China News Service, Changsha, November 10 (Xie Yanxiong) The second national sketch show will be held in Changsha from November 12 to 22. With the theme of "Play in Changsha and traveling with drama", this year's exhibition selected 55 outstanding short plays from across the country and arranged them into 14 high-quality performances, which were staged in turn at the Hunan Opera Performance Center and the Hunan Grand Theater.
The organizer stated on the 10th that unlike traditional theater performances, this exhibition breaks the boundaries of the stage and goes beyond professional theaters. It links diverse spaces such as ancient stages, old teahouses, museums, and urban small theaters, and is supported by a series of activities such as dramatic dialogues and immersive garden markets, creating a universal theater feast that covers the whole area and can be seen, visited, and experienced.
It is understood that the performance will integrate drama into the daily life of urban fireworks, and special outdoor opera performances will be held at Changsha's characteristic landmarks such as the Ancient Theater of Fire Palace and Tianfutai Tea House. Classic repertoires such as Hunan Opera, Flower Drum Opera, and Puppet Shadow Puppetry will be staged in turn, and well-known traditional operas such as "Mulan Trains Her Son", "Liu Hai Plays with the Golden Toad" and "Seven Grades of Sesame Official" will be performed brilliantly, allowing citizens and tourists to experience the unique charm of traditional opera up close while tasting Changsha's delicacies and strolling around the old streets.
During the event, new performing arts spaces in major cities in Changsha continued to unlock diverse theatrical performances. Small theaters in university towns, intangible cultural heritage theaters, and small theaters with urban characteristics are blooming. Dramas, Peking opera, puppet shadow puppets, new flower drum operas and other repertoires are fully covered. With lightweight and youthful drama performances, art can go out of the palace and get closer to the public, realizing that "good theater is around you."
According to the organizer, on November 18, a major supporting event for this exhibition - Drama Gathering·City Living Room "Audience·Audience" drama dialogue event will be held at Hunan First Normal University. Wang Peiyu, a Peking Opera actor and inheritor of the Yu School, Yu Rongjun, a national first-level screenwriter and vice chairman of the Shanghai Dramatists Association, and cutting-edge drama Four guests, director Zhang Hui and senior theater producer and Edinburgh Frontier Theater Exhibition curator Yuan Hong, gathered in Changsha to have in-depth discussions on three major topics: "How close are sketches to us?" "How can sketches turn 'good-looking' into 'good business'?" "Are AI-empowered sketches here to steal the show or to warm up the show?" Drama lovers can listen and participate in questions and exchanges.
From November 11th to 12th, Courtyard No. 321, Renmin Middle Road, Changsha will launch the "Dongting Fairy Market" immersive amusement park activity, relying on the local classic Huagu Opera IP to create an immersive plot experience, and set up fun gameplay such as collecting seals through obstacles and interacting with immortals. There will also be a Hunan-specific intangible cultural heritage market on site, where Miao embroidery, Hunan embroidery, clay figurines, ancient incense and other intangible cultural heritage items will be on display, and intangible cultural heritage craftsmen will share inheritance stories on the spot. At the same time, opera flash mobs, national style performances, and theme light arrays filled the atmosphere, allowing citizens to immerse themselves in the drama in advance and experience the unique charm of the integration of traditional drama and national style culture and tourism.
From high-quality performances in professional theaters, fireworks and pear gardens on the market stage, to ideological dialogues with celebrities, and immersive national-style garden tours, the second national sketch show will unlock new ways of drama in multiple forms, inviting tourists from all over the world to gather in Changsha and embark on a unique theatrical journey in an immersive way.
