The “Nanjing Drama Festival 2019” has got under way this month and will last until December, with more than 20 different Chinese and foreign dramas on show for Nanjing theatre lovers.
An initiative of the Nanjing Poly Theatre, the Nanjing Drama Festival 2019 is collaborating with the UK’s TNT Theatre to put on the dramas “Little Women”, “Wuthering Heights”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Sherlock Holmes – Four Signatures”. Each will be performed in English.
Other international productions that shall be presented during the festival include Agatha Christie’s classic court drama “Witness for the Prosecution” and Ira Levin’s suspense thriller “Death Trap”.
Solidifying the festival’s credentials, William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” opened the festival, which is also vigorously supporting local theatres’ originality, building the Yangtze River Delta Drama Alliance and promoting the development of youth theatre. As such, this year, the festival’s Youth Unit will sign strategic cooperation agreements with Shanghai Youth Drama Festival, Hangzhou Youth Drama Festival and Suzhou Youth Drama Festival.
Since its debut in 2017, the Nanjing Drama Festival has showcased nearly 80 domestic and foreign classical dramas, putting on a total of more than 160 performances and attracting nearly 300,000 audience members.
At the end of this month, the festival will join hands with “Nanjing Book Fair” for the first time, launching the “Read at the Book Fair, Enter the Theatre” activity to help the public understand drama from various angles and encourage them to drop in the theatre.
Such tactics seem to be working. An employee from Jiangsu Theatre who spoke with The Nanjinger said, “More and more local people find it entertaining to go to theatre, and as a result audience figures are increasing year by year”.
