Founder of the Huichang Theatre Village

赖声川 Stan Lai

"The best Chinese language playwright and director in the world." (BBC),"Asia's top theatre director." (Asiaweek) Robert Brustein calls him "unchallenged as the major contemporary Asian playwright of his time, perhaps of all time." His over 40 self-directed plays include Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, which the New York Times has chosen as one out of 20 "Essential Plays of the Last 100 Years," The Village ("The pinnacle of our era of theatre." -- Beijing News) and A Dream Like A Dream ("Possibly the greatest Chinese-language play since time immemorial." -- China Daily) His pioneering book on creativity, which has sold over one million copies in Chinese, is now available in his own English rewrite: Creativity: Asia’s Iconic Playwright Reveals the Art of Creativity (Anthem, 2025). His plays are available in his own translations in Selected Plays of Stan Lai (3 vols., Ed. Lissa Tyler Renaud, U. of Mich. Press, 2022). Lai is currently Artistic Director of Theatre Above, Shanghai, Performance Workshop, Taipei, and Co-founder and Festival Director of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, China. He is also Founder of the Huichang Theatre Village.

丁乃竺 Ding Naizhu

One of the most celebrated theatre producers in the Chinese-speaking region, she is also a respected producer of films and large-scale events.She graduated from the Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, and holds a Master’s degree in Educational Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. Since the founding of Performance Workshop in 1984, she has produced nearly 60 stage plays, including landmark classics that reshaped Chinese-language theatre, such as Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, A Dream Like A Dream, The Village, Piano Talk, and That Night, Crosstalk on the Road. As an actress, she starred in Reaching for the Stars and the premiere production of Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, originating the iconic role of Yun Zhifan. She has produced three feature films: Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, Super Citizen Ko and Here Is Shangri-La, which have won numerous awards at international film festivals including the Caligari Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and awards from the Tokyo International Film Festival. She once served as Vice President of Super TV. Her large-scale event productions include the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2009 Taipei Deaflympics, the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition, and the 2011 Miaoli Lantern Festival in Taiwan. She is currently CEO of Theatre Above in Shanghai and Administrative Director of Performance Workshop.

倪妮 Ni Ni

An actress, she graduated from Communication University of China, Nanjing.In 2011, she made her debut playing the leading role Yu Mo in the war epic film The Flowers of War, winning the Best Newcomer Award at the 6th Asian Film Awards. In 2023, she received the Golden Deer Award for Best Actress at the 18th Changchun Film Festival for the blockbuster suspense film Lost in the Stars.

Her major films include The Flowers of War, Shadow of the Sword, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Up in the Wind, Fleet of Time, Bride Wars, The Warriors Gate, Suddenly Seventeen, Wu Kong, The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, Savages, Shock Wave 2, 1921, Yanagawa, Lost in the Stars, etc. Her TV dramas include The Rise of Phoenixes, Love and Destiny, With You, Medal of the Republic, My True Friend, West Out of Yumen. Her stage works include 11 Docks and the exclusive version of A Dream Like A Dream.