Following the success of "Il Teatro delle Regione (Regional Theatre)" (21 – 26 July), the Tramedautore Festival returns for its traditional international September appointment, this year dedicated to China and its grand transformations.

The review will host eight productions by established and up-and-coming Chinese artists, who through their various styles tell of urban life in the Chinese megalopolises of Beijing, Shanghai, Nanking and Hong Kong: Cent'anni di architettura cinese (11 and 12 September, a play in original language with surtitles); Fake Single (13 September); Leave before getting old (15 September); Contratto matrimoniale (16 September); Wildboar - Il cinghiale  (17 September); La Fuga (18 September); Cinglish - Cinglese  (19 September); Carbone attivo (20 September).

Alongside the performances there will be opportunities to meet the artists, conferences on the themes of the review and film screenings. Click here for the programme.

In collaboration with Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office – Brussels, Eric C. Yim, Ronald Lu & Partners -呂元祥建築師事務 – The Italian Institute of Culture Beijing, Istituto Confucio dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, Fondazione Italia – Cina, O barra O Edizioni, The Chinese theatre workshop of the Università "L'Orientale", Naples, created by the sinologist Maria Cristina Pisciotta.

The protagonists of this pièce are three characters: a mature intellectual, a student and a young actress, who find themselves together by chance one night in the sinister space of a warehouse where they are hiding in a desperate attempt to escape death. Outside, in fact, the army is laying waste to the streets and squares of the city. The allusion is to the violent clashes of 4 June 1989 in Tiananmen Square, taking this as the starting point for a reflection on more universal themes. The political dimension weaves together with the problematic and perverse relationship between men and women, a recurring question in the author's works.

Gao Xingjian (1940), Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, narrator, essayist, playwright, translator, painter, cineaste. After having studied French literature at the University of Beijing, and after five years of 're-education' imposed by the cultural revolution, he became a playwright for the Beijing People's Art Theatre (1981). In the same year he made his entry onto the literary scene with 'A preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques". In 1987 he left China and arrived in Paris, where he lives today, and where he completed his masterpiece, Soul Mountain(1990). In 1999 he published his autobiographical novel One man's bible. France nominated him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et de Lettres and in 2000 Italy bestowed him with the Feronia Award from the City of Fiano.