Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

The Wuzhen Theatre Festival is set to kick off in East China's Zhejiang Province on October 19 with the theme "Arise: Taking off, In flight, Setting forth on new journeys." The event, which is set to run until October 29, will mark the 10th anniversary of the festival's establishment, according to the festival's organizing committee on Saturday. 

The committee also announced that the Emerging Theatre Artists Competition and the Outdoor Carnival channels are open for registration. 

Artists looking to compete in the 2023 Emerging Theatre Artists Competition will need to perform a theater play related to the key words "train tickets," "famous paintings worldwide" and "horses" within 30 minutes. According to the rules, stage settings will be kept to a minimum with only simple tables and chairs provided and self-made and other large props not permitted.

A highlight of the festival, the Emerging Theatre Artists Competition has supported many young Chinese artists' dreams of creating and promoting original plays. Over the past decade, more than 8,100 people have applied for the competition, with almost 600 young playwrights producing 143 original plays for the festival, noted the press release.

The Outdoor Carnival is another highlight at the festival. The 2023 carnival will embrace all art forms, from traditional performances to contemporary avant-garde theater, multimedia technology and creative cross-discipline works. More than 2,000 shows are scheduled to be held in over 30 outdoor spaces and will cover a wide variety of live performances, including improvisational comedy, traditional dance dramas, puppet shows, juggling and experimental short poetry-music plays.

Chinese artists Zhou Xun, Hu Ge, Huang Bo and Hao Lei and Travis Preston, dean of California Institute of the Arts School of Theater and artist director of the CalArts Center for New Performance in the US, are some of the new members of the Artistic Committee, which usually sees a reshuffling every three years.

Editor: Xiao Da