Village savors its leading role

It's been a decade since theater director Stan Lai first brought a play to his father's hometown, in Huichang county, Jiangxi province. What started with just one production a year has grown into a much larger vision, and the Huichang Theatre Village has been established, giving around 700 performances in its first year.

The village hosts two theater seasons per year and from May 23 to June 2, the Huichang Theatre Season 003 will bring together international stage artists for more than 370 performances.

This year's event will be more international, especially since a residency program was launched to encourage global theater artists to settle in the village and draw inspiration from the environment.

Among these artists is leading American experimental theater director Robert Wilson, who was invited as a resident artist during the second edition of the event, hosted from Nov 21 to Dec 1 last year.

"He's not just staging one of his plays — he's creating a production right here. We've selected the performers according to his instructions, and he'll stay in Huichang for a month of rehearsals," Lai said at the theater season's media conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

The production is the Chinese language version of Hamletmachine, a classic play directed by Wilson and written by German playwright Heiner Muller, that has been staged in English, German and Italian. The Chinese edition will have its world premiere during the theater season, making it the first international production created on-site at the village.

Greek theater director Theodoros Terzopoulos, a founding member of international theater exchange organization Theatre Olympics, is bringing his rendition of Oresteia, the only surviving complete ancient Greek trilogy. Huichang will be the play's only stop in China.

In his recurring lecture series, Lai will give a special session on Greek tragedy, and invite Terzopoulos to a dialogue discussion.

At the theater village's public areas, visitors will see a variety of open-air performances by domestic and international troupes, including French aerial company Gratte Ciel, which appeared at the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

Also from France, Les Grandes Personnes will bring giant puppetry to the village. As the festival coincides with Children's Day, a series of special workshops will engage local children in collaborative creations.

Lai is going to stage two productions of his own for the theater season. One of them is a new rendition of Menage a 13, the same play he staged in Huichang back in 2015.

Born in 1954 and then from 1966 based in Taiwan, it was not until the 1980s that Lai got back in touch with his uncle in Huichang. In 1997, he finally visited the county.

"The journey was very tough. Then I thought, if I could bring my productions here, so the residents had the chance to see performances of the same high quality as those in Beijing, Shanghai, and abroad, what kind of impact would it have? It became my own personal social experiment," Lai says.

In 2015, he was able to begin realizing his vision and staged Menage a 13 there.

"Menage a 13 is a comedy that addresses topics like marriage, family, and parent-child relationships. It has a somewhat absurd sense of humor. So 10 years ago, I was a little concerned about staging it in this small county," says Ding Nai-chu, theater producer and Lai's wife.

"But after the performances, I was relieved to see an overall positive reaction. The audience seemed to accept it quite well."

A decade later, the same production returns, now featuring a new cast, including actress Xie Na and actor Chu Chung-Heng.

Over the following years, Lai continued to stage more of his work in Huichang. Receiving positive feedback, he thought it was possible for him to give back more to the county, and started envisioning this theater village.

With support from local government, Lai and his team redesigned the area around his family's ancestral home to establish a comprehensive performing arts complex.

While preserving the area's historical architecture, four indoor theaters were built or repurposed from old buildings, such as a former printing factory and an ancestral hall, along with several plazas for open-air performances, including the Lai Family Mansion Plaza, a square in front of Lai's ancestral home.

This year, Lai's new production Beckett in the Lai Family Mansion will be staged inside the house.

Influenced by Irish writer Samuel Beckett's work, Lai created Footfalls: Beckett in the Ancient Chinese Garden in 1989, and directed Waiting for Godot in 1999 and 2001. After 24 years, Lai pays tribute to Beckett once again with the site-specific play at his ancestral mansion.

"This year, we've also established a theater troupe, Actors Company, especially for the village, hoping that the village will have performances all year round, rather than only during the theater seasons," Lai says.

Theater practitioners from around the country have joined the troupe and begun studying under Lai and rehearsing his classic work. On Sunday, the troupe gave their debut performance, a new version of Lai's play Circle Story.

"The theater village project began as a dream, a simple, naive idea. After 10 years, the biggest change is that the theater village has opened. I feel a sense of accomplishment, but it's still very early on," Lai says.

"We are working on building a creative cultural ecosystem. Our poster is of a banyan tree with a light bulb as its roots. The light bulb goes deep into the soil and illuminates it. Changes are only beginning to take place on the ground."

The village officially opened with its first theater season which ran from Jan 5 to 14 last year. Official statistics show that, by presenting 354 performances, the event attracted 1.24 million visits, with a peak of over 200,000 in a single day.

Over the course of the year, the village hosted 698 performances given by 65 theater troupes from China and abroad, leading to 6.6 million visits, which boosted the county's tourism revenues.

According to Yu Kai, deputy head of Huichang county, the county government continues to strengthen the cultural brand of the theater village this year, enhancing support facilities, organizing high-quality theater events, developing the Hesheng Institute of Theatre Technology, and working toward obtaining a national 4A scenic area recognition for the theater village.

"This project aligns with our goal of strengthening the cultural foundation of our county — to make culture a driving force for its development and for the residents' well-being. We hope it will be a place where creators, performers and other theater practitioners realize their dreams, and where visitors can see a broader world," Yu says.