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Hu Defu (right), better known as Ara Kimbo, a pioneer of Taiwan folk music, will make a cameo appearance in Stan Lai's River/Cloud. CHINA DAILY

Along with his company, the Denmark-based Odin Teatret, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary, Barba will be mounting two productions, Hamlet's Clouds and An Ordinary Day in the Life of the Dancer Gregor Samsa.

Director Stan Lai, one of the festival's cofounders, will stage his 40th production, River/Cloud. Making its Chinese mainland premiere this year, after which it will go on tour, it is a spinoff of Lai's classic Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, and is about the poignant love story of the protagonists Yun Zhifan and Jiang Binliu.

Audiences will be able to watch screen actor Chang Chen as Jiang, while Hsiao Ai will reprise the role of Yun, which she played in 1991. Hu Defu, a pioneer of Taiwan folk music, better known as Ara Kimbo, will make a cameo appearance.

This year also introduces a public welfare performance, The Revised Future, by director Ma Yan and the Pleasure Troupe, an inclusive theater troupe, of which a majority of performers have disabilities.

"It won the best play award at this year's Nanjing Festival of New Theatre. It is such an extraordinary production, with people of diverse abilities telling their own stories onstage," Lai says.

The recurring section for young theater practitioners, the Emerging Theatre Artists' Competition, is making some changes this year, due to the growing number of submissions.