The Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) will collaborate again with the China Theatre Association and the Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles to hold the National Advanced Studies Program for Young Stage Designers in May this year.
From 2011 to 2014, STA successfully held four national advanced studies programs for young playwrights, young directors, young Chinese traditional opera musicians and young theatre critics respectively. These four previous programs achieved great results and won wide recognition. The way in which these programs were held attracted the high level of attention by the leaders of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, Ministry of Culture and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and generated a positive and far reaching impact nationwide.
The forthcoming program for young stage designers has enrolled 64 students aged 38 years on average. They come from art groups and institution of high education in 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, including one each from Taiwan and Macau. Among all students, 16 people have the academic qualification of master’s degree or above, 8 people have the professional title of associate professor or above, and many people are well accomplished in stage design creation.
The program will be delivered in diversified forms including celebrity talk, masters’ evaluation, foreign expert workshop, theatre visit, youth forum, site visit to featured venues, tour of masters’ art exhibition etc. The program will not only invite renowned Chinese experts to give lectures, but also invite some foreign experts to exchange with the students in the form of workshops. These foreign experts include Dmitry Krymov from Russia; Carl Fillion from Canada; Sven Soren Beyer, Sebastien Dupouey and Kathrin Hoffmann from Germany; Tom Piper from the UK; Irina Kruzhilina, Michael Ramsuar from the USA ect. The number of foreign experts invited to this program is the highest in comparison with all previous programs.
Because of the relatively large number of students in this year’s program, the organizers have upgrade the composition of evaluating professors to include an increased number of front-line specialists. The studies to be undertaken under this program will have a great significance and the graduation works of this program will be compiled into an album for open publication.
