Stage set for Guilin Festival

The 2025 Guilin Festival is set to open from Oct 24 to Nov 2, in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

On Friday, organizers of the festival held a promotion event in Seoul, South Korea.

Liu Xinglin, artistic director of the festival, said during the event that the 2025 edition of the festival will center on theater, while also encompassing music, visual arts, arts education, and cultural forums.

"The goal is to create an open, diverse, and multidimensional 'City of the Arts'," he said.

The festival will continue to highlight Guilin's distinctive integration of "landscape and art", featuring 18 productions from both China and abroad. These will include a variety of art forms such as drama, musical theater, children's theater, and puppetry, actively fostering creative exchange and mutual learning among Asian countries.

The opening production will be Xi Wu, a Chinese play which combines Peking Opera with contemporary storytelling. The Chinese musical, titled I Am What I Am, which highlights the centuries-old folk art of lion dance, will close the festival.

International theatrical productions, including the energetic and playful nonverbal show, Doodle POP, by South Korea's BRUSH Theatre, and The Seagull, a cooperation between Chinese and Russian artists, which is adapted from Chekhov's classic work, will also be staged during the festival.

The Chinese stage production, The Butterfly Dream, which is performed and produced by the Central Academy of Drama, was staged in the event in Seoul. The production will also be featured during the Guilin Festival.

Initiated in 2022, the festival, co-organized by the Central Academy of Drama, has attracted theater lovers to Guilin, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country.