On the morning of 28 May, the opening ceremony of the "Memory and Dream of A City – Statues of Foreigners in Shanghai" Photo Exhibition jointly organized by the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (SPAFFC) and the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) was held at the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
Since 2007, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio and Television, the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Affairs Office, the Shanghai Friendship Association and the Jing'an District Government have jointly initiated and supported the Shanghai "Drama Avenue" project, and have gradually solicited ten statues of famous foreign dramatists from overseas to settle in Shanghai, most of which are placed on the Huashan Road Campus of the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
From 2018 to 2020, SPAFFC worked jointly with the Shanghai Municipal Planning and Resources Bureau to conduct a survey and collation of a total of 165 statues of 116 foreigners scattered in various public places throughout the city. They then collaborated to plan and launch Shanghai’s first-ever picture album with the theme of statues of foreigners, titled "Memory and Dream of A City – Statues of Foreigners in Shanghai". This time, SPAFFC further selected 50 pictures of statues from that picture album and planned an exhibition with the same name, which aims to take the statues of foreigners as clues to explore the historical footprints and capture the wonderful moments, reproduce the beautiful imprints created in the course of interaction between the East and the West, and revisit the anecdotes that have retained in Shanghai’s interconnection with the world.
The opening ceremony was presided by Yang Yang, Vice President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Chen Jing, President of SPAFFC, Fu Jihong, Senor Inspector of SPAFFC, Jin Lei, Deputy Director-General of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, Zhang Hui, Deputy Mayor of the Jing'an District, and Tobias Biancone, Director-General of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), as well as Mileidy Aguirre Diaz, Consul General of Cuba in Shanghai, Joan Valadou, Consul General of France, Leopoldo Michel Diaz, Acting Consul General of Mexico in Shanghai, and Kamila Kukova, Acting Consul General of Slovakia in Shanghai, and other Chinese and foreign guests of honour attended the opening ceremony and cut ribbon for the exhibition. Representatives from other consulates in Shanghai, including the United States, Greece, Japan and Russia, as well as other foreign friends, also attended the event.
At the opening ceremony, Gong Baorong, Dean of the STA International College, introduced the stories of statues of foreign dramatists placed in STA. Fu Jihong, Senior Inspector of SPAFFC, and Tobias Biancone, Director-General of ITI, delivered speeches successively.
After the opening ceremony, the student volunteers from STA took the guests for a guided tour of the indoor exhibition and the statues on campus, and provided vivid explanations.
The urban statues in Shanghai embody the city’s spirit of "being inclusive, pursuing excellence, being open-minded and wise, and being generous and modest". The statues of foreign dramatists on the STA campus not only serve as a carrier of STA’s campus culture, but also carry the friendly feelings endued in cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, and are a vivid manifestation of the cross-border nature of art. In the future, STA will continue to focus on its disciplinary characteristics, leverage its resource advantages, and facilitate international cultural and artistic exchange and integration.
