The 10th Wuzhen Drama Festival will be held on

From October 19 to October 29, 2023!

The theme is “Rising”.

Leap, rise, take off in the wind and embark on a new journey.

Arise

Taking off, in flight,

setting forth on new journeys.

On May 5, the organizing committee of the Wuzhen Drama Festival released the propositions and rules for the Youth Competition at the 10th Wuzhen Drama Festival in 2023, and officially opened the registration channel for youth competition and the Guzhen Carnival.

The 10th Wuzhen Drama Festival will also usher in the triennial re-election of the Art Committee. Zhou Xun, Hu Ge, Yao Renxi, Travis Preston, Yue Minjun, Huang Bo and Hao Lei will serves as the art members of this Wuzhen Drama Festival.

At the same time, the youth competition judging committee of this Wuzhen Drama Festival will be composed of Lai Shengchuan, Huang Lei, He Jiong, Zhou Liming, Cheng Er, Yang Ting, Li Bo, Wu Bi and Situ Jiayi.

Youth competition sets sail again

The Wuzhen Drama Festival, as a diverse and inclusive international cultural exchange platform, is committed to providing more opportunities for young theatricians to learn, create, and communicate. As the core unit of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, the youth competition has always taken supporting young people's creative dreams and reshaping the value of original drama as its mission.

Over the past decade, more than 8,100 people have signed up for youth competition units. After careful selection by the Wuzhen Drama Festival judges, nearly 600 outstanding young drama creators have emerged from the Bengwan Theater, and they have created 143 original drama works, injecting a continuous stream of vitality into Chinese drama. This year's youth competition will once again set sail, with love as the flag and youth as the starting point, they will write a memoir of the next decade's drama.

The Youth Competition of the 10th Wuzhen Drama Festival in 2023 features three creative elements: "train tickets, world famous paintings, and horses". Participants could use simple tables and chairs provided by the organizing committee, but are not allowed to make or carry other large props on their own; Participants must creatively use these three elements to create stage drama works, and the performance time should not exceed 30 minutes.

From now on until August 20, 2023, participants can log in to the official website of the Wuzhen Drama Festival (www.wuzhenfestival. com) to register. The preliminary judges of the Wuzhen Drama Festival will conduct preliminary selection based on the online registration results, and will announce the list of 18 successful entries on September 24, 2023. Afterwards, all shortlisted works will participate in two to three public performances during the Wuzhen Drama Festival for the preliminary competition. After that, 6-8 plays will enter the finals, and the final judges will select the corresponding award-winning works.

This year's Wuzhen Drama Festival still has one Best Drama Award (with a prize of RMB200,000), one Best Personal Performance Award (with a prize of RMB 60,000), and a number of Special Attention Awards.

Sincere creation will eventually be found, the spark that once did not ask for harvest and aspired to cultivate will eventually become a shining star of rising stars! Young people, the stage of Beng Bay always light up for you!

Ancient Town Carnival with diverse arts

In Wuzhen, the beautiful things appear anytime and anywhere. As a unique cultural landscape of Wuzhen Drama Festival, the Ancient Town Carnival has more than 2,000 performances from more than 100 groups in ten days, including improvised comedy, opera, installation art, multimedia, traditional dance drama, puppet drama, digital performance, juggling magic, body drama, experimental music and dance short plays, and other forms of performance, which have been staged in turn, enriching more than 30 outdoor performance spaces in Wuzhen West Gate.  In stone bridges, docks, alleys, squares, markets, rowing boats, and even a place between the water and sky, the bridges between the audience and art have been built.

Open and inclusive performance methods, diverse and integrated artistic concepts, as well as intangible cultural heritage programs such as Tibetan opera, Kunqu opera, Nuo opera, puppet show, Sichuan opera, Gan opera, and single bamboo drifting from all over the country, have made strong appearances. For the past decade, tens of millions of visitors from both domestic and foreign countries have come to experience the immersive atmosphere of the ancient town carnival. This year's Wuzhen Drama Festival welcomes more diverse artistic performances, thriving every stage outside the theater.

The Carnival unit of the Ancient Town welcomes traditional performance skills, contemporary avant-garde drama, multimedia technology video, space installation art, music, dance, cross-border creativity and other art forms with aesthetic shock and appeal. From now to September 15, 2023, drama groups, artistic creators and performing arts lovers from all over the country can register on the official website of Wuzhen Drama Festival (www.wuzhenfestival.com). The Wuzhen Theater Festival Organizing Committee will provide assistance in creation, performance, daily life, and opportunities for cooperation.

In addition to the above registration channels, the Wuzhen Drama Festival also welcomes the public to recommend excellent artistic performances to the organizing committee. The organizing committee of the Wuzhen Drama Festival hopes to find more times art that is close to the true form of life and has strong vitality through the eyes of the public.

Ten Year Expectations - Retrospect and Prospect

Ying, Hua, Cheng, Tiao, Ming, Rong, Yong, Mao, Feng…

From 2013 to 2023, you can savor the colorful journey of the Wuzhen Drama Festival, from the initial singing of new warblers ten years ago to the lush appearance ten years later, from invited plays, youth competition, ancient town carnivals, town dialogues to reading performances, drama public welfares, and drama fairs

Through the wind and rain, we forge ahead, and every new exploration expands the boundaries of the stage of the Wuzhen Drama Festival. We use drama art to expand the beautiful living space and draw an ideal blueprint for art, culture and tourism.

In a world drama cultural exchange window like the Wuzhen Drama Festival, drama is integrated into space, as well as other art forms and life aesthetics, leading to cultural revival and lasting charms. After ten years, we welcome the next decade, even a hundred years. It will be the eternal theme of Wuzhen Drama Festival to keep the purity of art, constant content innovation and formal iteration.

Listen to thunder in silence, see flowers in colorless places. The steadfast and warm spiritual power conveyed by the Wuzhen Drama Festival gives every ordinary person the courage to overcome hardships and embrace a better life. Behind the gentle scenery of Jiangnan, the contemporary cultural and artistic energy conveyed by the Wuzhen Drama Festival will also bring more aftertaste and emotion to the audience of this era.

Starting anew, always looking forward to the Wuzhen Drama Festival!