23 May 2018
The 2018 Shanghai Jingan Modern Drama Valley International Forum entitled "Drama and City: The Future Road of Asia’s Performing Arts Capital" was held at the Shanghai Theater Academy on 22 May. At the meeting, the Jingan District People's Government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Edinburgh Council Cultural Committee to promote in-depth cultural exchange between the two places. The two sides will take the Shanghai Jingan Modern Drama Valley and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as the platform, give full play to each other’s advantages, promote cultural exchange between the Jingan District and the City of Edinburgh in the fields of culture, innovation and festival organization etc, and take the arts festivals as a medium to promote the prosperity and development of culture and arts.
Thanks to the increase of theater facilities, the richness of market players, the rise of original power and the blooming of internet-based entertainment consumption, Shanghai’s entertainment industry has been developing vigorously in recent years. In the future, Shanghai plans to achieve the goal of 40,000 performances a year in three to five years. To this end, we need to continue to strengthen the attraction and influence of Shanghai’s own performing arts exchange platform such as the China Shanghai International Arts Festival and the Shanghai Jingan Modern Drama Valley to enhance the visibility in terms of first issue, first performance, first screening and first exhibition.
Taking the initiative to absorb the experience of the top performing arts clusters such as the Broadway in New York and the West End in London, and with the characteristics of sharing the high quality plays from all over the world with the general public, the Shanghai Jingan Modern Drama Valley works actively to build a performing arts ecosphere that includes a series of theaters and other performing arts venues such as the Experimental Theatre of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, thus providing the Jingan sample of space layout in central areas for Shanghai’s efforts to build itself into Asia’s performing arts capital. This year, the premiere ratio of the famous plays section of the Jingan Modern Drama Valley is expected to be over 80%.
The vice president of the Edinburgh Council Cultural Committee said that the arts festival makes the community come together more closely, makes the audiences like theatre and music, and also allows the voice of the audiences to be heard, thus having them involved in the cultural projects of the city and making the arts festival one that truly belongs to all people. Mr Yang Yang, Vice President of the Shanghai Theater Academy, pointed out that Shanghai had led Chinese modern drama in the 20s and 30s of last century, and today’s Shanghai faces new opportunities in the theatre industry and theatre production system. “We see so many theatre practitioners looking for development opportunities in Shanghai, so many industrial support programs are in the process of being considered and implemented, and more and more funding and personnel are concentrated in the theatre related industries. All these may be a new signal of cultural transformation. Changing our imagination and starting it from theatre may become a new style of urban culture in the future
