The BeSeTo Festival is Back to Splendid Life in Shenzhen

The text is an account of the renewed BeSeTo festival in its first post-pandemic edition in Shenzhen, China. It presents its main characteristics, while touching upon the history of this unique transnational theatre endeavour, initiated in 1994 as the festival of China, South Korea and Japan. The main focus is on the productions of the first festival week, some of which belong to genres listed by UNESCO as masterpieces of oral and intangible heritage – Pansori opera and Kunqu opera. Other critics’ response to them is also used as a spring-board. Interwoven in the texture of the article is an attempt at finding some common or contrasting points between the theatre in the West and that of China, South Korea and Japan.