The 2024 Aranya Theater Festival, with the theme of "Routine and Exceptions", will be held from June 20 to 30, and tickets will be officially opened on the Damai platform at 10:00 on May 9. On April 22, this year's repertoire and arrangements were released, Ma Yin, chairman of the Aranya Theater Festival, Meng Jinghui, Chen Minghao, artistic directors of the festival, Yang Ting, Liu Chang, artistic planners, and Li Jianjun, theater director, participated in the display and release of all aspects of the scene, and all 29 domestic and foreign blockbuster plays in the theater art section of this theater festival were announced.
According to Artistic Director Meng Jinghui, this is the first time that the festival has invited nine artistic directors from the world's eight top theater festivals to bring their own theater directors' works to Aranya. These include Olivier Pi, former Artistic Director of the Avignon Theatre Festival in France, and Thiago Rodriguez, Artistic Director of the Vienna Festival in Austria, Satoshi Miyagi, Artistic Director of the Shizuoka World Theatre Festival in Japan, Michael Kantor, Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Youth Theatre Festival in Australia, Caterina Evangelatos, Artistic Director of the Athens Theatre Festival, and Mazen El El Murray, Artistic Director of the International Youth Theatre Festival in Egypt. Galabavi, Artistic Director of the Polish Divine Comedy Festival, Bartos Sidlowski, and Fabio Rubiano Ojuela, Artistic Director of the International Theater Festival of the Americas in Colombia.
Among the blockbuster plays include the international opening drama "Theatrical Maniac" staged at the Lonely Outer Theater, the new work "The Mystery of the King" just premiered by Emma Dante, an important representative of the Italian avant-garde theater, the first season of the stage play "Flowers" will be performed as the domestic opening drama in the newly opened Aranya largest indoor theater - the ninth phase of the theater, Japanese director Satoshi Miyagi's "The Tale of the Castle Guard" will be staged as the closing drama, and "Theater Superman" Chen Minghao invites the audience to come to the theater to "drink porridge in the morning, soup at noon, and drink wine in the evening" This is "Galileo by the Sea I.+II.+III.", which will be performed in the Rehearsal Hall Theater......
The ecology of world theatre will also be presented through a number of plays, such as "A Story About an Actor" from Austria, "Moby Dick" by the famous European puppet director Inveld Aspelli, "Lines and Lines in between" directed by Thiago Rodriguez, the current artistic director of the Avignon Theatre Festival, and "Who is Virginia Woolf" with the pioneer of twentieth-century modernism and feminism, and the representative of stream-of-consciousness literature. Woolf's life is the theme of the French play "The Head of the World and the End of the World" by Argentine director Ezequer, which is a work of puppetry, text, scene construction, and contemporary art installation, the physical theater "She and Them" was created by Icelandic director Unur Elizabet, and the Brazilian National Treasure Theater Warehouse Theater Company brought "Neva", which tells the story of an accident in a theater during the Tsarist period.
The special invited plays of this theater festival are undoubtedly the epitome of the avant-garde attitude of contemporary theater in China, such as "Magic Toy Shop" directed by Li Jianjun adapted from the novel of the same name by Maugham Prize winner Angela Carter; "Princess Fishbones" directed by Yang Ting is adapted from the famous Polish playwright Gombrowicz's work "Princess Ivona of Burgundy"; the grand theater version of "Five Rules of Lao She" led by Wang Jinsong is directed by Lin Xiyue; Liu Chang's "4:48 Mental Breakdown" brings artists from various fields to connect diversified art forms; Meng Jinghui's new work Adaptation of Zweig's classic novella "Fear", starring Huang Xiangli, the "Queen of One-man Show", is the final chapter of Zweig's "Zweig Trilogy";
In addition, artists from all over the world will be guided by music, dance, body, and poetry, allowing the audience to dance with the natural landscape. The Canadian cast of "Cock Cock Cock" was busy roasting chicken, pounding potatoes and preparing appetizers on stage to accompany the audience. The Symphony of People troupe from North America is an imaginative carnival where they blend singing and oven to create a surprising feast. Polish directors Pushzovowska and Figelewicz's Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet is the first work in the history of Polish theatre to use sound language and sign language to create and perform bilingually. Lonely Island, a pure dance New Wave work from the Belgian Anton Racic Theatre Company, tells the story of a group of people living in an isolated world. "Your Body Loves the Universe" was inspired by the great Persian poet Rumi. The classic Broadway romantic musical "I LOVE YOU..." is the longest-running small theater musical on Off-Broadway in the United States, and director Zhou Xiaoqian uses the most life-like way to explore love, marriage and other life themes with the audience. The Hong Kong-style musical "Country Talk" is the latest work by the new Artistic Director of the City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong, Yuri Ng, with an original score by multi-faceted musician Lo Yee-kwan. Young dancer Lian Guodong's dance theatre work "Hidden Landscape" uses objects related to the dancers' lives to show the contemporaneity of young people at various social levels.
In addition to the theatrical arts section, there will also be a variety of content that will extend the stage infinitely, including the youth culture vane "Migratory Bird 300", the popular "37°2 Environmental Drama Reading", and the "Drama House" that plays with diverse cross-border creativity. It is worth mentioning that this year's Theatre Festival will launch a new professional drama competition unit - "Future Theatre SHOWCASE", which will feature the Gold, Silver and Special Awards of Future Theatre, which will be selected by an international jury composed of 7 international theatre directors, directors, producers, critics, actors and professors from 6 countries. The "Future Drama SHOWCASE" is jointly planned by theater directors Li Jianjun and Meng Jinghui, and will also hold a series of activities such as master classes, international market recommendations, youth summits, and action workshops.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Guo Jia
Editor/Cui Wei