Friends use festival to stage theater dreams

This year, Chen is taking his theatrical experiment to another level by building a tower, the Galileo Tower, as the main site for his new play, Galileo by the Sea. The play includes different elements, from sound, paintings, physical theater and literature. The three parts of the play will be performed in three separate shows each day, with the audience attending at breakfast, lunchtime and dinnertime. It will be performed for seven days.

"Food will be a part of the production, and we will serve the audience three meals a day," Chen explains. "Audience participation is key to the success of a theatrical production. I want to build a world for them where they can dream and imagine things."

Director Ma Junfeng's play Blossoms will be staged at the newly opened Nine Theater. Remaining faithful to the novel, the play is about the journey of Ah Bao, an ambitious everyman opportunist who rises to become a legendary figure in Shanghai's most elite commercial circles in the early 1990s. The plot follows his subtle and ambiguous romance-like relationships with three women. The play is an adaptation of Mao Dun Literary Prizewinner Jin Yucheng's novel of the same title, and it has had 100 performances nationwide. A TV series based on the novel by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai became a phenomenon early this year, making the novel popular with young people.