A scene from Moonlight.

Shao Zehui, said, “I can’t tell whether my work is good or not. It’s pretty much more like a dialogue with master Pinter. The reason we decided to do this particular show is because we think the domestic theater market is not as prosperous as what we are expecting. It needs to be sobered down. We need something different, something calm. So we are willing to and we must do a show like this.”

It is never the perfection, but the self-expression that matters. The Beijing Fringe Festival provides a prime platform through which the younger generation of drama lovers are able to demonstrate their unconstrained artistic styles and get their voices heard.

Li Xiang, Beijing, said, “We don’t know yet how far these young drama enthusiasts will go, nor how many of them will still be holding on their stage dreams a decade later. What we do know is that their love for theater is earnest and true, and their wild imagination and ambitions can keep them moving forward at a steady pace.”

Harold Pinter, talk of the town

Theatergoers this month are sure to catch at least one play written by the Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. Four Chinese adaptations of his works are being staged throughout Beijing theaters until September 25 as part of the Beijing Fringe Festival.

Pei Kuishan, director of Pinter’s The Homecoming (1964), the story of an expatriate returning from the US to North London, said he had immersed himself in the heady source material. “My wife thinks I’m crazy but I’m not,” he said. “I’m giving my best shot to learn Pinter’s craziness.”

When given the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005, Pinter was praised for his ability to “uncover the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” He is known for extensive use of pregnant pauses amid tense and dramatic scenes.

Considered to be one of his major works, Betrayal (1978), a tale of surreptitious extramarital affairs, was staged at Peking University on September 14 to 16. The play’s director, Li Jianjun, said his understanding of the play was “friendship, love and marriage.”

“The characters are all sealed in the chains of betrayal, struggle and distortion,” Li Jianjun said. “Their mental states are subtle but full of tension.”