Wu Zhen .[Photo provided to China Daily]

Some of the young people who started their theater careers in Wuzhen have gone on to be successful theater directors, he says.

One such is Wang Chong. His latest work, Where Do We Come From, What Are We, Where Are We Going 2.0?, will be staged during this year's festival. There are no professional or trained actors and just four audience members, each of whom plays a character, guided by audio directions in what they do or say.

Teachers and students from Central Academy of Drama, Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, and Nanjing University of the Arts will also stage works during the festival.

Given how small Wuzhen is, it is not unlikely that over that time they and many others at the festival will somewhere knock into Huang, the man whose drunken reverie 12 years ago made it all possible.

"People knock into me in restaurants or see me outside sitting on a public bench during the afternoon, but I'm not treated like a celebrity," Huang says.

"The thing that draws us all here is a great theatrical experience. In fact people come to Wuzhen - in its theaters, along waterways and in its narrow streets - for one thing: to dream."