in Wuzhen. This classic play will be interpreted in a new way and Chinese audiences will be invited to participate in the performance.
(4) Puppet play Don Quixote
Carles Alfaro from Spain brings the puppet play Don Quixote, which marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Spanish literary giant Cervantes in 2016, condensing the 820,000-word-long novel into a 60-minute production that brings together the famous Spanish literary figure Don Quixote, who has influenced the world over the past 400 years. literary figure Don Quixote and his attendant Sancho to a contemporary audience.
(5) Experimental Drama "The Cherry Orchard"
Japan's newest director Miho Yanehara creates an experimental drama "The Cherry Orchard" inspired by Russian master Chekhov's masterpiece "The Cherry Orchard", with an all-female cast, relocates the story framework to contemporary Tokyo, and conducts a theatrical experiment in the collision of body and language.
(6) In addition, Chinese young theater director Wang Chong's "Ghosts 2.0," based on Ibsen's 1885 work "Ghosts of the Group," and Chinese young theater director Chen Minghao's annual new work "The Big Chicken," which is derived from Swiss playwright Dylan Matter's play "Romulus the Great," will be unveiled at the festival in Wuzhen. Meng Jinghui, the artistic director of this year's Wuzhen Theater Festival, will also bring his masterpiece "He Has Two Revolvers and Black and White Eyes" by the famous Italian playwright Dario Fo.
(7) Denmark*** and Theater Company's rendition of the brand-new Hamlet
In 2016, the world is commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, and the Wuzhen Theatre Festival has invited four Shakespeare-related productions of varying styles. Europe's most innovative Danish **** and theater company and the internationally acclaimed British rock band The Tiger Lillies will perform the new Hamlet. Director Martin Dulianiès has stripped the original Shakespearean monologues, subplots, fights and taunts of their essence, and propelled the story forward with 21 newly composed songs.
(8) The puppet show "The Tempest" by the Gong Theater Company of Sibiu, Romania, puts people and puppets on a two-tiered stage, exploring pain, patience, hope and disappointment through superb puppetry. Dou Hui, a young Chinese theater director with a background in choreography, will use multiple stage visual forms to build Lear's kingdom, exploring the spiritual world of man in multiple spaces and times. The Hamlet Machine is a masterpiece by contemporary German playwright Heiner Müller, which rewrites Shakespeare's Hamlet in a postmodern way.
(9) "Mom's Poem"
Theater without language has always been an integral part of the festival, and this year's slate features five productions. Pantomime "Mom's Poem," by Sergey Zemlyansky, director of the Pushkin Theater in Moscow, Russia, expresses a mother's love and pain. Black Hole Theatre Company from Australia and Duda Paiva Theatre Company from the Netherlands co-produced the physical puppetry "Blindness", which was created from the personal experience of the main actor and puppeteer Duda Paiva. The physical puppet show "Those People" by the French troupe Lili Labelle is about wandering, nomadic life and outsiders.
(10) Australia's Black Hole Theatre Company and the Netherlands' Duda Paiva Theatre Company co-produced the physical puppet show "Blindness"
(11) Young Chinese theater director Li Ning's physical theater "Soul Thesaurus" combines pioneering means of installation, performance, and dance, while Chinese conceptual photographer and renowned visual artist Ma Liang, as the artistic director and chief puppet designer, is the original actor of "Papa's The Time Machine" is a unique stage performance in which actors and puppets perform in parallel.
Last but not least, Lin Zhaohua's full-length production of Dr. Godot or Six Men in Search of the Eighteenth Camel, the world premiere of which is also a highlight during the festival, will be staged in Wuzhen. Adapted from Dietrich Schwanitz, the play tells the story of five patients in the reading room of a severe schizophrenia unit who all think they are the most famous European playwrights of the 20th century, and each of the five patients harmoniously derides the other's dramatic forms, theatrical ideas, and achievements in the first-person tones and perspectives of each of the five playwrights. The play imitates all the theatrical forms represented by these playwrights: George Bernard Shaw's "discussion play", Pirandello's "postulate play", Brecht's "educational drama", Unescu's "absurd drama" and Beckett's "metaphysical drama".