As the NCPA International Theare Festival 2018 is in full swing, a special ”International Children’s Theatre Festival” will be held as a drama carnival for younger audiences. Eight children’s dramas from six countries, including China, Denmark, Austria, Australia, France and South Africa, will be staged at the NCPA. Those dramas, of different forms such as multimedia stage drama, puppet drama, acousto-optical, etc., will bring children a novel experience.

Still of drama Life’s A Fairytale

Danish multi media drama Life’s A Fairytale will appear on July 26^th-29^th. Famous Danish director Steen Koerner combines science and technology perfectly with fairytales, stringing six classic stories from Hans Andersen’s Fairytales - The Nightingale, The Unwise Hans, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, Little Match Girl and The Ugly Duckling - together by artistic means of acrobatics, dance, image, animation and music. Several projectors will be used to project animation on the whole stage, including both downstage and upstage, in the whole course to create a realistic fantasy world by high-tech means. Moreover, actor WANG Luoyong will speak aside in Chinese for the performance, to shorten the distance between world classics and Chinese audience.


On August 3^rd-5^th, the Schönbrunn Schlosstheater will appear with children’s puppet operas Die Zauberflöte and Hansel and Gretel. Die Zauberflöte, originally known as an opera masterpiece by Mozart, tells a story about Prince Tamino who risks saving his beloved Pamina. However, the leading characters on the opera stage will become lifelike “puppets” enlighten children on opera in a special way.


Hansel and Gretel is a German fairytale collected by Grimms’ Fairy Tales, telling a story about an abandoned brother and sister straying into a candy house in the deep forest, where they see through the witch’s evildoing and save themselves wittily. The Schönbrunn Schlosstheater has adapted the script with a vivid aside added.

Me and My Shadow tells a story that one can make friends with his/her shadow

On August 3^rd-5^th, drama Me and My Shadow will be staged at the NCPA Multi-functional Theatre. Audience can make friends with their shadow and play a game with it. Children’s imagination will be inspired by fantastic images, novel body performances and interesting music, and they will gain wonderful, simple but poetic experience that can enable them to perceive joys and challenges in friendship.


On August 10^th-12^th, STEREOPTIK's Dark Circus will appear with a shadow play to set off light by darkness. Romain Bermond and Jean-Baptiste Maillet, from STEREOPTIK, will come on the stage with famous children’s book writer and illustrator Pef to draw paintings and play music on the scene, and then project the visually rich paintings on the big screen to the accompaniment of beautiful music, to give an impressive fantastic circus performance.

Beijing Art Theatre for Children will go on stage with its hilarious play My Primitive Family

At the NCPA International Children’s Theatre Festival, two Chinese children’s plays will be eye-catching. On August 17^th-19^th, the Beijing Art Theatre for Children will go on stage with its hilarious play My Primitive Family. The story takes place in a “primitive” modern family. The father is a softhead who is one track-minded. The mother, who talks about bones all the time, has no interest in family affairs. How do they get along with their imaginative son? The play will be performed in more abundant, exaggerated and improvised body movements under the direction of Italian commedia dell’arte inheritor Jeff Bee. Australian designer Charlotte Lane’s set, costume and appearance design of Western comic style enables audiences to quickly follow the development of the characters’ emotions and story line after they accept this novel form of expression, which helps to reveal that every family member has weaknesses, but each is an essential part of the family.


On August 17^th-18^th, the China National Theatre for Children’s puppet show Journey to the West will be put on stage at the Multi-functional Theatre. Diverse visual elements and images are used to make it a wonderful and straightforward story featured by unique costumes, diverse puppet types, rare huge characters, funny masks, as well as fascinating body movements, pleasant singing and instrumental music, multimedia pictures and acousto-optical effects.

On August 19^th-20^th, the Magnet Theatre’s drama AHA! from South Africa will be staged to put an end to the International Children’s Theatre Festival. The artists from South Africa will draw children audiences into a wonderful world of wool with only one prop—wool in body language as a communication medium, to explore using and playing with wool, to inspire endless imagination in children with simple creativity and bring about joys in every possible way.