A stage play featuring the journey of young dramatists to find meaning in their creative work will premiere at Chang'an Grand Theater on Thursday.

Entitled Look Over Our Happy Life, the new play reveals the young drama devotees' ideals and their struggles in a stressful and competitive modern life.

The story starts with Hu and Die's ambition to create a "real artistic play with deep meaning." However, the producer Shan persuades them to work on a commercial show to add glamour to the New Year season.

When they begin to rehearse, weird things happen one after another: a hurricane strikes the city, the theater closes down, a gas explosion causes heavy casualties, a mysterious man joins the crew and so on.

The crew then face further trials and tribulations as they have to battle deceit, snobbishness and other bad traits of human nature.

The story of Hu and Die mirrors that of Shi Zhan, director of the new play, and his friends.

"Does entertainment mean everything to life? Is it the only reason we create a play to amuse an audience? No. The play answers such questions and we hope the audience can understand this," said the young director Shi.

But it does not mean that Look Over Our Happy Life is a heavy play. The show is filled with dark humor and makes fun of headline news and public figures from last year such as the Super Girls competitors and the famous controversial Internet figure Sister Furong.

Three popular TV stars including Suo Ni, Gu Yang and Wang Fang will give guest performances in the show, briefing the top-10 headlines of 2005 in an original way.

Look Over Our Happy Life is the first of the theatrical shows in this year's Happy-New-Year theatrical program, a tradition that started four years ago to lure people out of their homes.

The first ever Happy New Year drama was created by a group of students at the Central Academy of Drama. The comedy, entitled Cui Hua expands on the lyrics of a hit pop song in 2001 and enjoyed tremendous success as the play featured a couple of hot topics from that year.

Ever since then, student productions have kick-started the Happy New Year dramas. In the years following the start of the program, the same cast performed an updated version of Cui Hua, alongside other similar comedies.

Very much like the festival movies, they are funny, rich in holiday spirit and the performers make every effort to amuse their audience.

However, the crew has decided to change the direction slightly this year. "Since we have now all left school and have gained more life experience, we have found that entertaining plays should be more serious and deep with a greater emphasis on social problems," said Shi Zhan, who performed the first edition of Cui Hua and worked as assistant director of the third edition.

(China Daily January 11, 2006)