The "circle of friends" of Chinese musicals is expanding. On the 12th, the "Performing Arts World - 2024 Shanghai International Musical Theatre Festival" Musical Theatre Development Forum was held in Shanghai Cultural Square. Keynote speakers from China, Japan, the United States, South Korea and Germany, as well as industry experts, scholars and media, gathered at the forum to open a collision of ideas and experience exchange combining industrial practice and academic research.
On the same day, the "World of Performing Arts - 2024 Shanghai International Musical Theatre Festival" came to an end. As one of the three major international festivals and exhibitions in the world of performing arts, the "World of Performing Arts - Shanghai International Musical Theatre Festival" was born at the same age as the world of performing arts. The Musical Festival radiates multiple aspects of the development of the industry, drives the "high agglomeration" of performing arts resources with the "excellent empowerment" of brand festivals and exhibitions, helps the performing arts world become a place of integration of performing arts wharf, performing arts source and performing arts trend, creates a high-quality business card of "Shanghai culture", and forges ahead for the vision of building an Asian performing arts capital. The event was hosted by Shanghai Huangpu District People's Government and Shanghai Grand Theatre Performing Arts Center, and organized by Shanghai Huangpu District Culture and Tourism Bureau and Shanghai Culture Square Theater Management Co., Ltd.
Explore the new trend of industry development
The "Musical Theatre Development Forum" hosted by Shanghai Culture Square has been held for 13 consecutive years, with more than 1,600 guests and more than 160 experts and practitioners at home and abroad exploring new ideas and introducing new perspectives through case sharing, dialogue and discussion, etc., touching the multi-dimensional field of the musical industry chain. The forum witnessed the dedication of the practitioners, the tireless pursuit of the spirit, and also explored the never-ending development of musical theater with the times and the audience.
At this year's forum, Kazuhiko Matsuda, Senior Manager of the Drama Department of Toho Co., Ltd., detailed the history of Toho Musicals and looked forward to the future development direction of Japanese musicals; American musical theater director and choreographer Zoe Marconelli shared his experience in the industry over the past 40 years, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and synchronization of all parties in the creation of a new musical; Playwright Wu Shiyi shared his years of experience in the co-incubation and production of Chinese and Korean musicals from the perspective of musical directors and screenwriters, Martin Markelt, a German musical actor and artistic director, used the musical "Ludwig II" as an example to explain "quality is king" in production, and Fei Yuanhong, deputy general manager of Shanghai Culture Square Theater Management Co., Ltd., presented "Musical Theatre in China from an Aesthetic Perspective" The keynote speech gave full play to his keen sense as a theater manager and analyzed the integration and change of musicals in China from the unique perspective of audience aesthetics.
Open a new chapter in Chinese originality
The "Original Chinese Musical Season" and the "Chinese Original Musical Incubation Program" are the performance and incubation brands that Shanghai Culture Square has been cultivating for many years. Over the years, the two have given full play to the advantages of the cultural square's industrial platform, promoted high-quality masterpieces to the market, discovered new works for the industry, and become the driving force for the development of Chinese musicals, witnessing and nurturing the prosperity and growth of China's musical industry.
Since 2012, the "Original Chinese Musical Theatre Season" has presented 58 sets of 163 original Chinese musicals to the market with the desire of "Selected for You every Spring". This year, 5 masterpieces of "Classic of Mountains and Seas", "South Wall Project", "I Want You", "Stars" and "Rouge Buckle" appeared in turn, and the 18 performances attracted nearly 20,000 viewers, giving the audience a unique "message of spring" for Chinese musicals.
The five works presented this season are diverse in style, including singing the times with music, telling the dreams, love, and true tastes of ordinary Chinese in the process of growing up; there are also current fashionable national style themes, integrating traditional Chinese cultural symbols and contemporary multimedia technology expressions; and contemporary interpretations of classic songs and novels, striving to show the vitality and new heights of original Chinese musicals, and innovating the audience's imagination of art. As the finale of this year's performance season, at the press conference, Zhang Ze, the actor and musical actor of the "Twelve Less" in the musical "Rouge Buckle", brought an excerpt of the same name from the repertoire "Rouge Buckle" to everyone, and innovatively interpreted the classic written by Li Bihua, the "first person in the world to love love".
New artists and new works are constantly emerging
New artists and new works are constantly emerging, injecting fresh blood into the development of the industry and accumulating a solid creative force for Chinese musicals. According to Fei Yuanhong, deputy general manager of Shanghai Culture Square, the 2024 "Chinese Original Musical Incubation Program" received a total of 80 submissions from 144 creators. Among them, 72 works were submitted to the free incubation track, 8 works were submitted to the film and television IP incubation track, and the creators covered 19 regions, and 91% of the creators participated in the incubation plan for the first time.
As the first original musical incubation project in China, the "Chinese Original Musical Incubation Program" was launched in 2019 and has grown into an original incubation platform with rich resources and a scientific mechanism after six years of development. In the past six years, the "Incubation Program" has received a total of 488 original submissions from 717 people, and incubated more than 10 original musicals.
Today, six excellent original musicals, "The Queen of the Southern Tang Dynasty", "Life and Death Sign", "Sorry, I Forgot", "Inaccessible", "South Wall Project" and "Lady Macbeth", have been successfully commercially produced and received enthusiastic responses from audiences all over the country.
At the press conference, the specially invited incubation work, the original new musical "Lady Macbeth", presented a series of conceptual visual posters designed by artist Pang Hao. "Lady Macbeth" is co-created by James Beaney and Gina Georgia, an outstanding British young creator, and is the first internationally oriented musical work completed by Shanghai Culture Square and Xu Jun Theatre in conjunction with overseas resources, and will premiere at Shanghai 1862 Fashion Art Center on May 9. Creatively presented in English with an international cast and crew, the play will be the first new original English-language musical incubated and produced by a Chinese team and with its world premiere in Shanghai.
Create new possibilities for artistic life
Give the stage to the audience and let art come to life. Since 2019, the "Musical Theatre Singing Competition" has been open to musical theatre lovers, singing lovers and people who are interested in the musical theatre industry every year, providing a platform for lovers to "speak out". In the past five years, the competition has received more than 2,900 submissions from all walks of life, with the youngest of the contributors being 16 years old and the oldest being 61 years old, touching 92 professions and spanning 79 cities. Among the top 20 finalists over the years, 28 have appeared on the stage of commercial musicals, becoming a new force in the sustainable development of Chinese musicals.
As the music played, six new faces appeared on the stage of the press conference. They are the six winners of the 2024 "Musical Singing Competition": the first prize winner Huang Shengqi, the second prize winners Zhou Huanhe and Yang Xinyu, and the third prize winners Zhang Zhi, Huang Qianyi and Guo Chenchen. From more than 500 submissions when the registration opened, to more than 160 people entering the semi-finals, and then to being shortlisted for the top 20 finals, and finally determining the first, second and third prizes, the six contestants sang the hearts of the contestants to bravely pursue their dreams with the popular excerpt "Rewrite the Stars" from the musical movie "The King of the Circus", and also witnessed the passing of love and dreams.
Revitalize the new space of the theater field
At the beginning of 2023, the physical space of the Shanghai Musical Theatre Culture Research Center, Shanghai Cultural Square Musical Theatre Center, was officially opened to the public. In the 1,800-square-meter space, it is open to small production companies, main creative teams, performance teams and cross-cultural companies in related fields that are professional in the musical theater industry, and is committed to becoming a new industrial platform integrating content incubation, talent gathering, pioneer experiments and other functions.
"Shanghai Culture Square Musical Theatre Center" is a key measure of Shanghai Culture Square to deepen the layout of the musical industry chain, and strives to build the most influential musical industry incubation and cultivation platform in China. From "watching musicals to cultural squares" to "doing musicals to cultural squares", Shanghai Cultural Square focuses on the development of endogenous power in China's musical theater industry, and gradually adjusts its industry positioning to the role of content producers and platforms. On the occasion of the first anniversary of its operation, the logo of Shanghai Culture Square Musical Theater Center was unveiled at the press conference. The design of elliptical and trapezoidal shapes creates a junction in the overlap, marking the concept of an inclusive development of the Musical Theatre Center. This field encourages diverse musical theatre art forms to be incubated, integrated and complemented here, creating new possibilities for cross-border and breakthroughs.
In the future, the Musical Theatre Center will welcome more musical theatre creators, enthusiasts and cross-border partners to settle in, build a bridge between practitioners and audiences, stimulate the vitality of the composite space with "space +" services, and give individuals and creative groups a sense of belonging to the "home" here.