Also Co-Founder and Festival Director of Wuzhen Theatre Festival.
Stan Lai is "the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world" (BBC); "Asia's top theatre director" (Asia week); and “Asia’s flagship playwright” (China Daily). Beginning in Taiwan in the 1980s, Lai’s plays have greatly influenced theatre in the Chinese speaking world, including his most famous play, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, which was performed in English at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015. His The Village has been described by Beijing News as "the pinnacle of our era of theatre." His epic 8-hour A Dream Like A Dream (2000), has been called by China Daily "possibly the greatest Chinese-language play since time immemorial." One One Zero Eight is Lai's 39th original work as playwright and director, and his 4th offering at Wuzhen Theatre Festival.
Lai is Artistic Director of Performance Workshop, Taiwan; Theatre Above, Shanghai; and Co-founder and Festival Director of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, China.
Also Co-Founder and Producing Director of Wuzhen Theatre Festival.
Huang Lei is one of the most prominent actors in China, in theatre, television and film. He is also a screenwriter, theatre producer, and a TV & film director and producer. Hang Lei has been teaching at the Beijing Film Academy for 22 years. During his many years of teaching, and with his sound knowledge of literature and artistic practices, Huang Lei has creatively formulated his diversified methods of training actors, nurturing much outstanding young talent for the TV and film industries.
Huang Lei’s acting is popular with audiences and acclaimed by critics. His theatre credits include Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land and The Yellow Storm; TV and film credits include April Rhapsody, A Love for Separation, A Little Reunion, Hey Daddy!, Honey Bee Man, Between Husband and Wife, Guys Clan, When Tangerines Turn Red, Life on A String. He has also written and directed many works for television and film, especially the TV series Lost Time, which he wrote, directed and acted in, and which was shot in Wuzhen in 2003 and won him great popularity and warm appreciation all over China, while at the same time introducing the timeless beauty of Wuzhen to the public.
In 2013, Huang Lei co-founded Wuzhen Theatre Festival with Chen Xianghong, Stan Lai and Meng Jinghui.
He is also part of the jury for this year’s Festival.
Raymond Zhou is a prominent bilingual writer and cultural critic, especially in the fields of film, theatre and cross-cultural interpretation. For more than a decade he contributed columns for China Daily and Movie View, and he now writes and hosts a weekly segment for CCTV’s Movie Channel.
Zhou is the author of 21 books, published since 1998. Of these, three are in English. The Los Angeles Times calls him “China’s Roger Ebert.”
Zhou has been on the jury for the Competition section of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival and has often participated in the Forum section. His play The Ring Road uses China’s road structure as a metaphor for today’s Chinese society and its stumbling blocks and pitfalls. The original English version premiered in Los Angeles in 2010, and the updated Chinese version toured China in 2014 and 2015.
Zhou is a prolific writer with over 100 articles published each year and the same number of media appearances. He has been invited to several BBC Culture polls as a culture expert from China. The cover story he wrote for American Theatre, with critical reflections on contemporary Chinese theatre, has just won the Critics Award conferred by the International Association of Theatre Critics, Chinese section.
Zhou is a graduate of Hangzhou University, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and the University of California at Berkeley.
Cheng Er is a prominent director, writer and author. He graduated from the Director Department of Beijing Film Academy. His works have a unique film aesthetic style. The exquisite lens composition and non-linear narrative structure have become a unique romance in Chinese language movies. His graduation short film, Criminal, is considered the most outstanding graduation work in the history of Beijing Film Academy. His debut film Unfinished Girl, Lethal Hostage, The Wasted Times, Hidden Blade, these have all received recognition from the industry and audiences.
Cheng Er has won Annual Dirctor of China Film Director’s Guild, Best New Director and Best Film at Chinese Film Media Awards, Best Screenplay and Best Film at Beijing College Student Film Festival, Outstanding Youth Drama Award at Huabiao Film Awards, Outstanding Screenplay at China Film Association and so on.
Chiayi Seetoo holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and is an Associate Professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. She had danced with Legend Lin Dance Theater, Cie Felix Ruckert, Stephan Koplowitz project and acted in the play Two Swords devised by polish director Gregorz Jarzyna. She had served on the boards of directors of Performance Studies international (PSi) and Dance Studies Association (DSA). She is a performance artist who uses rational perspective to perceive emotions, moving across the realms of theater, sites, video and film art, and digital interactive mediascapes through dance and physical performance. She is committed to the integration of performance art theory, practice, and education. Her performing art studio Realms of the Liminal aims to promote cross-border artistic creation, production, and education around dance and the integration of body and mind. Her recent works include Invisible Cities 2.022, Avatar Mythology, Stories in the Flow in An Ecosystem of Alliances at the 13th Shanghai Biennale, among others.