The power of one

Evelina Arapidi performs Women of Passion, Women of Greece at the festival. Interconnected stories Tatiana Ligari, director of Women of Passion, Women of Greece, believes that monodrama's unique charm lies in its ability to reach "something deeper in our emotion". One of the goals of this year's festival is to allow Chinese audiences to hear the voices of creators from across the world and to facilitate exchanges and learning between Chinese theater practitioners and their global counterparts. One of the nine works in this year's competition is Seabird, directed and performed by Zhang Le, a 24-year-old from Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. While rereading Russian writer Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Zhang was struck by the similarities between the young playwright Treplev and himself: "We are both poor, troubled, yet persistent," he said.