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The Jiading district's drama festival and competition with the theme "My Best Opera - Drama", which began in March, held its final round in the district's Culture Center, on July 13 and 14, with around 180 participants from across the district.
For the past five months, the festival drew in more than 2,000 participants and an audience of 20,000, for the 70 tryouts and follow-up rounds, and about 1,500 shows. Jiading's opera drama festival, which is one of the district's many "Public Stage" activities, has three highlights:
1. Different age groups
Most Chinese consider opera a traditional art mainly for middle-aged and older people. But, the Jiading government sees it differently and has been making an effort to promote opera and folk arts among students and young people in recent years. And many young students have responded and have become opera fans, with some even playing in operas. So, this year's event has seen players of all ages, with the youngest only 10, and the oldest 83, at the tryout in the town of Jiangqiao.
2. Variety
Participants not only took on familiar opera types, such as Peking, Shanghai and Yue, but other forms of folk art as well, such as Huai opera, short sketches, folk stories, Shanghai monodramas, ventriloquism, and even Shanghai rap. This turned the the festival into a real opera-drama feast for the audience and a huge venue where enthusiastic players could demonstrate their particular drama form.
3. Localization
Unlike the events in past years, this time the festival organizers tried to bring in more participants by allowing local towns and neighborhoods to handle the registration and hold tryouts and follow-up rounds locally. As a result, operas were held on public lawns, in local schools, in industrial parks, in villages, neighborhood committees, you name it. The organizers tried to make the public become activists and participants rather than just passive observers of the whole dramatic festival.