The large-scale Yue Opera cultural promotion and competition program "Yue Opera Youth" will be broadcast from May 4th. With the help of the linkage of large and small screens and multi-platform communication mechanism, it strives to create new glory for Shanghai Yue Opera.
Program poster
Shaping a new IP for Shanghai stage
Yue Opera has a deep connection with Shanghai. In the first half of the 20th century, the "Ten Sisters of Yue Opera" and the founders of the school took root in Shanghai's modern urban environment, giving birth to popular classics such as "The Butterfly Lovers", "A Dream of Red Mansions", "The Romance of the West Chamber" and "Xianglin's Wife". The "Ten Sisters of Yue Opera" performed "A Romance of Mountains and Rivers" for charity, inspiring future generations with their lofty ambitions, and the motto of "Stage Sisters" "Be a clean person and perform seriously" is deafening.
Since the 1980s, a group of actors who have won the Chinese Drama Plum Blossom Award for their original plays have emerged. Zhao Zhigang, Fang Yafen, Wu Fenghua and others have been personally taught by the founder of the Yue Opera school, promoting the modern transformation of Yue Opera. In 2025, facing the transformation of the performing arts market, from large theaters to small theaters, immersive and digital broadcasting eras, "Yuedong Youth" calls for a new generation of Yue Opera talents to emerge and promote the Shanghai Yue Opera "talents emerge from generation to generation".
Mentor lineup for "Youth"
32 future stars pursue their dreams in Shanghai
"Youth in Motion" is centered on "youthful expression and breaking the circle of communication". The program team carefully selected 32 future stars from Yue Opera troupes across the country. Among them are the winners of the Newcomer Award of the Magnolia Drama Performance Award, the Young Artists Supported by the China Shanghai International Art Festival, and the Little Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Opera. Most of them are born after 1995, and the youngest contestant is only 19 years old.
32 contestants will fully display the beauty of Yue Opera singing, the beauty of inheritance, and the beauty of spirit in "Yue Opera Youth" with an ingenious and professional competition mode.
The mentors include direct disciples of Yue Opera masters Yin Guifang, Yuan Xuefen, and Fan Ruijuan, and Plum Blossom Award winners and Yue Opera performing artists Zhao Zhigang, Fang Yafen, and Wu Fenghua, all of whom have more than 40 years of stage performance experience.
Player lineup
In the first episode, Wang Wanna, a Xu-style actor from the Shanghai Yue Opera Theater, performed "Stunning·The Phoenix Seeks the Phoenix" from "The West Chamber" while playing the guqin and singing; Zheng Mengmeng, who often performs Yue opera live, not only improves her artistic understanding, but also does not forget to promote Yue opera culture with new means; She Ying, who looks like Liu Yifei, performed the classic excerpt "The Story of Two Heroes·Praise the Husband", with excellent singing and dashing drumming performance; and Chen Xinyu boldly adapted the domestic game song "The Goddess Splits the View", exploring new expressions of Yue opera in the contemporary era.
The contestants of "Yue Dong Qing Chun" shine on stage and are also versatile young people off stage: Hu Haobin made a new start by switching from Wuju opera to Yueju opera, and took the exam again. He can do makeup, write, shoot, and host, and he is a drama by himself; Lou Qin has been a coffee shop owner and a dance teacher, and incorporated her self-choreographed street dance into "Nine Jin Girl"; Zhao Xinyu adapted Lin Daiyu's classic "Three Quatrains on a Handkerchief" and created her own guqin and calligraphy performances; Yang Yuner danced the graceful and lingering long silk dance in "Empresses in the Palace".
Promoting inheritance and development in front of and behind the scenes from multiple dimensions
In each episode, the audience will see the competition between the male and female roles, from the extreme planning of 48 hours to the unpredictable live broadcast of the theater, which fully restores the high requirements and high standards of the Yue Opera stage.
During the recording process, mentor Zhao Zhigang expressed his desire to create works that are suitable for the contestants' personal characteristics and popular with the audience. He encouraged the contestants to make good use of different platforms in inheritance and innovation, not only to produce good works, but also to let more people know about Yue Opera art. When Fang Yafen saw the young actors on the stage, she seemed to see herself 30 or 40 years ago. She said she wanted to help young people bloom the youth of Yue Opera on the stage. In Wu Fenghua's view, "Yuedong Youth" is like a mirror that allows young actors to recognize their potential, understand the growth trajectory of their predecessors, and more quickly sort out and summarize the methods of inheritance and innovation of Yue Opera.
From the beginning of planning, "Youth in Motion" has focused on the growth and stage practice of young Yue Opera actors of Generation Z, cultivating new stars of Shanghai Yue Opera with both inheritance awareness and innovation ability. Taking the broadcast of "Youth in Motion" as an opportunity, Oriental Entertainment, a subsidiary of Shanghai Radio and Television Station, will continue to build the "Youth in Motion" cultural IP brand and explore the diversified development paths of traditional art in the context of modern communication.
"Youth in Motion" will be broadcast on Dragon TV at 12:45 every Sunday starting from May 4th. It will be broadcast on the Urban Channel at 20:30 on the same day, on the Oriental Video Channel at 23:00 on the same day, and the Colorful Drama Zone will be online at 12:45 on the same day.
