A classroom beyond walls

Besides producing and spectating, Jiao also attended the festival's six-day international master classes, launched last year as public charity sessions. Serge Nicolai from the French company Theatre du Soleil and Marina Alexandrovskaya from the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts served as instructors.

"They are considered charity classes because our teachers are unpaid," Li says. She invited Nicolai to Daliangshan after visiting his innovative teaching class in France. Although only 30 spots were planned, 40 students participated.

Nicolai taught using masks, asking students to follow the instincts of the prop rather than their own identities. To help Chinese students understand his method, he incorporated characters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms into improvisation exercises.

Alexandrovskaya introduced the theory of Mikhail Chekhov, telling students that the ultimate goal of an actor is to elevate their craft until they can embody anything — even a door or a tree.

The master classes offered Jiao exposure to theater thinking outside the Chinese context: "This was the best course I've taken this year."

During his class, Nicolai insisted that all doors and windows remain open and students' shoes not block the entrances, so that anyone who may not be involved in theater could come and go freely — even for a fleeting moment of connection.

He emphasized that, throughout history, from ancient Greece to the Renaissance period, theater was performed in marketplaces, church courtyards, and other public spaces. "Perhaps today's theater must return to where people truly live."

At the opening ceremony, he noticed many residents in the audience. "When people see their lives performed on stage, they recognize themselves," he says. "The purpose of theater is to allow people to experience emotions together, not alone."

Jiao summed up the festival with three keywords: "Passion, purity, and connection." During the festival, Jiao made many new friends, with whom he shared worries, discussed dreams, and promised to visit each other's cities to watch performances.

The festival concluded on Nov 16. As Jiao says, when theater people say goodbye, they say, "See you at the next theater".